Hidan no Aria AA – 02

One of these days one of them is gonna be “too old for this sh!t”

What?! Two Aria AA posts in just two days?! Well, yes. You can put most of the blame on Funi for playing shenanigans with their streaming schedule. Then put some of that blame on me. See, one of my shows is kinda/sorta/maybe dropped from coverage, but more on that later….

The Secret Ingredient is Stalking Surveillance 

Akari is a cute little grasshopper…

Well the real meat of the show is the showdown between Shino and Akari, but it doesn’t let us down in terms of advancing the rest of the plot. We defiantly know that there is more to Akari then what she seems. Aria has gone from a simple background check, to discovering that yes, there is a rabbit hole, and that Akari has gone down, and come back up. With help from one of her fellow Butei members, she’s able to suss out a few details. But along the way Aria still manages to hold that tantalizing stone in the palm of her hand….

There’s just enough evidence given to suggest a tragic past and hidden memories and techniques she might not be aware she even possesses. Her desperate-and failed-lunge for her gun last episode is really of a secret ninja technique; one that can pluck eyes from sockets, and her use of powers in last episodes cold open tells us even more is going on under the hood. Now much of this is only known to the audience, so Aria has a bunch more to track down. But the twin-tailed assault-princess does discover one hidden talent: intense sewing techniques cannot be ignored! Nice to see that Aria wants to improve her para-gliding. She was pretty boss the first episode of the previous series.

The schools accepted currency for ninja is noodlebread….

I also thought they did a good job on introducing some of the terms of the Butei school into the dialog without it becoming a huge exposition dump. It was evocative, and stood it’s purpose. We know the school has Assault, Snipe, and Surveillance, in addition to a super-powers unit, and a group of tech units and the students get to specialize; that’s all we really need to get the story moving along. Even the Amica system is pretty easy to get a hold on, it’s just a very complex senpai-kouhai understanding. But that wrinkle at the end, was a nice exploit for Shino to work herself into. Who knew the intital contract had a deadline? A l33t hacker that’s who!

BY WHO!? WHO CALLS IT THAT!

But as I said the meat of the show is the showdown. Shino really doesn’t let up on the yandere vibes, and that stalker-with-a-crush attitude really doesn’t bring a bunch of sympathy to her character, especially when it’s strictly based on, “you weren’t a total bitch to me like the other girls that failed to understand that I’m both rich and shy”, “and you shared a pastry with me”. Shino has the poor little rich girl thing to tug on the heart strings, yes, but I don’t think it really counters her more aggressive tendencies that much.

Butei plays with hard-knocks school lessons, but yeah, her motivation is a bit too personal! In future I hope they can focus on Akari’s other friend, Raika, and that she isn’t more of the same type of crazy-pants. But still Shino has mad hacking and sword skills, that’s nothing to sneeze at. The combined effort of both Akari and Aria’s heads-up, sailor-suit-ties-up clue put the damper on the yandere rampage. So, with defeat comes real friendship, and Akari has her first official nakama member.

..really do wish they would call the uniforms damage-resistant, not bullet-proof….

Every breath you take…

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We had a rather nice second episode here. I quite enjoyed seeing some of the similar parallels play themselves out. With Aria poking around on Akari, and Shino poking around on Aria, that was a neat full circle. Also, both Akari and Shino worked the night through to get satisfaction, one on sewing the other on her hacking skills. So even though they started off in opposition, really the methods were similar, are they are looking out for each other, in odd ways yes, but still…

Well, it looks like I will settle into Aria AA as my “third show”. I have to admit that I’m a more than taken aback by Sample, so I’m on the fence about how I’m going to cover it in the future. But, all things considered, this is a good replacement. Being a fan of the older series helps quite a bit. I’m glad to see it’s not as wacky as that one, and they’re taking the time to build up the characters. By next episode we should have things nicely rounded out with Akari’s nakama members getting more story, and perhaps a glimpse of some of the future antagonists and/or fellow student competitors. Butei is an aggressive place and they’ve not really shown us that side of it in great detail. Besides, there has to be a group of wacky villains with super-powers in there somewhere! It’s expected!

…so it is Raika next time! She’s here to help you cut the cake!

About skylion

All around nerd that enjoys just about any anime genre. I love history, politics, public policy, the sciences, literature, arts...pretty much anything can make me geeky...except sports. Follow me @theskylion