Summary:
Aika is struggling along in some complex currents, when her gondola is passed by a tensai Pair (lowbie apprentice), Carroll Alice of Orange Planet. Alice is rather cold towards Aika and Akari, but she is a gifted and hard-working Pair who practices on her way to school every day. Although Alice has good knowledge retention and sweet gondola skills, her interpersonal skills are a bit lacking.
Later that day, Akatsuki stops by to molest Akari some more, and Alice comes to her defense. They end up taking Akatsuki around to kill some time while he waits for his older brother to show up with loan money. Alice marvels at Akari’s ability to smile and be courteous while sharing a gondola with a jerk like Akatsuki, and she begins to fall in love with Akari. Once Akatsuki finally gets his money, he invites the girls up to his place for some hot exercise. It turns out Akatsuki makes it rain up in Ukijima, the floating island that controls the weather in Aqua.
Reaction:
At first I thought Alice was totally bitchy, but once she got ready to club Akatsuki I warmed up to her. Man, I can’t stand that guy; he is like one of those kindergarten boys tugging on the pigtails of the girl he likes. Only once you get older it isn’t cute anymore, it’s just creepy. I thought it was pretty funny how Alice got into Mensile Undine magazine and had been scouted from her gondola club. If only there was a smiling club or a cheesy lines club, Akari would have been a tensai star for sure!
A few things bothered me this episode. First off, why would a company called Orange Planet line its uniforms in yellow? That makes no sense. Secondly, why are journeymen counted in average earnings per member? Is Akari counted, or is Aika was implying that Alicia’s earnings have gone down ever since Akari arrived? Then there was the whole matter of Akatsuki inviting the jailbait up to his place and then having an extended moment of… moaning. Seriously, listen to this scene; who sounds like that while running? Stop judging me!!!
15 Comments
Maybe it gives the uniforms some Red/Yellow/Blue color wheel coordination. But yeah, it’s stupid. Orange Planet should be orange.
*blinks* Wow, talk about coincidences…I’ve just started on Aria recently too! I think I’m at around ep #6 right now so I’ll be coming back to these posts to read your reactions on the episodes (something tells me I won’t have the energy to blog it episodically).
As for Alice, you do warm to her after a short while - I thought she was a bit cold at first too but after the end of this ep the ice gets broken somehow. I can’t remember which blog it was that pointed it out (it may have been Baka-Raptor actually) but I understood straight away when they pointed out how, no matter which characters are on-screen at any given moment, there’s chemistry.
I guess you could draw less-than-pure subtexts from this show (I reckon it has a subtle shoujo-ai slant!) but it’s one of those series that you have to take at face value to appreciate, without any of those pesky preconception things.
There are a lot of explanations for a yellow corporate identity of Orange Planet:
1. People wouldn’t talk about it otherwise -> publicity stunt.
2. Colour-blind marketing department. Not everyone agrees upon the same definitions of yellow, orange and red.
3. Epic failure of the legal department. They were so busy on checking the fine-print and paragraphs that they never noticed someone had picked the wrong palette.
4. They ran out of Cyan and Magenta.
5. Yellowish orange was 1% cheaper.
6. The plan was delivering only during sunrise and sunset when nobody could tell the difference.
7. Deutsche Telekom has a trademark on the colour Magenta, Orange Netherlands has a trademark on the colour orange. Before you know the world will turn greyscale again as it was before they invented colours.
8. Someone got a patent on “mixing yellow and magenta to create orange”.
She’s already a tensai at tennen! *revenge for the Rurouni Kinshi pun*
Nice to see you’ve started as well Martin, but nonsense! Goggles are fun too. And speaking of which:
I knew I wasn’t the only one who saw that! (Just kidding… or AM I?!? :D)
…I-I-I sound like that while running
*BLUSH*
in my baggy pants…with my incestphone…Oh man, this is just the beginning of the misunderstandings! Aria is choke full of them! (well, at least I think so… maybe its cause I read too many Aria H…. and on the subject of Aria H… nevermind, lets just leave that bit of info on Totali’s blog! XD)
I’m glad you decided to blog Aria, cause I get to remember all these wonderful memories! Keep up the good work!
@ TheBigN: I’m pretty sure all of us thought about that! I guess its like you said, we aren’t the target audience…CAUSE WE RUIN THE SHOW WITH OUR PENORZLE MINDS!!! D:
The good news is, Alice grows on you a lot through the series. She’s easily my favorite non-Akari character.
I hate you. T_____T. I jest xD.
I hate jogging but I seriously wouldn’t mind running a few laps with her.
hmmm, if Chris double posts, I’LL DO IT TOO!!!
Whoa! This means I could make 2 Neil Sedaka references! ALL RIGHT!!! (err… couldn’t find the Alice in Wonderland song… oh well! this should do!… I can’t be the only Neil Sedaka fan here… right? You guys are probably seriously scared about my age
)
I’m not double posting and the glove is too small anyway.
I meant double posting in a good way, as in posting another comment, not writing the same thing twice or writing two comments in a row. Sorry for the misunderstanding… *finds the jar of cookies and gives them back*
And to keep the subject on Aria, I recently found out that the US version will only have subs…
Well, I know how much people hate dubs, but I think with the proper care, it could have been pulled off pretty nicely! Well, I guess this means there is no way RightStuf will mess up anything… hopefully
The price is certainly attractive and sub-only releases is the right thing. English sounds just awful to my ears no matter whether it’s a dub or original. English is an extremely practical language but certainly not a beautiful one.
The speed and price for sub-only makes sense for a show that may not necessarily appeal to mainstream anime fans.
I was proud of that Youtube clip. It took me forever to learn how to convert the .mkv (which I love, but every program seems to hate) and then clip the section I wanted. I especially like how after “running” for a while, Akari and Alice climax by bursting out into the light.
The two events that staved off Alice hate for me in this episode were when she was trying to smile and look cute but then went into her horrible SD face, and when she was ready to give Akatsuki the beatdown with the oar. Do not attempt to mess up the shoujo-ai pairings, Akatsuki!
Two years for a single clip isn’t so bad. I’d use either mencoder or ffmpeg for this purpose.