neko's thinkbox

After some unforeseen occurrences including a whole afternoon of troubleshooting to getting rid of some peculiarly obnoxious worms and Trojan horses *breathes in* …I was finally able to finish the first season of ARIA (to catch up with the airing S3, ARIA the Origination). It’s been over half a year that friends of mine had been urging me daily to watch it, and despite the artwork being good prey for wallpapers (especially vectors), I never paid regard to ARIA.

…damn. Right now I realize that I have indeed missed an incredibly nice anime…

Then again, the timing could not have been any better: just as I was trying to get close to the Slice of Life genre, I was able to watch one of its purest specimens: ARIA. As I said in the intro, I only knew the artwork (scans) from the numerous ARIA artbooks, which honestly speaking looked all the same to me – which doesn’t mean they were not beautiful at all, to the contrary: it goes without saying that Amano Kozue’s drawings are gorgeous. Perhaps not at the same level as Makoto Shinkai’s artwork, but that would just be too much for a simple series like ARIA.

The story

Akari ‘Momiko’ Mizunashi

Simplicity is prominent in this anime, and it’s always astonishing how little actually is needed to create a pleasant atmosphere. From the gentle Opening to the equally smooth Ending, each episode literally takes you to another world. Of course, as a true Slice of Life story… there is no real story. The point of this anime clearly is Carpe Diem – enjoy every day to its fullest extent. It’s all about Undines (female gondoliers) guiding around the man-made city of Neo-Venezia on planet Aqua (former Mars), and different mini-stories from beach island excursions to rowing training afternoons. A recurrent pattern is that Akari reports about each of her eventful days to Ai, who lives on Man-Home (Earth) and whom she met in the first episode.

This might seem utterly boring, but it actually is not. The sheer beautiful setting along with the cute protagonists and their natural appearance, and the light and sober comedy fully make up for the slow pace and the lack of action in the anime. The halcyon days of all the characters takes you away, and leaves a quite deep impression of pleasure and satisfaction – watching ARIA is, like its namesake from the opera, listening to a melodious song, and bathing in a dream of happiness (…HAZUKASHII SERIFU KINSHI!!!). Okay, perhaps I might be exaggerating in my choice of words, but I somewhat mean it ^^;;

The characters

President Aria, always cute and fluffy. Yes, it’s a cat.

If you have already seen some artwork about ARIA on image boards or scan/wallpaper resource sites, you might already have noticed it: the protagonists are mainly female – only a handful of males make recurrent appearances in this series (Akatsuki, his brother, Woody, and Al). And don’t forget the blue-eyed cats, which have a special role in this anime: they are the presidents of the different Gondola companies. President Aria of the Aria Company, President Hime of the Himeya Company… and the third company, Orange Planet, got a new President called Maa.

The individual character development is pretty superficial though, most likely due to the shortness of the series. Almost each episode introduced one ore more characters, which made it quite difficult to focus on one character at a time, except Akari. Well, the viewer accompanies her the whole time anyway, so we obviously have a deeper insight on her character traits. …Akari often reminds me of Milfeulle of Galaxy Angel. Not only because of the identical hair color (duh), but because of the joy and the brimful of life she spreads to everyone around her, especially to the viewer (Akari outdoes her GA counterpart in intelligence though :P).

All the important people in the anime.

Staying in the Aria Company, we have Alicia, Akari’s senpai and one of the three Water Fairies of Neo-Venezia. She’s like an idol to many Undine apprentices, like Aika. Aika is pretty cool, especially her “hazukashii serifu kinshi!” (embarassing remarks aren’t allowed!) remarks about Akari’s words are funny. She’s a little bit tsundere at times, and tsundere is good. However not as much as Akira, her senpai at the Himeya company, and the second Water Fairy. I love the ep where she rants about Alicia’s many “ara ara” giggles, it’s so hilarious. And finally the staff of Orange Planet, Alice and Athena, the third Water Fairy. Alice is somewhat of a talented loli, and very apathetic – me likes her lots. :3 Athena is more of a ditz, but her singing skills are top notch.

Well, I really don’t want you to go tl;dr on this so basically that’s all about the characters in a nutshell. Trivia: did you notice? All of their names start with A – Akari, Ai, Aika, Aice, Alicia, Akira, Athena… (not to mention the many side characters from the different episodes…) Pretty fitting for an anime called ARIA…

By the way, that Al guy looks like Negi from Negima (fix’d). True story, check it for yourself.

The soundtrack

Chillin’

It all started with the Opening song, so melodic, so soft, so soothing… There truly couldn’t have been a better song than Makino Yui’s “Undine”. The tranquil sound of the harps, the violins, the piano, the mandolin, the mellow beats, not to mention the overly smooth and beautiful voice of Makino Yui – everything converges into a shower of bliss which immediately tunes the viewer into the pleasant ambiance of ARIA (HAZUKASHII SERIFU KINSHI!!). Wonderful, simply wonderful. I also love how there is no set opening animation: it’s smoothly integrated within the beginning of the anime, and shows each episode new gorgeous sceneries of Neo-Venezia. Rarely have openings pleased me this much, and it would be a sin to skip those. I really am in love with “Undine”, and take my word for it, I tested it out myself this morning – there ain’t a better song to wake up in the morning to.

The Ending is quite great too. Well, Round Table feat. Nino is always win, their songs always fit. I especially like the acoustic version of the song, which can be found on the OST. Speaking of which, it has been looping for several hours in winamp, and it doesn’t feel like I will grow tired of it anytime soon – it keeps up the quality of the opening and theme song with nice and melodious tunes. And obviously, there’s Athena’s singing as well, but I didn’t like it that much either…

The animation + design

Simply wonderful.

The animation is pretty decent, although it obviously doesn’t seem that challenging either since there is no fast-paced action in ARIA. But now that I am looking at all the different people and studios that were involved in the making of this anime of certain episodes, it really becomes evident how much quality can be produced with key animation, without overusing computer technology, and it’s just plain amazing.

The design is wonderful, and I will reiterate that Amano Kozue’s original artwork, which has been the main inspiration, is just gorgeous. Many fantasy-like elements, like the occasional spaceships and the floating isle of Ukijima, offer a rather interesting contrast to the general lack of technology of Neo-Venezia. Well, technology is definitely present, as seen in the first episode with the virtual screen telephone, or later in the series with Woody’s flying scooter, but it is not omnipresent as one would expect from futuristic settings. Perhaps there is, but it has not been shown in this series yet (and I hope it will never be either, it’s absolutely fine like that).

Aren’t they just cute?

The characters look overly cute, and they add to the colorfulness of the sceneries… for once that unnatural hair colors don’t stand out negatively in an anime, heh. The occasional grimaces are funny bring some variety as well, and are pretty characteristic: Akari’s gaping mouth, Aika’s :3-like mouth, or Alice’s triangle-shaped mouth (“you’re so nosy”).
Also, I want a President Aria plushie. Soooo kyuute xD

Fanservice? No. And that’s absolutely great! :D It could have been hinted on the beach or the onsen episode, but it was just casual and not explicit like… uh… Kimiaru…….. ok, bad comparison. But I hope you catch my drift there.

Conclusion

After reading all of my eulogies, it should be rather easy to figure out that this anime has become one of my favorites. I definitely recommend watching it if you want to spend pleasant evenings, relaxing and chilling at home after stressful days for example. Rarely have I enjoyed watching anime at a slow pace… marathoning the thirteen episodes was impossible, and it would have been a waste not to savor them anyway. However, there is a small regret.

And off we go into the next season!

The only drawback is the fact that such a perfect world without wars nor any kind of conflicts, be it Aqua (Mars) or Earth, (with such cute Undines as well) will never exist. The more I watched this anime, the more happier I felt for knowing such a great piece of art, but also felt slightly depressed because it was simply too good to be true – a totally utopian scenery. You might think, “welcome to fantasy Mr. Obvious, it’s a fictional story after all”, and indeed that is true, however ARIA is one of those stories so fascinating that it makes me want to escape from this wretched and complicated world. Aah, I sound so pessimistic ^^

Anyway, I could not help smiling throughout the whole series, and it almost killed me that the series was already over. But I am relieved since I know that there are two sequels. And I can’t wait to finally start watching ARIA the Animation Natural, obviously!! Yay~ (…forgot I had an exam tomorrow x_x blah…)