Most dramatized banana peel slip, ever

Looks like I’m not the only one getting their butt handed to them by “real life”. But with midterms over (only for finals to appear over the horizon, in about a month) I can play catch up with ARIA, this post running a little over two weeks behind airing schedule, this time to no fault of fansubbers.

The episode itself was slightly different than usual, wherein there was no “suteki” moral lesson to be learned. Though there was some character development that brought an extra dimension to our lovable undine.

During their daily practice, Alice tells Aika and Akari that the following day she’ll be going on a picnic with Athena. The two are surprised, thinking that it may be Athena springing a single promotion test on her, but it turns out Alice was the one who invited Athena, who suggested the plan back in winter. Mapping out their route and preparing snacks and lunch for the picnic, Alice may seem relatively calm, but inside she’s brimming with excitement. After taking a bath she sneaks into Athena’s room to find her sleeping already, probably exhausted from a hard day’s work, she places a written invitation to the picnic by her pillow and heads to bed herself.

Sadly, Alice’s plans go to waste as Athena suddenly gets some work dumped on her lap and can’t make it to the picnic. She rushes back around lunchtime to see if there’s still enough time to carry through with Alice’s plans. Childishly hiding her disappointment, Alice says to forget it for the time being, coldly walking out on her. As Athena goes to chase her, she slips on a conveniently placed banana peel from President Maa’s lunch and faceplants. When she comes to, it appears that Athena has developed a case of acute amnesia, completely unable to recall who Alice is.

Completely in a panic, Alice sends out a “dekkai SOS” to Akari and Alicia, who come over to find Athena not her usual clumsy self and not recognizing them at all. However, as they sit around and talk, Athena starts to play around with President Aria and remembers his name. With a sincere plea and a ridiculously cute head tilt from Alicia, Athena remembers her as well. No such luck with Akari, Alice and President Maa though. Alicia thinks that they should wait it out for a day to see if Athena gets better, if not they’ll take her to the hospital, excusing herself to go to work afterwards.

To help her get her memory back, Alice takes Athena to some familiar places. First stop is the cafe that Athena is a regular at, Alice orders Athena’s usual dish as well as a bunch of others to see if Athena can pick out her favourite. She manages to do so and even regains her memories of President Maa. Next, Alice takes Athena to her gondola and asks her to pick out her usual oar amongst a long lineup of others. She nails it on the first try and regains her memories of Akari at the same time. Although happy that her memories are slowly returning, Alice can’t help but feel down because Athena is remembering everyone but her…

The three head back to ARIA company where Athena has a talk with Alice, asking her what kind of person she was to her. Alice tells her that Athena is her troublesome and clumsy senior, Athena wonders if that means that she hates her, Alice, on the verge of tears at this point, says that it’s the opposite, she loves her Athena-senpai. Breaking up their conversation, Alicia tells Athena that this should be far enough, and so it’s revealed that Athena’s amnesia was all a lie, a ploy to find out how Alice really felt about her. Being clumsy all the time, Athena was afraid that Alice was beginning to hate her and felt that missing the picnic this morning, she may have finally pushed her patience over the edge. Alice tells her that next time she should just ask her directly about these things instead of going at it in such a roundabout way, as that’s the part of Athena she sometimes hates, continuing her rant, Alice tells Athena that if she can seal her clumsiness she should do so all the time, Athena protesting that it takes a lot out of her to do so.

Akari and Alicia see them off, Akari marveling that even Athena, one of the great water faeries can have such worries too. Alicia tells her that they are just normal girls after all, with all the worries that you would expect a normal person to have, especially when it comes to their lovable kouhai. Akari wonders if that means Alicia worries about her that way too, to which Alicia pleads the fifth.

Thoughts

PROTIP: Do not try stunts like this in real life. It may work in Aqua where everyone means well and misunderstandings are dealt with in a calm and rational manner, but playing mind games with your friends, especially ones that bring them to the brink of crying, will not end well. I don’t even know if anyone else but Athena could pull this off in ARIA, everyone knows she would never pull something with the intent of malice, and she does things in the most roundabout ways, so it worked out, along with Alice being a good sport about it. But I suspect if Akari were to pull something like this with Aika, she’d get swift whack in the head with an oar from her kouhai.

That being said, it was fairly obvious that Athena was just putting on an act. First off, how often do you see someone suffering from acute amnesia state it so bluntly like she did. And more obviously, Alicia walked away from the situation to go to work. The most gentle and caring of the three great water faeries abandoning her one of her best childhood friends who might have suffered a bump to the head severe enough to give her amnesia, to go to work? Yea right. I’m surprised Akari didn’t pick up on that, then again, it is Akari, her naiveness and blind trust in her friends are part of her charm.

I felt really sorry for Alice throughout the whole episode, not only did she look like she was feeling guilty for causing Athena’s face plant by acting childish with the picnic, but added to that Alice was the only one Athena couldn’t “remember”, a crushing blow considering how much she looks up to her, despite not voicing that admiration. When she starting crying I wanted to reach out and give her a hug ;_;

Amazing how ARIA characters bounce back from these things though, any other show would use this as an opportunity to fill an episode with angst and misunderstanding before the two reconcile, yet Alice and Athena were back to normal within minutes.

Also, this episode saw more of Alicia being slowly lowered down from her pedestal of perfection. The closing scene saw her admitting that she has worries that she has to take care of as well and that she’s not always the calm and refined person she projects to the outside world. If you read my spoiler a couple episodes back, you’d understand why this is a necessary process.

Well, that’s it for this week, I’m looking forward to the next episode, seeing as I already know what happens and have been waiting for it for some time now. Hint: Alice’s graduation mentioned in the preview is literal in more ways than one.

Lolikit thinks President Maa would make a good mudkip, I think he’d be a great pac man. MaaaaaNOMNOMNOMNOM.

~ Shirukii ~