A few years ago I almost lost the hearing in my left ear. The gory details are best omitted, but I was left with (what the doctors claimed) was 20-30% hearing and only two thirds of the bones I should. For all intents and purposes I was deaf in that ear, a lopsided and mono world where car alarms didn't exist (a boon at 3am) but wearing headphones was painful.
Two years and two operations on I have most of my hearing back. All of this is just context for me to say: my hearing is precious to me and I am precious about it. It is a cliché to say that you don't know what you've got until you've lost it, but when it's personal it really brings it home.
Aria: The Animation is a holiday - from sexual innuendo, from noise, from fighting and from bustle. As it meanders along, content to show the placid toil of the gondoliers in training - geishas of the canals in everything but name - each episode becomes less about individual triumphs and pacing and more about getting lost in the tranquillity the series has gushing from it. The series may not be to everyone's taste, it is as much a holiday from drama and plotting as everything else, but for those looking to escape into a pastel coloured reverie there really is no better series; especially so for fans of gentle voices, lilting music, oddly proportioned cats and occasional time travel.
charmingly naive and has an infectious enthusiasm that elevates her above the common ultra-virtuous stereotype
Mars, once barren and harsh is now Aqua, flush with water and tamed by technology it is a utopia away from Earth - now Manhome. In the canal-city of Neo-Venezia, gondolas are the best way to travel and the water-ways are run by three companies: the smallest Aria, the biggest Orange Planet, and the oldest Himeya. After traveling from Manhome, Akari becomes an apprentice in Aria Company under the tutelage of the beautiful Alicia - one of the three Water Faeries of the city. Akari may not be the best gondolier - Undine in the series jargon - however she is affable and enjoys life, able to find happiness in the smallest of things. Along with two friends, her time on Aqua is replete with adventures both emotional and personal.
