ARIA the ANIMATION

Information of Anime

The year is A.D. 2301.  Mankind has started living on Mars, which has form into a planet of water.  Mizunashi Akari, a 15 year old girl, comes to Mars to become an Undine, or gondola rower, in a city called Neo Venezia.

Storyline (CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Below is a summary of the storyline I've seen.  This section does contain some spoilers.  If you haven't seen the series yet & don't want to be spoiled, skip this section.  If you want to know the story & want to see how I viewed it, read on.

Not much of a story to mentioned from this series.  It's basically about Akari's progress in becoming an Undine.  The show starts from her 1st year in her Undine training in ARIA, a gondola travelling company she works for.  Throughout the show, Akari meets a lot of people from her company to tourist to competitive companies.  In each episode, Akari learns about the meaning, feeling, & importance of being an Undine.  She learns this from her encounters from other companies & ARIA's customers mainly.  All this through friendship.

Also, we get to see from Akari's point of view Neo Venezia's past through the planet's mysterious magical powers.  Everything in this show runs for a year & ends the show like this with the celebration of the new year & all of Akari's friends getting together.  Akari & her friends are still training to become Undines.

My Personal Review

ARIA the ANIMATION is purely drama based on character development of Akari from what I've seen.  There's no love story involved & almost the entire cast is all girls.  This show isn't for everyone as it's moves at a very slow pace.  Also, I think the show is targeted towards a female audience. 

Animation

The drawings are okay.  At first, I found the character designs in terms of the faces to be weird.  But I've started to get use to it & it's looking prettier each time I see it.  Although the uniforms of the Undines from each company are the same, it looks pretty nice.  There are times in the show that the girls have weird facial expressions that made me go "What the heck?!" & laugh a bit.

One character design I didn't like was President Aria.  I have no idea that thing is.  When I saw it for the first time, I thought it was cat.  Looking at it closely, I went "What the hell is that thing????" when I saw how big Aria was & those brown spots on it's head that I thought were horns.  But it's really a cat in the series.

The backgrounds are pretty good.  Not the very best, but it draws me in.  I feel calm looking at the buildings, bridges, & water.  Plus the colour tones are dull which is a good choice.  It felt like a city from Italy.

Animation flow seem to be unnatural at times.  When the gondola are moving, they seem to go very fast.  It was a bit hard to believe that the Undines can make the gondolas move that fast & smoothly.  However, the ripples & waves of the water is excellent.  It's almost real.  One thing to note is how the show recycles its frames.  When you see the girls walking across the screen, you can see the animation loops very clearly.  You can really see the heavy breaks of the loop.

One thing to note about the show is that it doesn't have an opening theme animation scene.  There is an opening theme song, but it's played as the story is progressing.  It's like how some anime shows start off with their 1st episodes with the credits rolling on the screen as viewers continue to see what's going on in the show.

Sound

The sound effect are ok.  Sounded quite natural.  The volume is pretty low.  I assume it was to set a calm mood.

The background music is excellent.  It really help set that mood & draws you into the show's sceneries.  Even the opening & ending themes fitted the show very well.  As much as I enjoyed the music, it only sounds good when you watch the series.  When I listen to them while doing other things, I couldn't get that calm feeling is has when it's played during the anime show.  This is for the opening & ending themes by the way.

The voices are not bad & fits with the characters very well.

Story

It's very slow moving & I think this is 1st anime I've ever seen that moves this slow for 13 episodes with little amount of characters.  There is a storyline set, which is Akari becoming an undine, & it was already introduced at the beginning of the show.  The show mainly focus on Akari's training & bondage of her friends, as well as the historical background of Neo Venezia.  It leans more to the mysteries of Aqua more though.  However, it's really calming as you can relate this to your daily lives.  The joy of being with friends during your training & the sadness that may come when the time to depart comes.

Overall Conclusion

ARIA the ANIMATION  is a delightful show to relax to.  Because of it's slow pace, it's not for everyone.  The pace is slower than any anime series I've seen.  The reason behind it is possibly because of the second season.  If you like an anime that is lay back with a slow pace, this is recommended.  In fact, I highly recommend putting this in your "to watch" list.

ARIA the ANIMATION receives a grade of nine out of ten from me.  The show displays it's art beautifully with great music to set the mood.  Despite it's wonderful characters, the show seems to move slower than any anime show I have ever seen.  For an anime of 13 episodes long, this may be a problem if it continues the pace it's going at.  Initially, that's what I thought until I heard about the second season.

Last updated on May 6, 2008