Part One of the Aria retrospective.
Part Two of the Aria retrospective.
Anime has a tough relationship with endings. Lots of anime never actually end; they get cancelled before they can, or they just keep on going so everyone can keep making money, or the source material has no ending. When they do end, I can’t think of many that end well. Oftentimes they’re based on source material that had a terrible ending, like OreImo, so their hands were tied. The most famous example of a terrible anime ending is Evangelion, which got another chance to end in The End of Evangelion because its original ending was so bad, and now has yet another chance with the Rebuild movies.
So it’s no small thing that Aria manages to end so gracefully. It’s no small feat that it manages to end exactly as we would have expected from Episode 1, yet still surprise us. It’s no small feat that it wraps up every character arc, changes everything, splits everyone apart, yet does so in a believable way. It’s no small feat that it makes a happy, expected ending still so satisfying, and gives every character exactly the happiness she deserves. Well, not every character, but we’ll talk about that.
However, even though its ending ends the entire series, the ending is what I remember least about Aria: The Origination. That’s because it avoids a mistake a lot of terrible endings make: leaving too much story to be explored in the last episode or two. Aria: The Origination could have waited until Episode 12 to start promoting our heroines to Prima and then rushed through the aftermath in two episodes. Instead it starts all the way back at Episode 9, promoting Alice from Pair straight to Prima. This turns out to be enormous for the story: instead of 11 episodes of filler followed by an emotional height, we get to see how everyone reacts to Alice’s promotion. For Aika, Alice’s promotion is a little bittersweet. She’s happy for her friend, but she also feels a little disappointed that her junior colleague beat her to Prima, and a little insecure about her future, which starts to seep into other parts of her life. Since Alice’s promotion happens early, we get to explore Aika’s feelings over meaty parts of several episodes, especially the second half of Episode 10, where she frets over the slow progress of her relationship with Al. But after this, Aika determines to work even harder until she’s worthy to rise herself, and soon after, Akira gives her the Prima exam and promotes her to Prima as well.
While her friends are finishing up their paths to Prima, Alice begins adjusting to her new life. She has to get used to working hard every day with customers and she has to learn to respond to her Prima alias, Orange Princess, but the hardest adjustment turns out to be that she can’t spend every day with Akari and Aika anymore, and even though her customers are great, she feels lonely. Without the routine of coming together to practice every day, Alice doesn’t know how to ask to spend time with her friends. She can’t think of a pretense and she feels awkward asking to be together for no reason. But the three of them come together and acknowledge that they’ll have to work harder to spend time together now that Alice has full time work commitments, but they resolve to put in that work and find whatever time together they can, even if there’s no real reason for it.
Meanwhile, Aika is frustrated that her career isn’t progressing as fast as she wants, and she starts to transfer that anxiety onto her relationship with Al. A night of moon-watching with Akari, Alice, and Al ends with Aika and Al trapped at the bottom of a well, relying on President Maa to bring help, and Aika crying again, this time because of an astronomical phenomenon that she thinks metaphorically represents her relationship with Al never progressing. Akari, on the other hand, is sanguine as usual. She’s happy for Alice (and later for Aika when Aika also surpasses her) and copes easily with Alicia’s abrupt announcement, soon after Aika’s promotion, that her own exam is the next day. As soon as the glove is off Akari’s hand, Alicia announces that she’s retiring and getting married. Akari copes less easily with this announcement, but as good natured and unflappable as she is, she manages to get through it.
Even before Alice’s promotion, Aria: The Origination treats us to a look at Akira’s past and a glimpse of Athena’s dim-witted way of dealing with interpersonal issues, and lets us see Alice explore Alicia’s unique style of teaching. Episode 6, “That Wonderful Extracurricular Lesson…”, is one of my favorite episodes of the entire Aria series. Alice tries to covertly discover how Akari and Alicia’s mentor relationship works without scolding, which she assumes is a requisite part of being a mentor, delivering Aria’s usual gentle, silly humor. Halfway through the episode, Alicia calls Alice out and gets her to come talk straightforwardly about it. Alice had just assumed Alicia wouldn’t talk to her and that she had to spy to find out what she wanted to know, but Alicia, consistent with the philosophy she describes to Alice in this episode, doesn’t consider it at all beneath her to spend time explaining how she thinks about being a mentor to a junior colleague. There’s lots of clever dialogue and even more gentle, silly humor in their conversation, and by the end I had the sense that maybe Alice would have learned more from being mentored by Alicia than Akari did. Not that Alicia always behaves consistently with the philosophy of mentoring she describes in this episode—I can think of several times when she didn’t, including “That White, Kind City…” from The Natural—but that illustrates that Alicia too, as perfect as she appears, is only human, a consistent theme of her character development across both The Natural and The Origination.
The Origination does have a couple of clunkers. Episode 3, “Those Feelings Within…”, can’t seem to figure out what story it wants to tell about the maker of the little heart-shaped chocolates in the glass bottle, and ends up a series of scattered, poorly motivated happenings. Episode 7, "In That Gently Passing Time...", introduces a retired Aria Company Undine who’s living happily with a son and fisher-bro husband purely as an excuse for loving pans over white lace, and as a framing device for a story about Grandma and President Aria’s past. (President Aria used to be homeless. Which explains why he loves eating and sleeping so much. Also, he’s like a hundred years old.) But, unlike The Natural, in The Origination these episodes were mixed in with moving, lovely stories about the main characters, so it was easier to forgive them. Also, The Origination is superbly animated throughout, so even the episodes that don’t quite make the story land still present lots of beautiful imagery.
On the whole, I loved this series. Except for one thing.
Aika is Akira, But in a Mirror, Darkly
Cait Sith and the mystical cat god stories may have been my least favorite part of Aria, but second place surely goes to Aika.
I’ve never been a big fan of Aika, but if anything, I expected to like her more rewatching the series. I expected coming back with a little distance would bring to light some depth to her personality or some kind of character arc that would make me appreciate her more than I did back when moe points were my main measure of a character. But the more I tried to find something to like about her, the less I liked her. It all came to a head in The Origination.
In Episode 5, “That Keepsake Clover…”, the three trainees see Athena and Alicia both exhibiting their special talents—Athena her singing voice, and Alicia her dexterity with an oar. Aika realizes that Akari and Alice also have special talents—Alice is a natural at driving a boat, and Akari is Akari—and agonizes in her usual hysterical fashion over whether she herself has any special talents compared to them. She talks with Akira, who had to spend her entire career in the shadows of Alicia and Athena but still came out with a strong identity of her own as an Undine. Akira tells her that she was the last to get promoted to Prima, and after Athena’s promotion she was depressed and pitied herself a little. Thanks to baby Aika, she regained her confidence and pushed through to become the Prima she is today. Aika doesn’t remember this, but after hearing Akira’s story, she decides that her talent is persevering, being reliable, and working hard, and redoubles her efforts.
My major problem with Aika is that the evidence contradicts everything the series tries to tell us about what kind of person she is. She’s supposed to be practical, hardworking, reliable, and serious, but all we ever see her do is make eyes at Al, obsess over what Alicia thinks of her, primp, scream at Akira over minor things, yell at Akari and Alice like they’re mental defectives she’s been burdened with, fight with Alice over childish things, and burst into tears at the drop of a hat. She’s supposed to be hardworking, but all the evidence suggests Akari and Alice work equally hard—I’d even say Alice is more hardworking, because she goes to school every day and then comes home and practices on top of whatever homework she has. She’s not even a nice person: she spends a ton of time whining about things and yelling at or deriding her friends, and she and Akari are only friends because it seemed like a convenient way to get closer to Alicia. Unlike Akira, who can be mean sometimes but always thinks she’s helping, Aika behaves in a lot of petty, bullying ways from pure selfishness or from some sort of fragile, inflated egomania layered on top of her insecurity.
At the end of the day, I was never going to buy that Aika was a hardworking person who earned everything by sheer will and perseverance. Akira, who lacks the ethereal beauty and appealing personality of Alicia or the incredible singing voice of Athena, reached the top of the Undine profession through hard work and persistence. We’re meant to see Aika as the same. But Aika didn’t earn anything: her parents own Himeya. Not only are they rich, they own an Undine company. We never see her parents, so we don’t know what kind of people they are. If Aika were truly hopeless and could never have made it to Prima under Akira’s tutelage, it’s entirely possible they would have paid off a shill mentor to pass her. Even if we assume they have too much integrity for that, her parents employ one of the top three Undine in Neo-Venezia, so she had a straight shot to training under that top Undine with no effort at all. Then, instead of being grateful that she gets personalized one-on-one instruction from someone whose salary can sustain an entire company (judging by Alicia’s ability to keep Aria Company afloat on her own), Aika spends all of her time complaining that Akira is too harsh and threatening to run away to train under Alicia.
Contrast that with Akari and Alice, who were also privileged to train under top Undine. Akari was handpicked by Alicia, out of all the people, including Aika, who must have been vying to be her apprentice. She was chosen by Alicia herself based on what Alicia saw in her. We don’t see how Alice came to train under Athena, but since she’s a prodigy, the most likely scenario is that Orange Planet noticed her talent and took her in, and since she was so talented they decided to put her with their best Undine to help nurture that talent. Akari and Alice both ended up training under top Undine because their talent justified it. Aika, on the other hand, is training under Akira because her parents pay Akira. (And are her landlords, since Undine at the big companies live at their company’s dormitory.) We see no evidence in the series that Aika is anything other than mediocre. Alice’s talent is made clear many times, and aside from Akari’s obvious personal qualities, the other Undine on the traghetto in Episode 4, “Those Who Aim For Tomorrow…”, note that she’s an exceptional rower who will surely be a Prima soon. So Aika has no special talents, and her parents, the owners of Himeya, have started her out in such an advantageous position that she doesn’t need to be hardworking or persistent, though she’s convinced herself that she is since she’s able to keep going every time she has one of her borderline psychotic drama queen episodes where she breaks down in tears over some bizarre idea she’s taken into her head. (The astronomical phenomenon one is particularly hilarious.) When she makes Prima, her parents step in again and give her a position as branch manager of a Himeya office that we’ve never seen any evidence she’s at all qualified for. Then again, given that she seems more “competent” than “exceptional” when it comes to rowing and interacting with customers, maybe the manager position was the best thing for her.
All three trainee Undine are a lot like their mentors, but with subtle yet important differences. Akari has the same warm presence and generous spirit as Alicia, but trades Alicia’s glamorous image, which partially disguises Alicia’s insecurities, for an easy confidence around people that lets her relate to almost anyone. Alice is just as weird as Athena, but can accomplish basic daily tasks without hurting herself. She and Athena also share a certain passivity when it comes to getting what they want, but Alice seems to have done a better job overcoming it by the end of the series. Unlike Athena, who wistfully expressed her regret that she, Alicia, and Akira spend so little time together nowadays back in Episode 11 of The Animation, Alice has gone out of her way to seize as much time with her friends as she can. Aika and Akira share their status as the “normie” of their respective peer groups; neither of them have the natural charisma or overwhelming talent of the people they’re surrounded by. But Akira, as far as we know, was a perfectly ordinary person who came into Himeya and attained her top ranked status by hard work and determination. She has the down-to-earth wisdom to prove it, too. When other Undine were gossiping about her behind her back, she shrugged it off. She knew Aika was only setting herself up for disappointment by tying her sense of self-worth so closely to Alicia. Her teaching philosophy is harsher than it needs to be, and this backfires on her a few times, but it reflects her experience and how she sees the world—as a harsh place that nonetheless taught her a lot and let her rise to the top of her field. Aika was a rich kid with no special talent who decided to be an Undine because she couldn’t stop fangirling over Alicia, got to train under Himeya’s top Prima as a matter of course, took forever to learn anything or show any gratitude for it, only made Prima before Akari because Alicia was having trouble letting go, and then was elevated into management by her parents the second the ink was dry on her Prima license. Aika is like a dark reflection of Akira, both ordinary aside from a strong desire to be Undine, both ended up at the top of the field, but one getting there by effort and determination and the other getting there by rich parents and the unearned kindness of her mentor and her friends.
I expected to like Aika more after watching the show again, but in the end it was Akira I liked a lot more. So much of the way Akira is framed in the early parts of the series is filtered through Aika’s point of view, so until around Episode 24 of The Natural, the view of her we’re given is largely negative. But if you look at what Akira does both on and off screen without filtering it through Aika’s point of view, it’s clear she’s a good person and a great Undine who’s a bit rough around the edges, and whose roughness rubs the spoiled Aika the wrong way, especially since she’s already disappointed Akira isn’t Alicia. That Akira can stand to be constantly compared unfavorably to her old friend and sometime rival by her ignoramus of an apprentice is another testament to her strength of character. Both Akari and Alice seem to like Akira, aside from the respect they have for her as an Undine: in The Natural Episode 15, Akari and Akira share a nice lunch after they run into each other by chance, and in The Natural Episode 24, Alice remarks with unusual sincerity that it must have been disappointing for some customers whose appointment was canceled to miss out on their chance to ride in Akira’s gondola, which moves Akira to pat her head fondly. Alice doesn’t have the easiest time getting to like people.
It’s a Coming of Age Story, Man
The theme of growing up and coming into your own pervades Aria: The Origination. A wistfulness which is both nostalgic and forward-looking suffuses many of the episodes. The three main heroines are coming in sight of the end of a long, significant period in their lives, and knowing that, they spend a lot of time looking forward to what waits for them just ahead, but also spare some time to look back on what they’re leaving behind. The first time I watched The Origination, in 2011, I was going through some life changes myself that meant I could identify with that feeling. Since then, I’ve gone through even more life changes, and that feeling where you’re at the end of a phase of your life, taking stock of what you’re finishing and wondering how you’re going to move forward, rings even more true.
Episodes like “That Imminent Spring Breeze…”, “That Keepsake Clover…”, and “In That Gently Passing Time…” that depend on this wistful atmosphere attain a gravity that they wouldn’t have if they were merely flashbacks, but it’s best used in Episode 4, “Those Who Aim for Tomorrow…”. Akari, feeling a bit anxious about her rowing skills, goes to work the traghetto on Alicia’s advice. The traghetto is a cheap ferry boat that Neo Venezian locals ride to get around the city. Apprentice Undine, usually Singles, row it in their time off to practice and make some extra money. Akari meets three other Undine whose path has been much different than hers: Atora and Anzu from Orange Planet, and Ayumi from Himeya. Atora and Anzu are both struggling to attain promotion to Prima, while Ayumi has decided that the Prima lifestyle isn’t for her, and she prefers the down-to-earth lifestyle of a traghetto rower. Atora and Anzu go through a lot of emotions in this episode: they lash out at their instructor, who won’t pass them up to Prima; they rage against the system; they consider quitting and becoming permanent traghetto rowers like Ayumi. But Ayumi talks them out of it, telling them she’s doing it because she wants to do it, but they really still want to be Prima, so they shouldn’t give up. The three also confirm that Akari is a great rower and that for her, becoming a Prima is practically inevitable.
“Those Who Aim for Tomorrow…” is so successful because it goes outside our heroines’ little bubble and shows us the challenges that other Single Undine, ones who weren’t blessed with the best mentors in the world of Undine, faced on their path to being Primas. It illustrates what Undine who find themselves unhappy with the system can do. It expands the world, but it also shows us that Akari’s path isn’t the only path. While Akari may have been a natural who flourished under Alicia’s instruction, there are other trainees who struggle, fall down, and either drop off or come back to try again. It gets across the fear you feel when you’ve set yourself on a certain path, lost a lot of time and work to a goal, and now aren’t sure that goal is achievable. This isn’t a feeling any of our main heroines would have—they’re too talented, or have parents too rich, to fail like this—so the show introduced these new characters to expand on its theme of coming to the end of a major phase in your life, by showing what happens when bringing that phase to an end turns out to be more difficult than you thought.
Leaving Aria Behind…
Speaking of phases ending, I don’t know if I’m ever going to watch Aria again after this. I don’t know if I’m ever again going to feel moved to revisit this series, with its beautiful moments and its mediocre moments and its brilliantly genuine writing and its sentimentally boring writing. When I finished Aria: The Origination for the first time in June of 2011, I wrote in the notes I was keeping, “I don’t know how to go on after this without that weekly peek into a better world”. But I think I do now.
Don’t get me wrong, I love those characters (except for Aika) and that world (except for Cait Sith). The peacefulness, the natural beauty, the appreciation for a simple life, those are as potent as ever, and in some ways I needed this series in 2018 even more than I did in 2011. But living in that world doesn’t fix everything. The beauty of Neo-Venezia comes as much from the charming personalities of the Undine as it does from the architecture and the canals and the trees and the roasted potato stands. But to become an Undine, young girls compete fiercely for the chance to spend years in training, only to possibly flunk out at the Prima level due to the whims of instructors. They become apprentices at young ages—Alice at 14, Akari at 15—and drop out of school, so being an Undine is the only set of skills they have, and the world of Neo-Venezia is still capitalist, so changing jobs isn’t necessarily easy. Alicia is lucky enough to get a position with the Gondola Association, but she’s one of the most celebrated Prima ever. And not all Undine are as naturally personable as Akari; being an Undine is a form of emotional labor, like being a cast member at a Disney park, where the Undine’s vibe is an essential part of the experience for the customer. For someone like Alice, who is shy and quiet, being chipper and energetic all the time must be exhausting. So a lot of hard work goes into creating the experience of Neo-Venezia, and there are winners and losers, and some people get hurt. It may be utopian, but it’s not perfect.
But more than that, I’m never sure nowadays if I’m ever going to revisit anything. There’s so much anime to watch nowadays, so many books and comics to read, so many games to play, that coming back to any one of them almost feels like a waste. On the other hand, 90% of them are crap. Aria, despite its flaws, is a masterpiece—I’m more sure of that now than I ever have been. It succeeds too well at something too risky and too original to be anything else. And perhaps, even with the incredible preponderance of stories out there today to experience, it’s worth making time to return to the masterpieces every so often. To reaffirm that they are masterpieces, if nothing else—or perhaps to return to something familiar and friendly, warm and comforting, yet at the same time challenging and deep, like a city built on another planet to preserve the history of a world that can’t be bothered to remember where it came from.
