Everyone who is a fan of the series assures me that Aria the Natural is a better series than Aria the Animation. Yet what I'm feeling now isn't as good.

The first series was gentle, unforced, comfortable. The pace was almost languid, yet I didn't feel bored because it felt so nice to visit Akari and spend time with her.

The second series feels like someone started adding tobasco sauce to it, a little pepper, a little spice. And a lot of grime.

There's more angst, for one thing. The happy warm comfortable city I grew to love in the first series now is revealed as being full of dark mysterious dangerous forgotten places, and it's peopled by ghosts and fairies and the odd kami, who may or may not really be friendly. Aika, whose only real apparent fault in the first series was that she was a bit headstrong, turns out to be the primary source of angst in the series. (And I'm getting seriously tired of her ongoing campaign to humble Alice.) Akatsuki, who was something of a source of comic relief in the first series, a bit clumsy but fundamentally decent, is revealed in the second series as being a manipulative, arrogant jackass.

Alice started the first series glum, dejected, and withdrawn, but as she spent time with Akari (and Aika, but it was Akari that mattered) she seemed to be loosening up, learning how to let herself be happy. And now in this series it's revealed that, well, it wasn't really all that good a thing after all that she's been spending so much time with Akari and Aika. It's just another room she's shut herself up in, to keep away from all the strangers around her that make her feel uncomfortable.

I only saw Al once in the first series. (He appears in the Aria Superhero ep, but I skipped that part.) For the period that he did show up he seemed mature and level-headed. He is now revealed as being a major-league nerd, enough so that he makes me feel a bit uncomfortable.

Woody was a really good guy in the first series. He took Akari out to that island, for example, and he always greets her when he flies overhead. He seems to work hard, and cares about his business as a sylph. I don't like the fact that Akatsuki seems to take advantage of him. I don't like it at all.

And Akari? In the first series she was warm, spiritually strong. She was a source of strength to the other people who knew her. In the second series she's coming over as a ditz. And so is Alicia, stunningly enough.

President Aria? In the first series he was an animated plush doll, funny but not very important. In this series he's beginning to scare me, and not in a good way.

Every character in the series has become less attractive to me. Except Athena, strangely enough. I liked the Athena I saw in ep 7. She was deeper, more sophisticated, stronger and more mature than the Athena I had come to know in the first series. Athena and the mailman are pretty much the only adults in the series. The rest of the characters? These are not the people I thought I was going to be seeing.

So when I was watching the first series, and reached the end of a DVD, my thought was, "Where's the next one! I gotta watch it now!" I received it on October 13 and started watching it immediately, and posted my review on October 18.

With this series, I've left it alone a couple of times now, and eventually said, "Well, I may as well watch some more of it, since there isn't anything else new around here." It's just not the same kind of thing happening to me. I won't be finishing these 13 episodes (the first half of the series) anything like as fast as I did the 13 episodes of the first season.

Three of the first four episodes of this series were really excellent, or so it seemed when I first watched them. Yet they also contributed to adding dark shadows and grime to the place, and starting to degrade the comfortable feeling I had when I watched the first series.

I don't need Aika's puppy-love angst. (And at age 18, she's never had a crush on a boy before?) I don't need Akatsuki at all! What a loser. What a creep. What a cad. ore-sama my ass. I don't need Al to be such a nerd. Dammit, he's supposed to be an adult. Why isn't he more mature?

And the worst surprise of all: I don't like this Ai as much. She was great in the first episode, but her voice-over letters to Akari are a lot less interesting this time than they were in the first series. She really had something to say in the first series. This time all she says is "Yeah, you're right, Akari!"

I'm not going so far as to say that I don't like this one. I do like it, but I don't like it as much as the first one -- and that will, I think, harvest howls of rage from fanbois of the series. I don't look forward to the response to this post, but I have to be honest about how it's affecting me.

Wonderduck asked me how I would go up from the 4 stars I rated the first series. If I were to rate this series based on the 9 episodes I've seen, I'd only give it 3 stars.

I probably should watch ep 10 tonight, but I feel more like rewatching DBZ.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 08:04 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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ORLY? Alicia is a meganekko?

I rather think Alicia overdid it.

UPDATE: Unfortunately, ep 9 also won't be on my list of "episodes to rewatch". The last half of it was like drowning in syrup. It was, to coin a phrase, "sappy". Alas.

I think I'm overdosed and I'm going to stop watching now.

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It's Aqua Alta again, the yearly festival where the citizens of Neo-Venezia celebrate the fact that the salamanders aren't perfectly competent and can't prevent the city from being flooded. Or something like that.

In the first series Akatsuke was odd but acceptable, strange but OK. Not in this series, though. I'm rapidly growing to hate the dude.

Among other reasons, he refers to himself as ore-sama.

UPDATE: Al, meanwhile, is the uber-geek but he's kind, sensitive, and gentle. My kind of guy.

UPDATE: Ep 8 will not be one of the episodes I eagerly rewatch, because Akatsuke is an ass.

Though I must admit that seeing Akari trying to act like Alicia was wonderful.

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I'm going to proceed forward with new episodes of Aria the Animation tonight, but before doing that I'm going back and rewatching some of the best eps I've already seen. I rewatched ep 1 again, and now I'm rewatching the first half of ep 5. A couple of mild spoilers below the fold.

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I want one of these. (via)

It really is an amazing idea, I have to say, and obviously completely practical. Water makes a great propellant for a jet backpack; it's heavy, so there's lots of thrust.

But I bet it's really loud.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in linky at 08:30 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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1 I'm still waiting for my Gundam.  Nuclear Rocket Engine that can work in space/air/under water.

Posted by: BigFire at January 29, 2009 08:36 PM (JylMM)

2 Yeah, but this exists now. And works. And doesn't require phlebotinum to operate.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 29, 2009 08:41 PM (+rSRq)

3 Wow! I could definitely see myself running around on one of those!

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at January 29, 2009 08:45 PM (7TgBH)

4 (...or flying, anyway! )

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 29, 2009 09:12 PM (+rSRq)

5 That reminds me of a story as told by Richard  Feynman after WWII when Los Alamos lab is trying to figure out civilian application for all of the things Manhattan Project did.  His supervisor told him to file application to patent on everything he can think of, so he did.  So you'll find application in US Patent office from Frynman on Atomic Jet Engine, Atomic Rocket Engine, etc.  Unfortunately, someone actually looked at the application seriously and really ask Feynman how to do these things.

Posted by: BigFire at January 30, 2009 08:33 AM (Kwn4z)

6

Well, eventually they did figure out ways of building nuclear engines for space travel...

...But the complications from their use pretty much meant the idea was stillborne.

C.T. 

Posted by: cxt217 at January 30, 2009 08:54 AM (ypRP3)

7 If they can figure out how to ensure the safety of untrained operators (or increase the thrust to carry a passenger), I expect to see this start popping up at cruise line tourist traps.  It's like paragliding... but with a rocket.

Posted by: BigD at January 30, 2009 08:57 AM (LjWr8)

8 Mind you, Feynman filed his applications back in '48.  It was definitely not practical in any sense of the word.

Posted by: BigFire at January 30, 2009 09:07 AM (Kwn4z)

9 Is this the Orion engine design, or something actually meant for atmospheric flight?  Because as I understood it, Orion was entirely feasible, it just was left untouched due to pathological aversion to anything with the word "nuclear" in it.

Posted by: metaphysician at January 30, 2009 10:43 AM (h4nEy)

10 I think this thread has drifted enough. Sorry, thread closed.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 30, 2009 11:16 AM (+rSRq)

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I noticed yesterday that I didn't order quite what I thought I had ordered. I thought that Media Blasters was releasing the whole first season as a thinpak, but I guess I wasn't looking very closely. It turns out that it's a regular single-DVD package (they still sell those?) and just has the first four episodes, which is how many fansub episodes I watched. The next DVD of the first season will come out in March. Bummer.

Not that Ah! My Buddha! is the kind of series that will seize me by the throat and make me need more immediately, mind. But the eps I did watch were pleasant fun, and more varied than I had thought they would be, for a fan-service monster-of-the-week show. They didn't even make the guy become a super-saiyajin in every episode.

Media Blasters has surprised me: the title is late. The original estimate was Tuesday of this week, and Bob is usually pretty cautious with his estimated dates (on the assumption that people are happy if it's perceived as being early and mad if it's late, so it's better to set the estimated dates later). Media Blasters has usually been pretty good about making their shipments on time. I wonder what happened this time?

This one was dubbed, and I wonder if they had production scheduling issues. (These days it seems like the majority of Media Blasters releases are sub-only, and that's a lot easier to schedule, and a lot easier to parallellize.)

UPDATE: Of course, I could take the emotionally satisfying but utterly unfair route of blaming it all on Bob. Grr! He should have shipped it to me even if he didn't have it!

Or I could blame it on global warming. Seems like everything else bad that happens is caused by global warming climate change, anyway.

UPDATE: I remember seeing the March item for the series and somehow had thought that it was going to be the second season as another boxed set. I guess I was having a senior moment.

I make jokes about that, but something akin to that has been happening to me the last few years. Sometimes I need a word but can't find it. Yesterday I needed the word "devout", for example. Occasionally I'm reduced to looking at posts I made to USS Clueless which I know included the word I need. Sometimes the words come hours later and I edit the posts to include them. And sometimes I never find them at all.

It's a little scary.

UPDATE: I think that's the reason why it's better for me to write spontaneously. When the ideas are bubbling out, the words I need bubble out too. But if I try to force myself to write, it's like marching uphill through mud.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 04:23 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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Ubu says:

Just in case you’ve been hiding under a rock, the genre is “big-breasted sci-fi horror” and despite the first hyphenation, it’s not a “dumb tits and blood” show. Essentially the writers took a damn good concept, good execution, and a great story, then slapped humongous jugs on all the girls in order to sell it.

Which is pretty much the truth. Anyway, he says that it can be viewed online now for free -- except that it doesn't work for him. Maybe for you, though, and it really is worth your while. He's got the link for it. (It doesn't work for me, either, but maybe ADV will get its act together and fix its bug.)

The whole series (including Misaki Chronicles) is available now as a thinpak for $45, which is a hell of a bargain. Divergence Eve and Misaki Chronicles are on my very short list of "shows that any real fan of anime should own".

A couple of things about it: the very first episode is actually chronologically the 12th episode, and there's (deliberately) no plot exposition, so it is (deliberately) a bit confusing. Once the real story kicks in with the chronological first episode (i.e. ep 2) it starts a bit slow. The purpose of the early episodes is to let us get to know the 4 girls who are the main characters in the show. So be patient with it. Give it time. You'll be glad you did.

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Pete has finished watching Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha and wasn't impressed. He's decided not to watch Nanoha A's and I think that's probably the right decision. A's is the same as Nanoha; it does all the same things, except it does them all better. But if he didn't like Nanoha, then "better" won't help.

I think it's a genre thing. If you don't like a genre, watching a good example of that genre is not helpful. The Nanoha franchise is shounen, and a lot of people don't care for shounen. Despite the fact that the protagonists are all cute little girls, it has a lot more in common with Dragon Ball Z than it does with Fancy Lala.

I wrote once about "transport" and "destination". A's is really good at transport, but if the destination isn't one you want to reach, then that's not particularly important.

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha will fail for you if you don't come to love Fate. If she hasn't seized your heart by the end of ep 10, then the final episodes will fail completely for you. That's because the final episodes are about her, and the choices she makes, and the future she chooses for herself. And if you don't care about her, then it's a waste of time to watch them.

As to A's? I would say the test is Vita. If, after watching through to the end of ep 6 you haven't come to love Vita, then there's no point in going on. What happens later won't affect you because you won't have the right emotional investment in the show to make those events meaningful.

Not necessarily to the exclusion of others, mind. It don't hurt if you've come to care about Hayate, and Fate, and Nanoha, and Signum, and... But I think as an indicator of whether the show is working for you, Vita is the key. The scene of her in the desert at the end of ep 6, talking to herself, either will break your heart or it won't. If it doesn't, you may as well stop watching the show.

UPDATE: Am I bothered that Pete didn't like it? No. It doesn't represent a threat to my self-image that we disagree.

As Toren once said, If we both liked exactly the same things, one of us would not be necessary.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 10:30 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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My initial impression now after 4 eps is that this series is even better than the first one. Out of the first four eps I consider three to be aces. ("Aika's date" was OK, but nothing special. The other two were Carnival and Treasure Hunt.) It'll be interesting to see if they can keep the quality up.

Ep 4 was particularly interesting and creative, and there were a lot of things in it to like. It was nice to spend time with Mr. Mailman. It was nice to see how he delivers mail from a gondola. And it was nice to see the wedding. Whoever planned it spared no expense, given that they booked Akira to take the happy couple away from the church.

It took me a moment to recognize Akira and Aika, actually, because they're not in their normal livery. And it was fun to see the gondola equivalent of a limo:

UPDATE: Another thing that was nice to see was Akari's back-paddling.

UPDATE: Beginning of ep 6. Ep 5 was a strange one. We're also really cooking on time. Ep 5 was beginning of spring; the voiceover at the beginning of ep 6 says spring is over. That's 6 months or so we just skipped.

Regarding ep 5: It may well be that the Fox was attracted to Akari's inari. But I wonder if he was also curious about Akari herself, whom the Cait Sith seems to favor.

UPDATE: Ep 6 was a character building episode for Alice and Athena. As weird as Athena often seems to be, there's more depth and maturity to her than we usually see. And she genuinely is trying to look out for Alice, as this episode shows. It was nice.

BUT... Ep 7 was another awesome one. I'm now convinced that any episode about the cats will be awesome.

He is a rather natty dresser, isn't he?

I'm beginning to think that Alicia knows about the Cait Sith and has met him. Some of the things she's said, and the way she seems to be encouraging Akari to explore the supernatural aspects of Aqua, suggest that she, too, has stood on both sides and that she knows what Akari is going through.

Could it be that Alicia, Akari, and Ai all have second sight? By which I mean an awareness of things on another level beyond what the rest of us experience? In this episode Akari sees some things that Aika clearly did not.

As to that scene up there, I'm not sure that the Cait Sith would have minded having Akari visit. But Aika wasn't welcome, so as long as Aika was watching the Cait Sith has to use his magic to obscure the scene. As they're paddling away, however, with Aika distracted, the Cait Sith lets the mask fall and allows Akari to see what was really going on in that warehouse.

An interesting thought for the future: If, for whatever reason, Akari eventually decides that she really needs to get a message to the Cait Sith, she knows that Aria can find him and deliver it. I wonder if that will happen. Right now I can't really imagine a reason why that might be needed, however.

UPDATE: A huge question about ep 7: How was Aria moving his boat? No oar that I saw.

The obvious answer is "magic" and I'm sure that's what Akari would think. Evidently it didn't occur to Aika to even think about it.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 08:38 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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Carnival AKA Mardi Gras AKA Fasching AKA lots of other names from different places around the world is celebrated on Fat Tuesday, which happens just before Ash Wednesday, which is the first day of Lent.

Lent is a period of 40 days leading up to Easter, which is always a Sunday, and is a period of fasting, penitence, and self-denial for devout Christians which corresponds to the 40 days that scripture says Jesus spent in the desert.

Easter is set to be "the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the vernal equinox". And because it is a religious observation, it happens every terran year.

It simply wouldn't make any sense to have Easter once per Aqua year, on a date determined by the astronomy of Aqua. It wouldn't make religious sense, in particular. So if there is any justice, Carnival (which is a fixed interval before Easter) should happen twice per Aqua year.

But it probably doesn't. They celebrate Christmas only once per Aqua year, and that is also a religious observation intimately tied to terran astronomy.

To the Japanese, Christmas is a big deal, but it's entirely a secular event. Few Japanese are Christian. Of course, even for Americans many who celebrate Christmas are not Christian or at least not particularly devout, and many if not most of the modern trappings of the Christmas holiday have roots in European paganism, including Druidism. Even the date of celebration is fundamentally pagan. No one really has any idea what day of the year Jesus was born. The early Christians during the days of Roman persecution set their celebration of Christmas to coincide with a Roman mid-winter celebration so that they wouldn't stand out. (That's why Christmas is within a few days of the solstice.)

And I would venture to say that the majority of people who celebrate Mardi Gras in New Orleans, or Carnival in Rio or Venice, don't in turn celebrate Easter, and don't practice self-denial during Lent. Carnival is also a largely secular event.

Even so, for something as much fun as Carnival, and as lucrative to a tourist destination like Neo-Venezia, wouldn't you think that whatever government authority has jurisdiction over such things would recognize the benefit of celebrating Carnival twice per Aqua year instead of only once?

And if you say, "It would be strange to celebrate Carnival when it was hot!" then tell that to the people of Rio. They seem to manage it.

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