Aria the Animation Season 1 Box Set Review

            On the planet Aqua, there is a city fashioned after the Italy of Manhome called Neo-Venzia. Within this city are a few gondolier companies such as the Aria Company run by Alicia with her trainee sylph Akari. Over the course of thirteen episodes, the series will follow Akari and her trials as she trains and practices. Along the way Akari will have adventures and experiences with her friends and fellow trainee sylphs Aika and Alice and their seniors Akira and Athena.  

Good and the Bad

            Those within the anime audience who require a driving story or nail biting drama and conflict are going to be sorely disappointed with this series. What this series promises to deliver is a series about the daily events of a girl and her gondola. No real conflicts, no romance and just a bit of comedy to keep things interesting.

            It succeeds on this promise on all levels and the thirteen episodes of this first season move at its own slow pace. All it wants to do is tell simple episodic stories that occasionally weave into each other. If you can’t get past this, you won’t last through one disc.

            Now, for those within the audience who are more than happy to sit through a beautifully animated series that tells mostly cute stories about a girl and her gondola; you’re in luck. Directed by famed Junichi Sato (Sailor Moon, Kaleido Star), the animation in this series rarely has a flaw within it. The backgrounds and canals have such a strong real world influence and it’s very apparent in the artwork. Occasionally the computer animation looked over produced such as the snow in episode thirteen. Occasionally though, such as during the hot spring episode, the animation is so simply done that its mind bogglingly beautiful.  

            The writing and dialogue, like the rest of the series, is very dry. None of the stories are ever provocative in nature. If there is any conflict within the series it is resolved with a gentle life lesson by the end of the episode. And most of the time those life lessons come with a healthy side dish of heartwarming.

Music

            The soft ballad opening theme does not have its own animation. Every episode begins with a short introduction dealing with the episode. While it’s rare for anything important to be revealed during these first ninety seconds, the scenes are still nice to watch and enjoyable to sit through. If the soundtrack to this series contains any of the vocals from Athena though, it becomes an incredibly easy sell. This applies even more so for the insert songs that are sprinkled in throughout the last couple of episodes.

Dub vs. Sub

            It seems like there are so many of the cast members that have something memorable about their performances. Sayaka Ohara as Alicia is memorable for the ‘my, my, my’ catchphrase that starts every other sentence. Erino Hazuki as Akari hangs onto her syllables way too long and Ryou Hirohashi delivers great straight man punch lines. The cast didn’t have particularly complicated dialogue to master for these roles but the emotional impact of certain episodes had to be felt.

Extras

            All four discs in this set contain a few extras for fans to enjoy including interviews, segments and animations. On discs 1 and 2, an interview with cast members Erino Hazuki (Akari), Chiwa Saito (Aika) and Ryo Hirohashi (Alice) is shown. In the interview, the actresses talk for almost half an hour about the series, their characters, the setting for Aria and much more. A lot of this interview drags but there are certainly some interesting gems of information to take away from the actresses as they talk.

            On discs three and four, a second interview segment is shown featuring Sayaka Ohara (Alicia), Junko Minagawa (Akira) and Tomoko Kawakami (Athena). The interview here is roughly the same length as the other interview and many of the questions are similar. Sayaka Ohara though is certainly someone to watch. Constantly going off topic or saying other weird things, Ohara gives one of the more interesting interviews audiences will see for awhile. On all four discs, another segment is shown titled ‘Venice, I’m Sorry…’ In this segment, director Junichi Sato sits down with cast members to talk about his research trips to Venice, Italy.

Overall

            The artwork remains beautiful from start to finish and the characters are charming in their own ways. Because of this though, this is certainly a niche series that the few instead of the many are going to find satisfaction with. I would recommend this series to many people but only with the qualifier that they should test drive the first volume. If you don’t make it through that much at least, the rest of the set is just going to put you to sleep.