Many have suggested me to watch this show ever since I have watched K-ON!!. That series was Aria, a scientific fiction slice of life, which had some similarities to the mentioned title minus the excess moe. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the first two episodes with its nice animation, music and a interesting story. Therefore, I have to share my thoughts about Aria the Animation, the first season of the series. (Image Source)
The story takes place in the future on the planet called Aqua, which is a terraformed Mars. On the planet, there is a city looks like Venice is Neo-Venezia. Since the city has mostly water, travel is done by boats (gondola) and walking. The main heroine of the story is named Akari, which is employed by “Aria Company,” a boat tour company as trainee in Neo-Venezia. She works with Alicia, another woman that worked for the company with several years of experience. Alicia seems to be cheerful and graceful, with some taunting of a certain friend of hers.
The episodes I have watched focused on different issues and experiences. In the first episode, a girl named Ai sneaks onto Akari’s gondola when she was unable to book an appointment to ride with Alicia. When Akari finds her on the boat, she practices while Ai rides until she sees Aika, which is her friend. Aika meets Akari with a young girl and rides with them. After several hours passed by, Ai explained why she hated Aqua. It was caused by the jealousy of her older sister visiting Aqua and riding on Alicia’s gondola. Eventually, Ai begins to love Aqua after hanging out with Aika and Akari. When they come back to “Aria Company” building, she reunites with her parents. Before leaving, she exchanged emails with Akari so they keep in contact.
In the second episode, we are introduced to Himeya Company and Akira, a really strict mentor of Aika. Aika decides to run away and sleep at Aria Company after she got angry over Akira’s remark. Eventually they apologize to Akira with some bread. In addition, Akira revealed that Alicia and herself are childhood friends despite Alicia’s teasing.
Even though Aria the Animation is shown in the old-fashioned 4:3 format, the animation and art style is excellent. The scenery looked gorgeous, which brings out the beauty of Neo-Venezia. While the animation gets better in the subsequent seasons, this doesn’t mean the animation is weak because it’s made in 2005. Not to mention, the music sounded excellent that gives a gentle and a feeling of awesomeness.
Overall, I enjoyed Aria the Animation as a pleasant slice of life story. It was nice to see Akari be so cheerful while she continues her dreams of becoming a better undine. On top of that the art and music was beautiful, which adds on the enjoyment. Hopefully Aria will continue to be good or even better with future episodes and seasons.
Music is really great in Aria.
It’s a simple statement, but it’s definitely an underlying concept; making things better through the people you’re around.
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Helping people along the way is a part of becoming a better person. Consider Ai’s position… She is the youngest, thus the last child of the family. Most of the time, they get shafted with the first child getting the most of the attention, in this case her older sister. The younger would probably be jealous towards the older child’s so called bragging when in fact she only wanted to tell Ai how good Aqua was and wanted her to love it.
I may be overanalyzing this, but one of the important topics is growing up and becoming a better person, thus the Rite of Passage. The young aren’t perfect, but when they see the path… this is when they become better.
It gets better once the characters are fleshed out since their personalities bounce off each other quite well. I daresay you’re getting a taste for its wonderfulness and hopefully you’ll find that the series builds on that really beautifully to form a most heartwarming tale of optimism and gladness!
I’m two episodes away from completing this show, because it was recommended to me by Baka-Raptor (he forced me to watch it).
It’s not that good, but apparently everyone says the next 2 season are the good ones and that the first season sucked, so I’ll watch those too.
Of course, if you liked the first two, then I’ll assure you that you’ll like the rest of the season…the episode with the baked potatoes made me crave a baked potato like a madman….God they looked good.
One thing to remember about Aria is to savor it. As simple a slice-of-life as it may be compared to say CLANNAD, there is still quite some zen-like wisdom to be found in it if you look carefully. I remember watching only a single episode every couple of days after coming back from college all exhausted, with my critical sense dampened in order to let the beauty and wisdom of it shine through more brightly instead of worrying about tiny mistakes one might find in it.
You ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Each episode keeps adding more and more until you realize how much this show rocks.
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From what I have seen, it will most definitely happens considering the growing of awesomeness with each episode.
I think that I watched about only 3 episodes so far of this anime. It is slow paced but supposed to be enjoyable for it’s slice of life like you said. I’ll eventually get back into watching this show when I get time again. Thanks for the review, it reminded me that I still need to finish this anime hehe~