Finally, the highly anticipated (by whom? me.) ARIA DVD has arrived. Direction is great, character design is great, and the animation is... good. It's not amazing, but it's pretty good. I was a bit worried because it was animated by the same studio that animated Dokuro-chan. Looking back, I actually didn't have any problems with the character animation in Dokuro-chan. It was the background animation that was lacking. It appears that a lot more effort went into animating ARIA, so it's much better. I still like the background animation of AIR more than this, but this is still far above average.
I see Satou-sensei isn't following the manga directly, which is GOOD. I knew I could count on him. For those who never read the original manga, you're most likely going to miss some stuff because the anime jumps right in with the assumption that viewers are somewhat familiar with the characters.
First pressing comes with a box, two postcards, and a file to hold the postcards that I assume will come with all future first pressing DVD volumes.
Interview of Hirohashi Ryou (Alice), Saitou Chiwa (Aika), and Hazuki Erino (Akari).
