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Please tell me at least one person was surprised by the little twist in this chapter. Grandma has never actually been named prior to this chapter, right? Though, the Aria volume 10 omake, which Naph posted a month or so back, does spoil this chapter a bit anyway…
I’m almost certain that I’ve never noticed the calendar on the first page before. Perhaps the first few times I read it, I’d forgotten that the series started in 2301, so I just kinda went “oh, it’s August” and nothing more. (Barring any apocalypses, August of 2281 starts on a Monday, so you’ll be glad to know this calendar is accurate.)
Page 341-342 is almost like a horror movie. Close zoom into his disturbing eye, and in the reflection of his pupil, he’s looking directly at her. Then there’s a blink, and he’s staring out into the sea like always, as though he’d never movied.
I’m a little bit amused that Akino starts Aria Company because she’s tired of the hectic pace of life at Himeya, only for Alicia to wind up just as busy. Though to be fair, she does manage to personify the “I want to appreciate everything” philosophy from page 340. Though, if I had to pilot a gondola wearing those shoes, I’d probably start my own company too.
I was all ready to suggest “Since Amano-sensei was getting over the death of the real-world Aria at the time, he’s probably immortal” except that despite its position at the end of this volume, this chapter was actually released in Aria volume nine, which came out the previous year. Wikipedia just says “all we know is that he’s at least twenty”. Though in all seriousness, given his close association with Cait Sith, perhaps he is immortal. That said, the average lifespan of real-world Earth pet cats has risen from 9.4 years in 1995 to 15.1 years in 2018, so it wouldn’t surprise me if (a) it’s risen even higher by 2300, and (b) Martian cats live longer anyway.
@hachikenHaving reread the chapter now, perhaps he’s waiting for Akari.
Origination episode 7 (which also features the only appearence of Alicia’s sempai, Anna - she neither appears nor is named in the manga, though Alicia mentioned her back in Navigation 51. It’s also got the only appearence of Neo Venezia’s Burano Island.)
Mind you, after some careful consideration, I’ve finally cleared up some issues I’ve been having regarding the formation of Aria Company and how things work, timing-wise.
Simply put, the issues spring entirely from the anime’s interpretation of events, which I’d watched first, long before I read the manga - there’s no big problems in the manga. Basically, the anime implies that the complete list of Aria Company employees is Grandma, Anna, Alicia, Akari, but then shows a flashback of Anna retiring, and it’s implied she’s pregnant, and it also shows that Alicia is already a Prima… except that in the present-day scenes, her kid looks to be about eight, meaning Alicia would have had to become a Prima at the age of ten or twelve, or thereabouts.
Navigation 51, however, states that the original Aria Company palina was created by a sempai Alicia had never met, who was a different person to Alicia’s current sempai - i.e. there’s a chain of at least three people in the twenty years between Aria Company’s founding and Akari’s arrival. (In the anime version of the chapter, Aria Company has no original palina - instead, Akari finds plans that were drafted by an early employee, but which were never actualised because the Aria Company colours hadn’t been decided yet… except that the anime goes on to contradict itself in this story by showing Grandma wearing a uniform the same as the current one before she even opens the doors for the first time.)
Grandma is fifty when the manga starts? she looks more like 60 or 70 year old おばあさん
Do undines retire by the time they’re 30 or something?
No, wait, don’t answer that question. I get the feeling we’re going to find out the answer soon enough.
Grandma has never actually been named prior to this chapter, right? Though, the Aria volume 10 omake, which Naph posted a month or so back, does spoil this chapter a bit anyway…
