teddog

It's only 4pm?! Blugh.

Woot! Release date for the first half of Aria: The Natural:
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2008-10-15/right-stuf-to-launch-aria-the-natural-anime-in-january
For those who haven't gotten into this yet, I shall boaster it again!

Aria is a science fiction/slice of life/supernatural series with an unusual pace. It's releaxed. Amazingly relaxed. Almost to the point of inane, but dancing on that line enough to make it charming. The anime does better job here, include the more "grounded" characters earlier on, while the comic takes its sweet time to get going. I've read 5 volumes of comics (there's 14 total) and seen 7 episodes and the anime is already ahead.

The storyline centres around a terraformed Mars, which flooded after the ice melted (and is now called Aqua for this reason). In turn, many of the towns and cities are built on the water and humanity's existance is closely tied to the planet's massive oceans. When annual tidal floods hit the city, business stops until the floods go away - there's no battling the elements, but learning to live with them. Not much is shown of Earth, although humans do live there. The only things I recall mentioned so far is that food tends to be processed more and the oceans are unswimmable. It's implied that life on Earth has gotten so stressful and manufactured that humanity there has lose a facet of their spiritual side. As such, the spiritual side of existance had to relocate elsewhere...

Life on Mars is much more relaxed. The main cast are training to be Undines, gondoliers who act as tour guides in the major tourist hubs. The characters are all from rival companies, but are generally good natured to each other. Part of the reason is that company presidents are blue eyed cats. It's kinda hard to stage corporate warfare when the leaders are kitties! As to why they're cats, that would be spoiling some of the more bizarrely fantastic elements of the story.

The settings are like crack. You want them to be real - the systems used to keep the planet's environment in check are cutely steampunk and many of the locals have a feeling of surreal wonder. For example, there's a hot spring built into the ruins of an old mansion. How cool is that?

The only downside is that Akari, the main character, comes across as a bit of a Mary Sue. In the comic, it seems like special things happen to her for no reason, although it's cleared up that the reason they do happen is because she'd notice them, while other people won't. She's a detail person and is connected deeply to her surroundings, so a subtle difference stands out. The anime stresses this early on, so it's not as annoying.

So, yeah! Cute stuff! Generally aimed at a young female audience, but it's a good, light series to talk your mind off of daily stress. One downside - the official release is sub only. Get ready to read!