Aria the Masterpiece: Chapter 10 Discussion

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Aria the Masterpiece Chapter 10: ネオ・ヴェネツィア

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Start Date: August 25th
Previous Chapter: Chapter 9 (Volume 1)
Next Chapter: Chapter 11

Vocabulary List

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  • When asking for help, please mention the page, panel, and speech bubble. Be sure to mention if you are reading a version other than Aria the Masterpiece.
  • Don’t be afraid of asking questions, even if they seem embarassing at first. All of us are here to learn.

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image

:slightly_frowning_face: :frowning: :cry:

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I was wondering when this thread would pop out :smiley:

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Sooo, I have some mixed feelings about this chapter.

It’s more or less the same exposition than in the first chapter. The presentation of Aqua is done by the newscaster rather than the spaceship crew and the conversation about the convenience of Earth is just transposed from the one with the postman. That felt a bit boring to me. I understand the need for that, considering it’s technically a new series, but blarg.
Still, the visuals were beautiful, and the old man is hilarious, both in terms of design and attitude

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Wooh @Naphthalene is posting stuff first? I’m going to have to read the chapter first thing tomorrow so I can read your secret text.

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No one was saying anything, so I thought I’d just share my thoughts on the chapter :thinking:
I could have waited a little bit more.

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Nothing wrong with it, I was just surprised. :slight_smile:

Nobody has filled in vocab in the vocab sheet yet either, so more work for me tomorrow.

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Yeah, so, bit of backstory here. @Naphthalene touched on it, but for those playing at home:

Chapter 10 of Aria The Masterpiece was originally published as chapter 1 of Aria. Everything we’ve read so far was published in Enix’s Monthly Stencil magazine under the name “Aqua”. When Square and Enix merged, there was a bit of fun in Enix’s manga arm, the upshot of which was they all left to form a new company called Mag Garden, and Aqua was moved to Mag Garden’s Comic Blade magazine, now under the name “Aria”. Hence the re-upping of the exposition page.

When I originally read Aria, ADV had started the English translation with Aria volume 1, releasing it in 2004. Aqua wasn’t released in English until 2007, when Tokyopop assumed the licence. So for a very long time, this chapter was, for me, how the series started. As I saw it, this was the story of a girl who’d already become a Single, learning to become a Prima. That the anime’s first episode was the same story, just with the old man replaced by a young girl called Ai (who then became an anime-only recurring character) only served to reinforce that impression. It was a long time before I discovered that Aqua even existed. So the exposition page turned out to be kind of important. Without it, I’d have been completely lost. “They’re in Venice, aren’t they? So why do they keep talking about Mars? And what’s with that calendar?”

I did, however, somewhat get the impression that Alicia was a bit of non-entity - she’s there the whole chapter, but barely appears in-panel unless Akari directly points her out. In hindsight, that was kind of a mistaken impression, but that’s rather how it came across.

(Side note on the subject of the anime, for some reason, they like to take chapters from the manga and tweak them in various ways. As I previously mentioned, this chapter had a young girl instead of an old man. As well as that, Alicia wasn’t sitting in the gondola - instead, Akari was doing solo practice, and Ai weaseled her way aboard using the “I’m a friend, not a customer” story. Instead, Alicia’s role in the story was taken from Aqua chapter 2 - Aria accidentally floats away, and Alicia rescues him. Stylishly.)

I’m just starting to read it now. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Do you usually fill out most of it?

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Usually, yeah. Unless someone beats me to it.

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@Belthazar It’s appreciated! I’ve enjoyed coming along after you and only having to fill in a few extra bits!

Don’t worry, I’ll be back… in a month or two… :scream:

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I’m a few pages ahead using Jisho / google translate and was going to come back to fill in the blanks, but it looks like I won’t need to.

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And done.

  1. For some reason, I never noticed the translucent overlay page before the weird wedding dress character mini-poster in volume one…
  2. Trying to figure out what the G in “GAM” in the very first panel is supposed to stand for. Greenwich?
  3. Bit amused by the chapter title page. Chapter name: ネオ・ヴェネツィア. Furigana: ネオ・ヴェネツィア
  4. Another full-length drawing so we can see the character’s uniform, though it’s Alicia this time. Never noticed this before, for some reason, but the winter uniform has the slit over their left legs instead of their right.
  5. Page 8, finally, the first true appearance of Akari’s square-mouthed chibi form. The characters all have distinctive mouth shapes, and while Aika has been using hers since her first appearence, Akari’s mouth has been all over the shop.
  6. Huh. The 日 in 1日 gets furigana, but the 1 does not?
  7. Page 10… did she just send her e-mail in the post?
  8. I’m guessing 娘夫婦 on page 12 is “my daughter and her husband”? Curious way of phrasing. “My daugher husband-and-wife”.
  9. Page 16, last panel, what’s からかっとる? I was trying to make sense of it as からかっている, but I’m still not getting anything.
  10. A lot of similarities between pages 17 and 18
  11. I wanna eat じゃがバター now. (I actually saw a yakiimo truck in Kyoto in December. No idea now why I didn’t buy one at the time…)
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I didn’t even notice it in volume 2 until you mentioned it although I’d call it a water-effect rather than a kind of wedding veil.

That’s a bit strange since she wasn’t handwriting a postcard or letter and seems to have sent emails from her laptop in the previous volume.

I was wondering about the meaning of that. I know 娘 for daughter and 夫婦 for husband and wife so I didn’t know if it meant his wife or daughter and her husband or some other familial meaning behind the compound word but just assumed they were looking for his daughter from the rest or the story.

I don’t always use google translate, but when I do it gives a meaning of “are you kidding?!”

美味しそうね〜

It was a little big a of a slog to read through the re-exposition but good revision for all of those words I guess.

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It’s cause they’re married to Neo Venezia, the city of water. Yep, yep.

To be fair, it was already a bit strange that she was writing an e-mail literally in the middle of training with Alicia, though it’s always possible they’re waiting for a customer to show up. Really, it’s mostly just an excuse to get her into a position where the old man could encounter her.

The husband is in the boat on page 30, though never speaks.

That was the impression I got from the context, but what is it in Jisho?

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I assumed からかっとる was からかっておる, so basically からかっている, indeed.
So, yeah, “are you kidding me?”
Or maybe, based on the speech level “are you jesting me?”

Do you mean からかう? It means “to make fun of” (I don’t know the exact definition Jisho would give though)

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I didn’t notice him the first time but now that you mention it…

Also, I added some extra words to the vocab sheet.

I assume it’s one of those onomatopoeic words but I couldn’t find a meaning for the handwritten text word ムニムニ on p.16.

I was also thrown a little by the use of the kanji for 訊くinstead of 聞く on p.31

Also, why they didn’t use kanji for めぐり when they used the more complex kanji 逢う instead of めぐり合う (or its other myriad forms given by jisho)?

Also, back to the じゃがバター for a moment - it must be pretty damn delicious to put up with all the inconveniences of not living on Earth :rofl: (cute facial expression p.26 btw)

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Oh yeah, I was going to bring that up too. From Google Image search, it’s clearly the sound effect for something squishy, but it’s not in the onomatopoeia dictionary I’ve been referencing.

Ditto.

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I think I beat you to the majority for the last couple of chapters cos I was overexcited about making flashcards :grin: but dang, it takes a lot longer, so thank you for all of your efforts!

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I vaguely recall that we encountered this vocab in vol 1(?). I learned the きく-reading for the first time. I have since before only seen the kanji used to write たずねる… Either way, if I didn’t dream this up, it would have been a long ass time ago, so I’m not surprised if people have forgotten it by now.

Edit: I found it. The vocab sheet came in handy. It was in chapter 6 on page 209 of vol 1.

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