u/historyman2590

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Another fun piece in Allison and Lillia fandom history! The artist whose blog I've been mining decided to line up a bunch of the female characters from Sigsawa's different series and compare their heights, including several familiar faces from the Allison universe.

Obviously this isn't an official height chart, but I love things like this because it gives you a sense of how fans pictured the characters relative to one another. And seeing the A&L cast standing alongside characters from the rest of Sigsawa's extended universe is just fun in its own right.

Can you recognize everyone from the lineup?

Hello, my fellow pilots! I have come back from my vacation overseas and it was a fantastic experience. To celebrate my return, I wanted to share something a little different: Figurines!

This post got me wondering if there were ever any figurines or nendoroids made for the Allison and Lillia novels and anime. Turns out...YES!

https://preview.redd.it/hqsixitylngh1.jpg?width=600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cc5aae1724422559f63ea365e5ef55129945b18c

https://preview.redd.it/d0avtjtylngh1.jpg?width=521&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3b7198edfd20076defe4c752a98fa4b40a481461

https://preview.redd.it/kpafrjtylngh1.jpg?width=600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1bdf96d401442dc82c4f40f6567170acb70ff016

https://preview.redd.it/lt4b9ktylngh1.jpg?width=600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4d880d0475b019c757d5a48e2c2dd964b610140f

https://preview.redd.it/lvkgpjtylngh1.jpg?width=600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0ffe2fe14b60bc0ef801f87f9bfb5d4cc51e3753

I found all of these on My Figure Collection by searching Allison to Lillia and Lillia to Treize. According to the website it doesn't look like there were any figurines made of Meg and Seron, which is a shame but understandable. They never received an anime adaptation, so I can't imagine there was much incentive to make any.

As for whether these figurines are still available...that's not something I can say definitively. Given that these were all made in 2008 or so, it's likely they're long gone. But even so, it's quite a nice surprise to see that there was merch of these characters. I'd KILL to have any of these figurines now!

I will be back to my regular postings starting next Monday with a special surprise for all of you. Look forward to it!

In his video attacking reviewers of his book, TJ made the snide comment that he has more sales than the reviewers have subscribers.

Putting aside the childish and cheap attack of “my audience is bigger than yours” that he and his subs/followers regularly use to deflect criticism, it got me wondering: just how many people actually watch him?

For this discussion, I am solely focusing on TJ’s YouTube channel and leaving DFF/Patreon figures out of the discussion.

TJ’s channel currently sits at around ~920k subscribers. And that may sound like a big deal, but it doesn’t really hold when you consider that he struggles to get even a fraction of that number when it comes to views on his videos. His viewcounts tend to hover in the tens of thousands, and sometimes he struggles to get even that high. He only really breaks into the hundreds of thousands when he is covering mass tragedies that everyone else covers at the time.

That tells me that his active audience is much, MUCH smaller than his sub count would initially suggest. He has also actively complained about subscriber loss and low viewcounts on his videos in the past, meaning he is at least partially aware that his career is tanking. It’s also well known by this point that subscriber/follower numbers are easy to fake through bot accounts and in some cases just buying views to inflate your numbers. And let’s not forget that TJ has used burner/sockpuppets in the past.

If I had to guess, I would say that TJ’s core audience is maybe in the tens of thousands at best. That’s nothing to sneeze at, obviously, but this idea that he’s this big name on YouTube and the internet in general is just nonsense. Whenever people do talk about him it’s usually in reference to the banana or how they stopped watching him after growing up and finishing high school. By any standard, his career has fallen off and he’s a has-been on Youtube.

Also here is the original video he's reacting to in case you don't want to give Fatso McButthurt views: Sexbot Uprising - Book Brothers Episode 16

Since I know TJ is reading this, here's a protip for you: any respectable author does NOT try to fight or rebut his critics. It is always a sign of insecurity and a fragile ego. You are fast becoming Norman Boutin and Sexbot Uprising is your Empress Theresa. Though given that you're an illiterate slob who can barely read or write anyway, I doubt you know about either of them.

Couldn't help but notice all of these are recently made accounts too. Makes me wonder where they're all coming from.

It couldn't POSSIBLY be TJ making sockpuppets to defend himself right?

RIGHT?

...RIGHT?

You're not fooling anyone, TJ. We're all onto your BS. You're a pedo, a creep, and a loser. Your days are numbered and your downfall is inevitable. And no, that's not a threat; that's a promise.

"So what if he sent porn to a minor? She was almost 18 anyway! It's the internet, rules are different!"

"TJ is like that with everyone! I wouldn't do it, but that's just who he is!"

"Everyone on the internet thought age of consent should be 13 back then! Those comments aren't so bad when you put it in context!"

"Loli isn't child porn because it's not real!"

"It's not pedophilia because he's creeping on teenagers, not children!"

"Pedophilia is attraction to child bodies, so if a teenager is fully developed it's okay!"

"It's all Brett Keane's lies!"

The lengths to which people will go to defend this creep are astounding.

Consider this a follow-up of sorts to the Meg and Seron anime discussion here, I wanted to address a bigger question: does the Allison and Lillia anime need a remake?

I ask because while I love the anime, I recognize it has many, many shortcomings, not just in adapting the source material but some more fundamental things like art and animation. While I have grown tired of remakes, reboots, and revivals, this is one anime where I can see a renewal not only being logical but maybe even beneficial and necessary.

Let's start with a few base assumptions: the anime studio (Madhouse) would take on the production again and would bring all or most of the original team back as possible. That may sound counterintuitive, but I think it was clear the production team did have some investment in the series beyond just financial. And for this remake to work, I think finances would the biggest change.

The biggest reason is that Allison and Lillia has a very specific identity: it blends old-fashioned action-adventure with romance, travel, mystery, aviation, trains, firearms, and a pseudo-early-20th-century world that feels close to our own without being exactly our own. Even in the novels, it often feels like Sigsawa is using the story as an excuse to indulge his love of vintage aircraft, vehicles, weapons, and cross-continental travel. A remake should lean hard into that. The airplanes were already some of the real stars of the anime, and with modern production values, the aerial combat, mechanical detail, and travel sequences could be far stronger.

A remake could also restore some of the danger that the original anime sanded down. Allison and Lillia often looks and feels like a children’s adventure show, with very little blood and a lot of softened violence. If you've read the light novels, you will know they can be much harsher. Characters die more brutally, the stakes feel more immediate, and the world carries the scars of war more visibly. While I don't think a remake should become full-on grimdark as that would risk losing the original's charm, it should be more willing to let the danger feel real.

The other major thing a remake could improve is worldbuilding. The anime gets the broad strokes of the novels, but it glosses over a lot of the subtler material: the East/West divide, the language barriers, Roxche and Sou Be-Il’s lingering prejudices, and how younger characters live in the shadow of a war they did not personally fight. Those details matter because they give the adventure and romance more weight.

There are also characters who could benefit from a more faithful adaptation. Meg is barely present in the anime, despite becoming important later, and Seron is almost completely absent. While I wouldn't want a remake to awkwardly shove Meg and Seron into the spotlight, it could still seed them properly, assuming there was interest in adapting Meg and Seron afterward. Even small appearances or hints would make the world feel more connected.

That said, I do think a remake would need more than better animation. It would need better pacing, a team that understands the series’ and Sigsawa's love of travel and machinery, and enough confidence to keep the charm while restoring the sharper edges. If it only rushed through the same material again, better visuals alone would not be enough.

It is probably a long shot, but I sometimes think Allison and Lillia could stand out even more now. So much current anime leans toward high school romance, isekai, or medieval fantasy that a dieselpunk/WWII-adjacent adventure romance might feel fresh again.

What do you all think? Does Allison and Lillia deserve a remake? And if it ever happened, what would you want it to keep, change, or restore from the novels?

Meg and Seron (clean novel cover)

I wanted to do something a little different than just post more fanart, so I thought this would be a good topic for discussion.

As much as I love the Allison and Lillia anime, it feels incomplete knowing that the Meg and Seron novels were never adapted. The reason why is obvious: the anime didn't do that well and compared to Kino's Journey, the Allison, Lillia and Treize, and Meg and Seron novels are all relatively obscure.

But that doesn't stop me from wondering what an anime adaptation of the novels would have looked like.

For this, I would assume that the same production team would tackle the Meg and Seron novels. That may sound like a downside depending on how one feels about the Allison and Lillia anime, but given the nature of the Meg and Seron novels, it might actually be more of a strength.

Allison and Lillia had romance, but at its core it was an adventure anime. Meg and Seron would shift away from the cross-continental adventures, airplanes, and intrigue and focus more on the school club hijinks and slow-burn romance. Obviously, it would still exist in the same world with the two countries, and the themes of postwar reconciliation, language barriers, cultural differences would still be in the background. But it becomes more of an ensemble comedy and focuses on Seron's slow struggles to confess his love to Meg.

In other words, a Meg and Seron anime wouldn't have simply been "more Allison and Lillia." It would have been more of a school mystery/romcom set in the same world.

For this to work, the best adaptation would have been 24-26 episodes. I think one reason the Allison and Lillia anime can feel rushed is it had the unenviable task of compressing two light novel series into 26 episodes. With Meg and Seron, the threat of adaptation compression or distillation would be much, much smaller. 24-26 episodes would let every Newspaper Club case breathe and the anime could fundamentally preserve what makes the novels so charming: the club interactions, Jenny's scheming, Larry trying to be Seron's wingman, Natalia and Nick quietly stealing the show, Meg being cute, and Seron being outwardly calm while internally freaking out.

I imagine the anime would lean hard into the Newspaper Club ensemble. Jenny would be the anime's chaos engine looking to chase an article everywhere. The Ercho Village arc (Volume IV) would make for a big mid-season climax since there are real stakes involved. Seron finally confessing to Meg and the school's Spring Dance (Volume VII) would be the big emotional payoff.

To those who read the novels, what do you all think? Would Meg and Seron have worked as an anime? Would it have needed 1-cour or 2-cour? Which arcs would have been essential to keep? Could it work if it focused solely on the Newspaper Club, or would it need to make connections to Lillia and Treize (and potentially Allison and Wil)?