Moé Moé Rabu

Akari and Alicia are preparing dinner and Alicia suggest that they eat in the gondola. Eating dinner in the gondola, Akari thinks of this as a goodbye dinner, but Alicia thinks of it as a thank you dinner instead. Akari thinking of saying thank you and goodbye, she thinks that it is not enough. Alicia agrees with her on that sense and mentions that she thought the same when she first met the gondola. Flashing back to the past, we see a young Alicia meeting the gondola for the first time. Thus with a younger Grandma and President Aria, Alicia goes out and starts practising. Upon going down the canal, another gondola appears in front of Alicia, thus panicing she moved along to the side but causing the gondola to hit the wall leaving a large scratched area on the side of the gondola. Akari sees that the gondola has been with Alicia since she was a pair. Then with more flashbacks, we see Alicia doing various jobs on the gondola and comparing them to when Akari was working on the gondola. Various jobs including scraping barnicles off, washing and waxing the gondola. Back to the present Alicia sees that saying goodbye to the gondola is sad for her as well.

Aika, Akira, Alice, and Athena appear and join Akari and Alicia for the thank you dinner. After settling down, they decide to make a toast and get Akari to give a speech. Akari is stumped on what to say and start saying random things which Aika notes that her speech is too long. Upon finishing her speech, everyone toasts to the gondola. Afterwards, Akari shows everyone the photos she took earlier in the day. As Athena is looking through them ,she sees a photo of the three young girls together and says that it is similar to when the Three Water Fairies were together. Looking through a photo album, Alicia brings out the very photo that Athena mentioned. Going back to when Alicia became a Prima Alicia thanks Athena for the congratulations whilst Akira says that she’ll become a Prima soon. Now that Alicia is a Prima, she will be using the white gondola. But she sees that leaving the current gondola is a sad thing for her. Akira says that they have been through alot with the gondola, and then Alicia suggests that they take a photo. After taking the photo, Athena asks what will happen to the gondola. Alicia says that the gondola will goto a new trainee of Aria Company. Coming back to the present, Akari realises that the new trainee was her.

With dinner over, everyone leaves saying their thanks to the gondola, leaving just Akari and Alicia. With that the two return back to Aria Company. But as Alicia and President Aria get off, Akari wants to stay with the gondola a little longer, thus with Alicia saying not to catch a cold and good night to Akari. Later on we see President Aria waking up and notice a light rain and also notices that Akari is not in bed. With that he carries an umbrella to Akari. Akari thanks President Aria but says that it feels good to have the rain sprinkling down. Akari knows that she won’t be riding in the gondola anymore and starts remembering to the times she spent with the gondola. Noting from the time to she met the gondola, the first time she wore the uniform, to meeting many people and going to many places, Akari considers the memories she made are treasures to her. Starting to cry, Akari then says her thanks to the gondola and falls asleep. At that moment the old man appears on the gondola and places the opened umbrella over Akari and disappears. Akari wakes up and finds the umbrella over her wondering who it was that placed the umbrella on her.

The next day the gondola is taken away. With that Akari and Alicia goto the gondola workshop and see the new gondola that Akari will be using. Alicia says that Akari will be the first user of this gondola, thus they go out for a ride on the new gondola. As they are approaching the end of the canal, Akari sees a familiar gondola. Passing by, Akari looks back and sees that it was her old gondola. With that Akari turns back around and greets her new gondola.

Preview:

Well this episode follow up from last weeks episode. Last week I was wondering how they were going to go about introducing Akari’s new gondola and this week’s ep showed that. Last weeks episode stopped about a two thirds of Navigation 36 (Volume Eight) while this week’s covers the last third. But the first half of this week’s episode is not part of the manga. It was good that they did an anime only part which goes over when Alicia had the gondola. The comparisons of Alicia’s and Akari’s time with the gondola had a good effect. It also shows that the two are very similar just like Aika and Akira are similar to each other. Though this and last week’s episode are the only ones that are continous. Every other episode you can watch pretty much independently.

This week’s insert song is 「Amefuri Hana」 by Makino Yui. Its the 2nd song on the ARIA The Natural Opening Single. Quite fitting to start playing when it raining. Also they played 「Undine」 again this week so I am guessing that they will stick with it till the end of the series.