That does indeed look remarkably like the illustration. The real question is why Aika reminds him of it…
Edit: Did some further Googling. Considering it’s a guy in a suit, there’s a disturbingly large number of image results for ガチャピン 海…
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p295 きさま俺様の美しい汗がそんなにイヤかあ
How about “Is my beautiful sweat so disgusting?” Clearly delivered with some irony! 
Random thoughts.
How adorable is Aria社長 sprawled on the floor in the heat of the first two pages?
What about the wooden jetty they end up on, and Akari sitting on the end with her laptop out? 
Also, does it do anyone else’s head in that these islands are floating and tethered? How? And if they have the technology to do that, then why can’t they install ceiling fans for when it’s hot? 
I assumed that too. The 若者 are at one table, the grown ups at the other. Or something.
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Right?! If that were real life, I would 100% expect her to drop her laptop, probably when the fireworks start going off, and maybe end up in some kind of fail video
Yeah, I don’t really understand the islands. I think I’m going to choose to see it like a docked blimp or something until a better explanation comes along ^^
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I just assumed as much especially as how they’ve pixelated the face which I’ve seen in anime where they make a reference to a ghibli character for comedic effect but pixelate it because they can’t legally use the image.
The tension over dinner is pretty amusing in that scene - Aika calling him “ポニー男!” and accusing him of being overly familiar and while things seem a little less antagonistic with Akari, still calling her "もみ子”. 
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OK, another little linguistic mystery
p302 top right
おい さっきから
メンチくれてやがる
ガチャペン
I googled メンチ and on Wikipedia’s disambiguation page, one of the options is 「メンチを切る」は関西弁で「にらむ」の意味。
睨む means to glare at; to scowl at; to glower at. Given the looks they were giving each other on the previous page, do you think this might be the meaning here too?
I also found confirmation that ガチャペン is based on a character from a kids’ TV show called ひらけ!ポンキッキ, which ran for 20 years in Japan, which may explain the large number of pictures @Belthazar found.
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I’d say so, yeah. “What are you glaring at me for, Gachapen?”
Finally read the chapter! It was a nice way to end the first volume / Aqua. Here are my thoughts:
- I laughed out loud a few times, especially the line one page 302: 一番不思議生物
- The parts with Aika and Akatsuki fighting were entertaining (if occasionally confusing). Akari being stuck in the middle was really funny too.
- As always, Akari’s excitability is adorable.
- The explanations about the floating islands and the climate control was kinda cool.
- Along with もみ子, we now have ポニ男!
- There was a lot of great art this chapter! I just wish the double spread fireworks page was in color!
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Just paste in the corresponding pages from Yotsuba? 
I have no idea what you’re talking about. 
Nice. I only bothered reading the first two volumes.
Why would you not want to sit on the floor with the cats though xD I mean…cats
I’m torn: I can’t decide if all the precarious railways/paths are awesome or terrifying. If they could just add some more secure railings or something, I would love them xD Those views 
I find it interesting to think about the fact that even though Aqua is totally climate controlled, they still make these ridiculously hot summers (I know it’s supposed to be part of the charm [at least I think that’s what Akatsuki said in the restaurant], but like…if I were going to dictate the weather for a new planet, it would not include any temperatures above ~75 or 80 degrees, and there would be no humidity ever. If you have a choice, why take the worst parts of Earth weather with you?)
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I don’t feel like using spoiler tags, so here’s my response:
Response
I think the main point is that it’s not as precise on Aqua because it’s still largely controlled manually, unlike on Earth where it’s all controlled automatically. Akatsuki says that the Salamanders aren’t precise machine parts.
I think your translation about it being part of the charm (or perhaps just the fun) is probably correct. It’s just that it’s not an explanation of why the temperature is so hot. It’s more of an excuse to save face for them not being more precise.
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So then were they aiming for temperate, and just overshooting? I guess I assumed they (the Salamanders) were trying to make the seasons similar to irl Earth/irl Japan on purpose, but maybe it’s just a coincidence that they ended up like that because of the imprecise climate control. Still seems like it should be a fixable issue, though. I mean, I could understand not being precise to the degree, but it seems like they should take the imprecision into account when they set the target temperature so that the resulting temperature isn’t terrible, even if it isn’t exactly what they wanted. I’m probably getting too hung up on this for no reason Apparently it’s very important to me that imaginary places have good weather xD
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Do you know why they changed magazines?
Summary
No, it makes sense that they are aiming to have seasons like on Earth. They wouldn’t be off by that much. But perhaps they we’re aiming for an 80 degree summer day and got a 90 degree day instead. Plus, keep in mind that weather is a chaotic system. There’s probably only so much they can control it.
EDIT: Plus some stuff like orbit and the tilt of the planet are out of their control. Controlling the climate doesn’t mean having no variation. It just means that the variations can be made more reasonable.
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Whew, sudden change in topic.
Looks like it was all down to the merger between Enix and Square - Aqua was published in Enix’s Monthly Stencil, but when the merger happened, a bunch of manga artists who were concerned about their future publications left and formed Mag Garden instead, and one of the settlements they worked out was that series could be continued under Mag Garden, but had to be published under new titles.
Googling isn’t coming up with anything much (mostly because “Aria” is an annoyingly common word).
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Yeah, I just didn’t want to forget to ask. 
I just remembered you mentioning a slight shift in tone or something like that so I was curious.
I rewrote my previous post. Just making sure you didn’t miss it. 
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Oh now that’s interesting. I guess that was right when Square and Enix merged. And now we know why it changed names too, so that’s cool.
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