Ranked #474

Aria the Origination Picture Drama

For those of you who are suffering from withdrawal after the end of Aria: The Origination, the Aria Picture Dramas are like an anodyne for the soul.

I won't go into much detail about the story, as there are many reviews for all three series of Aria (I even wrote one for Aria: The Animation), and besides, Aria is easily one of the most popular slice of life anime to appear in recent years. It's relaxing feel, adorable characters, and surprisingly addictive stories where nothing really happens, and there's almost no drama, makes it a favourite of many people - whether they admit it or not. There's many a hardened action junkie who will, when pressed, sheepishly admit that the Aria series is one of their guilty pleasures :)

The picture dramas form a series of seven individual short stories that are completely random in nature, and have no bearing on one another. The seven stories are called:

1. Pyjama Party
2. Traghetto Epilogue
3. Aiming for that Glorious Victory
4. The Disgrace of Neo Venezia
5. Alice's Ghost Story
6. Akatsukin-chan
7. Together with Spring

Of the seven stories, my favourite is most definitely "The Disgrace of Neo Venezia", which is a parody of Aria and The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. There's energy bursts flying around, tea, and Alicia as a huge golden Buddha.

The animation (what little of it there is), is on a par with the series, and the designs are exactly what you'd expect Aria to be. The sound is as good as the series, but it lacks certain nuances which give the series part of it's atmospheere.

Characters are, again, pure Aria. There's no new characters introduced (although there are parodies of existing characters), and everyone behaves as you would expect them to.

I thoroughly enjoyed the picture dramas (I'm not sure why they called them dramas as they're not very dramatic), for two reasons. Firstly, I wanted something to watch that was nice and relaxing (and I was partly suffering from Aria withdrawal), and secondly, because the picture dramas gave me the excuse to re-watch Aria from the beginning :)

Aria fans should definitely watch the picture dramas, and for those of you who've never seen Aria, these 5-7 minute episodes will serve as a great taster for the show. read more