Aria banzai! Donuts banzai!

Like pie and ice cream, like Alicia and “Ara ara”, like Akari and embarrassing comments, the gentle strains of Makino Yui’s beautiful singing go together perfectly with the beginning of an Aria episode.

The whole concept of the “OP-that’s-not-an-OP” is wonderfully fitting for the series, as the song complements the gorgeous scenery of the opening shots, helping to soothe the soul and get you in the right mood to enjoy what’s to come. It’s almost like an insert song for every episode, in a sense.

Speaking of which, we don’t get to see the undine out of their work attire very often; it was pretty cool to see Akari in her civvies.

So she gets a phone call from a customer who specifically requests her to guide them around the city. Surprised and excited, she works late into the evening planning out the route to use, researching and eating donuts.

It’s the little everyday scenes like this that make this show so wonderfully entertaining. You can’t help but laugh as Akari is feeling around inside the box trying to find the last donut, not realizing that Aria-shachou has taken it. Then when she starts crying and he freaks out, breaks the donut in half, and gives it to her, you can’t help but smile. The whole thing takes place without and dialogue or sound effects, as the OP is playing on top of it, but it’s still so wonderfully engaging.

Then, as the OP slowly fades away, we see that Akari has fallen asleep planning the route for her customer tomorrow. It’s such a perfect way to set the stage for the episode, while simultaneously setting the tone for the story.

I have a ton of respect for director Sato Junichi and his team for going this route, rather that the generic OP animation that every other show does. It just serves to underscore even more just how unique and excellent this series is.

The next morning during the usual practice, Aika questions why anyone would specifically ask for a Single like Akari when Aria Company already has the immensely popular Alicia. She suggests that it must be some crazy person who picks on inexperienced undine and does unreasonable things to them (like fishing from the gondola, or kidnapping Aria-shachou to feed to sharks, lol).

Alice then adds that it could be an undercover inspector from the Gondola Association, come to check on Akari’s progress. And according to Alice, the inspector will demote her back to a Pair if she fails the exam!

As Akari is busy being nervous, her customer arrives, a dignified looking lady who introduces herself as Amaranta. She shows signs of knowing Alicia, hinting that perhaps this was all planned out. Akari asks if there is anything in particular she would like to see on her tour, and Amaranta replies that she’ll leave everything up to Akari.

Of course, the Aika and Alice duo are always up for a little lighthearted mischief. The two of them are worried about Akari, so they decide to secretly tag along and see what happens. They make such a great comedic combo whenever it comes to this kind of stuff, really.

For that matter, the relationships between all of the Aria cast are wonderfully entertaining. I think if I were to pick my favorite comedic pairing, though, I’d still have to go with Akari & Aika. You just can’t beat the dichotomy of Akari’s perpetual cheerfulness combined with Aika’s tsundere cynicism.

“Hazukashii serifu kinshi!!”

“Heeeee?”

I swear, even though they do it practically every episode, it just never fails to make me laugh.

The “secret spot” which makes it look at though the statues are holding up the ukijima (floating island) was a great touch. The coup de grâce, though, was definitely Aika and Alice coming in afterwards and looking around, trying to figure out what was so special about that spot. Really, they make such terrible stalkers.

Speaking of which…

Caught red-handed and blue-faced!

Whoops! Spotted by Aria-shachou!! Good thing he can’t talk, cuz he sure tried his best to tattle on them!

“They’re stalking us!!”

Oh man, I laughed so hard at this scene that I had to pause for a while to catch my breath. Poor Aria-shachou! You can just see it in his face, he’s going, “Hey! They’re right over there! They’re hiding right around the corner!”

Then when they didn’t get it and he started pouting, I laughed all over again at his grouchy face. :<

Aria-shachou banzai!!

Jagabataa is a traditional Japanese festival food. Jaga comes from jagaimo, or potato, and bataa is of course a Japanese loanword from English - butter.

Usually it’s prepared without the skin, grilled and served up with a variety of tasty toppings, but of course, as Akari explained in episode 1 of Aria the Animation, Neo Venezia’s jagabataa is a bit different how we do things back here on ManHome.

Real jagabataa

Here’s a photo of some real life jagabataa that I took at a festival in Tokyo last year. I think it’s probably my favorite Japanese festival food, along with okonomiyaki.

See? Jagabataa is President Aria approved!

Again, the small touches add a lot of depth to the show, such as how the jagabataa man remembered Akari:

“Thank you for your continued patronage!”

“Continued?”

I guess she doesn’t remember that she came there before with Ai-chan. Then again, it was two whole seasons ago, so I don’t blame her for being a bit forgetful.;)

Gao!

Alice-chan kawaii! She is such a tsundere, acting like she wasn’t hungry until the stomach growl gave her away. x3

As they come to the end of their tour of the city, Akari leads them down a narrow passage, which opens up into a beautiful forgotten waterway filled with wildflowers. Amalanta then spots a cool looking mystery door and suggests that they open it up.

Akari is more than happy to oblige, since as everyone knows, in Neo Venezia opening up strange doors that lead to mysterious waterways is always a good idea. You will inevitably discover some abandoned place of incredible beauty, or have a suteki encounter or something.

And of course it pays off, as we knew it would. Just as planned!

Damn this series just looks so good. I could sit here and stare at these screencaps all day long.

As they’re returning they meet up with Alice and Aika, and Alicia reveals that back when she and Akira and Athena were Singles, Amaranta also rode on their gondolas. Akari asks if once she becomes a Prima, Amaranta will come ride her gondola again, and she of course gladly agrees.

Afterwards Akari talks with Alicia about her hope to work hard and become a Prima soon, and everything is suteki suteki~.

So already here in the second episode it seems as though there’s a definite vibe that the girls are maturing, on the road toward becoming Primas themselves. Although it’s impossible to really speculate where they will go with this season, the Aria manga is coming to a conclusion very soon, which means it’s likely that this will be the last season of the Aria anime. I really hope that this final season will finish off with the scene that we’ve all been waiting for, in which Alicia removes Akari’s glove and pronounces her a Prima undine at last.