Kozue Amano

This manga is not going to appeal to everyone, but I quite like it. I don't really remember what prompted me to look at it, but I had downloaded some fan scans/translations of this and the second volume several months ago. After reading through those files several times, I decided that I may as well buy a physical copy of the books, so I did. It was a good decision, because I love the series, and I've already read this book three times since getting it.

Aqua has only two volumes, because the show more mangaka switched from one magazine for publishing the story to another, and in the process change the name of the series. Some events early in the Aria chapters make more sense when you've read this first volume of Aqua, at the very least.

The art style is very pretty, with lots of beautiful scenery of Neo-Venezia, which is a city on terraformed Mars (called "Aqua" now) made to resemble Venice, Italy. The character designs are very cute, though the cat President Aria is a bit freaky until you get used to him.

I'd say the style and designs match very well with the style and pace of the story, which is slice-of-life about a young woman named Akari, who has traveled from Earth to Neo-Venezia to become an Undine. Undines are women who give guided tours of the cities via gondolas, a very prestigious job due to the various skills required.

In this volume of Aqua, we see Akari arrive on Neo-Venezia and installed as a Double, the word used for apprentices because they wear two gloves, for Aria Company, one of the best of the Undine companies. In fact, she's one of only two employees and her senior, Alicia, is known as the best Undine, according to the new friend Akari makes from Himeya Company, fellow Double Aika. show less

This second volume of AQUA is a winner if only because of the two chapters from President Aria's point of view. In the first, Navigation 07: It's Hard Being President, he feels lonely and redundant while Akari and Alicia are cleaning Aria Company's building, so he packs up some snacks and his favorite toy and tries to run away. Only, he doesn't have anywhere to go, so he doesn't get very far. It's a super cute little story, especially seeing President Aria share his snacks with a bird, or show more holding his doll while perched on the roof, because he misses Akari and Alicia.

The second chapter about President Aria is Navigation 09: Enter the Hero! A big fan of Nyan-Nyan Puu, a tv show for "good girls and boys", President Aria one day decides to dress up as the titular superhero and do good deeds of his own. He wears a cape and mask and is, again, totally adorable as he encounters adventures on his way to return a lost doll to a little girl.

The other chapters are about Akari's first customer (Navigation 06, which introduces the Salamander from the floating island, Akatsuki Izumo), the loveliness of glowing wind-chimes in summer (Navigation 07: Night-Light Bells), and a bit of a science-fictiony background about how the weather on Aqua works, as a way to introduce the floating island Ukijima and Akatsuki's job as a Salamander (Navigation 10: Fireworks).

There is a bonus chapter (a "special navigation") called Colds and Pudding which focuses on Aika a little bit. It's a bit weird for it to be included in AQUA Vol. 2, though, because it includes Alice Carroll as one of the main characters, though she isn't introduced for several volumes. It's a pretty sweet little story, though, and I'm never sorry to see Alice.

As usual with the ARIA series from Tokyopop, this could really have done with having the title and contents page in color. The illustrations were obviously color images that were changed to black and white, and they look pretty terrible, all murky greys without any real definition/contrast in the tones. For a book that relies on pictures, and especially a book from Kozue Amano, who does really gorgeous artwork (colored or otherwise), it's a shame to not have those two illustrations in color.

I do like that this translation maintains the Japanese honorifics. Having just read ARIA Vol. 3, I noticed a few places where I expected an honorific to be, but didn't see one - yet in this book, there they are, thankfully. show less

Tokyopop isn't exactly known for their amazing quality manga - errors abound, from chapters being printed upside down or backwards to bad translations and so on. The ARIA series seemed to be doing middling-well at this, and I at least hadn't had any problems, but then the Tokyopop edition of volume 5 was delayed for over half a year. They delayed or canceled several titles at that time, so it wasn't clear if they would continue ARIA at all, which was pretty frustrating for fans, since this show more would be the second time an American publisher had attempted the series and quit after only a handful of volumes (ADV had done ARIA 1-3 while Tokyopop had redone those, as well as #4 and AQUA 1 and 2).

I can't read Japanese, but the ARIA series is very much making me want to learn the language, so that I can still enjoy the manga without having to rely on Tokyopop. You see, they did eventually publish volume 5 in October 2009, but I am seriously disappointed in the quality. The manga itself is wonderful, because it is ARIA and the quality of Kozue Amano's art and story continues. But the translation and printing by Tokyopop for this are noticeably worse than in previous volumes, which suffered from too much reliance on "journeyman" and "apprentice" rather than the in-Universe terms "single" and "pair", as well as the lack of any color pages at all, and the usual Tokyopop non-translation of sound effects.

So the problems with the Tokyopop edition:

1. The back cover blurb seems to have confused volume 5 with volume 3 - it begins "spring has come again and Akari now welcomes the start of her second year on Aqua", which is what happened in the third volume. The fifth takes place in the autumn. Furthermore, it refers to the beginning of the second chapter in this volume, but gets the details of it completely wrong. It's incredibly poor attention to detail (though I'm told it's typical for Tokyopop).


2. The translation of the volume itself seems to be pretty sloppy. Akari is admittedly light-hearted and optimistic, but some of the phrases grow increasingly strange and idiomatic as the volume progresses - first is "holy guacamole" on page 48 when she sees the enormous Orange Planet building, then it's "holy baloney" on page 79 when she sees a report on her computer about a meteor shower for that night - both of these are passable, but they're so idiomatic that they really stand out as being odd. The worst of them, however, is on page 113 when Akari greets her pen-pal with "what's shakin', bacon?" It is jarring and feels completely out of character, especially since I'm fairly certain that Akari uses polite and standard greetings in the original Japanese.


3. There are at least three grammatical errors that stood out enough to bother me. The first is a mix-up of your and you're on page 85 when Akari, speaking in super-polite forms to Al, says "you're arrival is both auspicious and timely", while the second uses an odd superlative form of lucky when she says to the owner of Caffe Florian on page 175 "we are the two most lucky people on all of Aqua". Finally, the preview of the next volume on page 184(?) says "Alice is reminded that the time will soon come for she and her friends to be promoted to Prima." where it should probably be "her and her friends". Now, I'm likely to be called out for nitpicking on these grammatical errors, but it drives me crazy when I'm forced to notice the words I'm reading because of strange or poor grammar, and these errors are added to several other problems with this printing. If they were the only thing wrong, I shouldn't mind so much (though it'd still bug me, since people are presumably getting paid to proof the translation).


4. And the last and probably the most minor the problems with this printing is the page numbers. For some reason, and I really don't know what is up with it, there are two page 178s. Technically, the second is 182, and the surrounding pages (180-192) lack page numbers, and I probably wouldn't have even noticed it except that I was checking for a page number for something else entirely and when I counted back from the second 178, I got to 179 and had to look again. This is probably a result of changing the page numbers from the original, but I feel that it's another example of the relatively poor quality of the Tokyopop edition.

But for all the problems with this edition, I can't hate on it. It is, after all, the only English-language version that I can get without using fan-translations (which I use for several other series) and the ARIA series itself is lovely.

Volume five takes place in the fall and sees Akari going along with Mailman-san on his route one day (Navigation 21), meeting the third of the Water Faeries, Athena Glory of Orange Planet in a story where she and Alice learn that just because something seems outwardly useless, it might yet be helpful without being noticed (Nav. 22), climbing the roofs of Neo-Venezia to see a meteor shower (and at the same time, Aika going on an almost-date with Al) (Nav. 23), suffering training from Akira with Alice and Aika (Nav. 24), and finally spending an afternoon enjoying the charms of Neo-Venezia at the Caffe Florian (Nav. 25).

I love the second chapter, Navigation 22 "Canzone", best in this volume, because Alice is pretty adorable when she's trying to punish her left hand for not doing anything. Okay, I also love Mailman-san, and seeing him without his hat in Navigation 21 "Mailman-san" was great. And then Aika getting embarrassed because she fancies Al but doesn't want to admit it, and he practically says the same thing in Navigation 23 "The Night of the Meteor Shower" was also a favorite scene. I really like Akira's character, too, so that made Navigation 24 "Margherita" another plus. So, uhm, basically, I really liked this volume a lot? show less

The third volume of the ARIA series is another beautiful, serene, slice-of-life book. The focus this time is on the celebration of spring and friendship.

In the first Navigation (#11, The First Gale of Spring), Singles Akari and Aika use the changing of seasons (and switch to summer uniforms) to tackle a difficult course for the first time, where they meet Pair Alice Carroll of the rival Orange Planet. Alice is fourteen years old with a somewhat rude attitude for a kouhai, but naturally Akari show more wins her over and the three appear to swiftly become good friends. Alice's facial expressions (especially her comedic chibi face) are hilarious — she's easily a favorite character.

In the second Navigation (#12, Under Cherry Blossoms in Full Bloom), Akari and Alicia set out to "search for spring". Alicia knows of a beautiful vista, but can't quite remember how to get there, and the trio (with President Aria) lose their way, but soon find something even better.

In the third Navigation (#13, Town Treasure), Akari, Aika, and Alice chance upon a scavenger hunt of sorts which shows them many hidden parts of Neo-Venezia and develops Alice's character some, showing us that she's a quirky girl, if somewhat lonely before meeting Akari and Aika. Also, this chapter gives a lot of development to the Neo-Venezia setting. I wish that the opening two-page illustration of the three girls were in color, as it seems to have been originally, because it is quite beautiful. Of course, the drawings of the Neo-Venezia scenery in this chapter are really wonderful, too.

In the fourth Navigation (#14, Three Major Fairies), we learn more about the operations of the Undine companies in Neo-Venezia in a bit of exposition that leads up to the appearance of an old friend of Alicia's and Aika's senpai/mentor, Akira E. Ferrari of Himeya. I really love the relationship between Akira and Alicia, as shown here, and I hope there are plenty of chapters in future volumes about the two of them when they were younger. (I know the anime adaption has a few such flashbacks, but I don't know if those were from the manga or not.)

The fifth Navigation (#15, Festa del Bocolo) features Akatsuki once again and has the most romantic theme so far in the series. Festa del Bocoloi is a day when one gives a red rose to a loved one, rather like the Valentine's Day chocolate tradition. Akatsuki calls Akari out to help him deliver "all the roses in Neo-Venezia" to Alicia, because he can't carry them on his own, especially as it is Aqua Alta once again. I love Akatsuki, so I'm always glad to have a chapter featuring him.

So this is another volume of ARIA and it doesn't fail to uphold the standards of the series. Tokyopop really should have included the colored versions of the illustrations at the beginning of Navigation 13 and the title/contents pages, because they look pretty awesome even in b&w. I would have gladly paid more than the standard price if they were included. (It doesn't hurt that the title page is of Aika during Aqua Alta and the contents page has Alice out of her Undine uniform. I'm a sucker for Aika and Alice illustrations.) show less