Anime: Aria the Animation

I always thought that the “working life of cute anime girls” or “cute anime girls doing a very specific activity” was a trend of the recent years: 2019 had Dumbbell Nan Kilo Moteru?, a series about cute anime girls doing workout. 2016 had New Game!, an anime about cute anime girls working as video game developers. But it appears the anime industry was already producing this type of show fifteen years back. So here’s Aria the Animation, a show about anime girls training to become gondoliers in a recreated Venice on another planet.

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It doesn’t have a plot

The show being a slice-of-life, it doesn’t have an actual plot. It is episodic and the story of each individual episode is an excuse to show the characters doing things in a more tranquil version of Venice (IRL Venice is full of tourists and much more noisy) with a few SF and fantasy elements here and there. The planet Aqua is a Utopian world. There are no antagonists, no conflicts or anything of the sort, only good emotions and happy people. The universe is not really developed either. But this isn’t that much of a problem, as the point of the series isn’t the story or the relationships between the characters but the peaceful and relaxing atmosphere.

But it fulfills its purpose as a slice-of-life very well

Aria the Animation is a pure slice-of-life: no drama, no psychological or physical violence, just the peaceful and slow-paced daily lives of young women training to become Undines (aka female gondoliers – there doesn’t seem to be any male ones) in the beautiful scenery of an animated Venice. Everything in this anime is purposely made as relaxing and comfy as possible: the slow movement of the gondolas on water, the satisfying dialogues delivered by a very nice voice acting, the sound of the water, the seagulls cry, the background music, the simple and innocent comedy… In short, this anime is ASMR.

The animation is visually pleasing

The animation is slow but there are very few to no static images. The character designs and the clothing are pretty original. The face designs, particularly the eyes, are very detailed. The backgrounds and the landscapes are very detailed, and Venice is beautifully recreated.

It also avoids the negative sides of the genre

At first, this show seems like the usual “girls doing things” type of anime – well, it mostly is, but it manages to avoid most of the cliches and irritating tropes associated with the medium. Contrary to the vast majority of anime, there is no sexualization of the characters, and the show doesn’t shove naked minors with huge anime breasts into your face with the only objective of appealing to the horny teenage males and the pedophiles in denial that constitutes a big chunk of the modern anime community. The show also doesn’t have any unnecessary romance elements that would disrupt the calming atmosphere.

The cat(s)

All gondola companies have a cat as their company “president” – they’re more like mascots. The show introduces us to three of them, as the 3 main girls all work in different companies. The cat that appears the most on the screen is Aria (hence the name of the series), “president” of the Aria company. This cat with a disproportionate head and unusually big eyes follows the main girls in most of their whereabouts, and he is constantly doing things in the background while the characters are talking, or paddling the Venetian Canals in their gondolas. His presence adds to the comfy atmosphere, particularly when he does funny uncharacteristic cat noises, although he can get pretty annoying, especially when the show suddenly decides to make an entire episode around him wandering in the city – worst episode of this first season.

It can get boring pretty easily, though

The show is slow-paced, has no plot and focuses on mundane stuff like sleepovers, taking care of a cat in secret, a day off at a grandma’s house, new years celebration… You can easily see where I’m getting at: this show could be seen as boring by a lot of people. People expecting plot progression will get tired of the episodic format very quickly. The dialogues can be very sappy, which doesn’t really help. The thing is, you’re not supposed to focus on the dialogues or the story, but on the atmosphere.

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Conclusion

Overall, Aria the Animation is a very nice show, but it certainly is not for everyone. While I did enjoy this series even though I wasn’t a fan of the genre, if you’re looking for dramatic shows with many conflicts between the characters, fast-paced stories and plot twists, then this isn’t anime isn’t for you. It is definitely not an anime you should watch in one go, and I would even recommend not to watch more than one episode in a row, as it quickly becomes repetitive. It is however, the type of show you can watch to relax after a stressful day, or to get rid of your anxiety before going to sleep.

"No sappy lines allowed"

I have one word to say about this: Predictable

I don't get what's with everyone's hype with this anime. It's boring, unoriginal, and saccharine. If you are looking for a fast-paced, entertaining anime, then Aria the Animation is not the best choice to watch. Sure it may have a good idea but the story is boring and very slow-paced, not for those looking for action.

Story:

Too much flashbacks, expositions, and development makes this enjoyable likely for people who enjoy slow-paced slice of life anime. But I was having a hard time sitting through this as it has really bad plot issues and there's no story anyway.

Characters:
The characters' interactions are pretty saccharine. I understand that the writers were trying to go for a more simple, kid-friendly series but there is little for teens to enjoy.

Ai-chan was a character that overstays her welcome to begin with. The character itself is not extremely annoying but still not my cup of tea. It would've been good for Akari to interact with her for a little while but making her a secondary character who sends her e-mails was surprisingly rushed.

The other characters are annoying stereotypes. There are tsunderes and cutesy girls which filled this anime to the point of being unbearable. This could've been done with less development and drama.

Numerical ratings are even less meaningful than usual for a show like Aria the Animation. This is a series as close to plotless as makes no difference; most episodes - no, the entire series - serve as an excuse to watch the gorgeous scenery and listen to the characters talk.

For a viewer in the right, relaxed frame of mind, it's a wonderful experience. All is well in the world of Aria (though there is the occasional hint that things are less well on Earth, this is background detail than any serious drama); the characters live happily in a beautiful, peaceful city, and there is rarely so much as a hint of ill intentions. Make no mistake, this is a very enjoyable show to watch.

But looking through a more critical eye, I start to suspect it's not all that. The lack of overarching plot can be accepted as a stylistic choice, but the episode plots (such as they are) become repetitive, even formulaic (character has small problem, learns to solve it with the help of the girls, and discovers the wonderfulness of life). While the scenery is beautiful (and the water has been animated astonishingly well), the show resorts to showing its characters in "super deformed" mode far too often, in lieu of displaying actual emotions. The characters themselves are too similar; while the "familial" resemblance between each trainee gondolier and their superior is cute, it's also a rather lazy shortcut. I feel a strong contrast here with Marimite, which has a very similar setup - three families of girls, with the previous generation teaching the next - and is a slow-paced series, with no plot outside the character interactions. But that show was always careful to have a realistic mix of similarities and differences within each family - and of positive and negative traits in the characters themselves. Aria doesn't do negative, by and large (and I can't help noticing that what few bad traits it does have are assigned pretty much exclusively to men, despite the cast being probably 3/4 female). So the cast have only slight shades of personality to set them apart, and while they are distinguishable, this leads to characters who are in practice defined by a single trait.

The one point I can't attack even with my best critical hat on is the sound; the voice cast have done remarkably well, keeping the characters distinct despite all their similarities, while the music suits the soft mood perfectly (and the use of the opening song as a gentle lead-in to the episode rather than for a distinct animation sequence is perfect for easing one into the right frame of mind).

It's hard to be suitably objective about Aria. I can see many faults, but they don't seem to matter; I've been charmed by the series' easygoing, happy attitude. All I will say, therefore, is that this is a very pleasant show to watch.

The easiest way to describe this anime is that the anime in itself is actually quite boring and the episodes are as exciting as watching a campfire for a couple of hours. Which, in itself can be strangely relaxing (just like this anime). The slice of life aspect is quite well done, and almost each episode has its own story in it.

Animation:
Obviously the strongest point of this anime, the surroundings and animations (especially the water) are beautifully done. This anime probably has one of the best animations in all the animes I've seen throughout the years (surpassed by few). Gave it a 9 because of some minor things I didn't like in a couple of episodes.

Sound:
The sound in this anime was quite well done, nothing more I can say about that. Deserves an 8

Story:
No plot continuity throughout the series and no main theme part from the slice of life. The short stories weren't interesting at all either, fell asleep a couple of times. This made the series' story section a definite 1 from my part.

Character:
Overall the main characters in this anime were ok, gave it a 7.

Overall:
This anime is what it's worth, I recommend only watching after a day of stressfull work. Definitely an anime with little/no action and watching all of it at once is probably near to impossible.

The word "boring" resumes this serie.
Animation is technically ok, wise mix of techiques (cg, etc..)
Sound is ok too. Japanese productions like this are quite responsible in these topics.
Story: There's no story. The chapters are autoconclusive.
Characters: They are well defined for this kind of anime. kawaii is the word that most well define this set of chars.
Enjoyment: Really I dont know what kind of people would like something like this. For me Anime is a lot more than aesthetic factors, technical stuff or kawaiiness.

This series is the laid back sort of show that just makes you want to watch it. The characters never have something wrong in their life, there isn't a crisis, the new planet isn't exploding, no one dies, and they try to be cute all the time.

That is both good and bad. If you're looking for a series that actually has anything happen in it, this isn't what you're looking for despite the ratings. It was tagged as a drama, but after watching it I can safely say there was absolutely no drama in the show.

A good comparison to this show would be watching paint dry. Well, maybe not just plain paint. We're talking about paint with speckles, or maybe paint that changes colors when it drys, but still drying paint. There might be a texture job in there somewhere as well. Either way, this is a series you watch when you want to shoot the breeze, not be entertained.

The sound does compliment the series well, but it doesn't fit my taste. The piano plays during the apropriate moment and you go "awww" sitting there watching.

I'm not down on the technical lingo for animation, but I have watched my fair share of animes. The animation is very well drawn, however, if you look for consistency it falls short. Like sometimes stuff randomly appears and disappears when they have a different take on a character. Things change around when no one actually changes thme, but it's that way in a lot of anime series.

I'm going to hodge podge the story and characters together. Neither of them have any sort of depth. If they did have depth it would ruin the light atmosphere the series trys to set. So it's a double sided sword I guess. There were episodes where I was just waiting for something to go wrong, something to happen, maybe one of the characters falls in love, etc. etc. It doesn't happen, don't fool yourself. Paint drying.

The highlight of this series was when one of the characters goes back in time. You know what happens? They drink tea together with the person from back in time, then they go back to the future, and where like 'wow, that was fun'. The character doesn't wonder WHY or HOW they just went a couple hundred years back in time. The character didn't tell anyone they went back in time, they just took it for granted like it was a every day occurence. The complete lack of a reaction was a character killer for me.

I did watch the entire series which is a plus, but it was just like shooting the breeze. Imagine sitting with your friends and talking about every day life, thats what this anime get's across. It was enjoyable, but only to the point of which you can realize things could develop so much more.

I'm not watching this series again so the value is poor. Maybe someday when all my other anime disapears, this is all that's left, and anime stops being produced.


Given this anime was engineered to be a paint drying anime, I can't disregard the fact that it had no plot, no character development, no story, no content, no depth, no, no nothing. It is just all fluff with no substance and that in my book is something that doesn't deserve a good rating.

You could take a crappy anime, hollow all the plot out of it, have the characters sit down and drink tea, and it would be just as good as this. There is nothing in this series except cute looking faces and giggly moments.