アリソン(Allison) is a Light Novel about two teenagers in a world with two continents split right down the middle that are eternally at war until the end of the first light novel.

My biggest gripe with Allison is that it comes off as quite naïve, going all-in on the Japanese Kumbaya cliché. This is fine…at first…at the end of the first volume…but gets more grating with each installment.
The reason this isn’t that big of a problem is that the series is only 4 volumes total, so it just barely overstays its welcome.

Besides that though? Yeah, it’s alright. I think the worldbuilding actually kinda works if we take the intended theme (which is Japanese Kumbaya-related) into account…as it kinda makes sense. The issue is that past the first volume, there are serious issues with the worldbuilding keeping everything in order…because, while it makes sense in that initial volume’s premise…it doesn’t make sense longer-term.
My personal approach would have been to treat the first volume as a one-off/pilot/preview like you sometimes see with manga. Then I would have taken the time to work on the worldbuilding a bit more…and then I would have continued.
But that’s why I said it just barely overstays its welcome.

I realized only now that I kinda failed to elaborate on what the problem with the worldbuilding is…so uh…I’ll elaborate with more details in the future, but the gist of it is that the world of Allison features one pangaea-style continent which is split exactly in half. After millenia passed, the people of the two continents mutually discovered each-other and then, seemingly, realized that it makes more sense to hate the guy across the street than the next-door neighbor.
Each continent united into mega-alliances (the West into an autocratic Empire, the East into a democratic Federation) which then occasionally went to war with each-other: the aim being to exterminate the other side. Both continents frequently bicker about everything…including which continent humanity originated from.
The first volume ends with Allison and her boyfriend whose name I suddenly forgot discovering an ancient cave painting that evilmen aim to destroy. This cave painting depicts the sacred symbols of each continent side-by-side showing that, in the past, both peoples were united as one. This then leads to both side realizing that fighting each-other is pointless and dumb and they should stop – which they do.
There are a lot of issues with that, but I’m gonna leave it there for now.

I would write something here, but I either stopped reading during the first volume or after finishing the first volume. I wasn’t really as into it as I was into Allison. Again, the worldbuilding cannot possibly maintain a story past the first volume of Allison.

The Japanese Kumbaya thing is also still going so yaaaaay.

There is an anime which adapts both Allison and Lillia into a single series…which is an interesting choice. I’ve had it in my backlog for a while and I’ve been intending to watch it for a while…initially I avoided it because I wanted to finish reading Lillia & Treize first…but that ain’t happening for a while, so it might be the only way I experience Lillia‘s story.

• Allison – Baka-Tsuki
• Lillia & Treize – Baka-Tsuki
• Both of the above lead you to fan translations of Allison and Lillia. It’s where I found the novels and read them.