Aria, Vol. 1

By Kozue Amano
ADV Manga, 174 pp.
Rated: All Ages

If you can’t afford that trip to Venice this summer, you can still pick up “Aria,” which takes place in a city with very similar waterways. Starring a young gondola rower and tour guide-in-training, this enjoyable series explores Mars in the year 2301, but is mostly set in Neo-Venezia, which like its Italian forefather is partially underwater.

The first volume introduces us to Akari Mizunashi, an Earthling who relocated to the Red Planet to study the art of being an undine. She’s lived on Mars for almost a year, gone from new recruit to trainee, and has a number of friends including President Aria, the blue-eyed cat of the company employing her.

Akari can’t take on a passenger without an instructor present, but there’s still plenty of room for funny hi-jinks. Meanwhile, writer/artist Kozue Amano does sufficient world-building in volume one, explaining how the Red Planet became the “Water Planet” and throwing in other details. Apparently, Mars circa 2301 is considered backwards compared to Earth, but interestingly, that only means it’s slightly more advanced than the Earth we all know.

“Hi-jinks” might have been the wrong word, since the action is as sedate as a voyage on calm waters and all developments are age appropriate. A typical Akari adventure is encountering a lost vacationer, scrubbing the barnacles from her gondola, feeding ducks off a bridge, or taking part in Neo-Venezia’s annual boat race. The only tonal shift might be in “Sun Shower,” a chapter in which she visits a traditional-style Japanese shrine. Here, the canals of Neo-Venezia are traded in for lush forestry and textured stone, but there’s also a procession of masked figures and an atmosphere of quiet mystery.

If there is an underlying message throughout this first volume of Aria, it’s that life is full of magical moments and people should enjoy them. Akari seems to teach that to somebody in almost every chapter. She also embodies that sentiment; whether lost on vacation, performing manual labor, or being stood up by a friend, she’s one of those relentlessly-upbeat life forms spotting the silver lining in every dark cloud. Ultimately, your tolerance for this type of main character will probably determine how much you enjoy this manga, even more so than Amano’s bright, clean artwork and painstakingly-realized architectural details.

In the end, Aria is no space opera featuring good and bad guys, more like the journal of a young woman who is developing as both a professional and a human being.

Volume one of Aria is currently available through Tokyopop in a new translation. For additional perspectives on Aria, please see Erin F.’s review from 2006.