Aria the Scarlet Ammo

Genre: Drama
Age Appropriate: Pre-teen
Emotional Response: um, okay
Notable Features: guns, historical characters, spy agents
Language: English/Japanese
Length: 12 episodes
Overall Recommendation: Good

"I'll pump you full of holes!" - Aria

Aria the Scarlet Ammo refers to a high school student named Aria. She appears when the main male protagonist is stuck in a Speed-like situation on a motorbike and saves him from segway-riding machine guns. Kinji, the young man in question, is a high school student at Butei High School - a high school for training special agents in weapons/strategy/hacking along side traditional education. He actually want to transfer out of the school, but through his interactions in the series never meets this goal. Part of his life includes his childhood friend, Shirayuki, who is in love with him and dotes on him in a way that annoys him. Still, he puts up with it - especially when she brings him food. After Aria saves the day, she decides that Kinji will be her slave (read: partner), and badgers him into working with her on  one case, which turns into the whole series. As part of the comedic side, she has frequent arguments (with weapons) with Shirayuki about their relationships with Kinji.

Aria's goal is to save her mother from her consecutive life sentences, given to her as a result of being set up by IU, a mysterious organization. This revelation brings in new characters to defeat as part of their end goal. These characters are also distantly related to historical figures. Through the process of learning their ancestral motivations, it is revealed that Aria is actually Aria Holmes Kanzaki. The Holmes is a nod to Sherlock Holmes! While it appears that Kinji doesn't have such a famous ancestor, this story does involve his brother, and his brother's death as a Butei.

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Aria the Scarlet Ammo is generally pretty good. I like some of the story line, and chuckled at some of the comedy. I don't think it was a waste of my time or anything. The addition of the historical ancestries wasn't necessary though. You'd really have to understand something about those figures (for the villains at least) to actually care about why it's been added, and even then the information doesn't seem to have any bearing on the situation at hand. It's nice that VillainB is a descendant of HistoricalA, but who cares? I thought I would like it more, but it was just "good."

I might have liked it had it been longer than 12 episodes. It could've used the time for a little more character development. It might be good if they end up doing a second season, although I haven't read anything about that being a possibility. It seems to be fairly new, though. Aside from some embarrassing moments (blushed included) there isn't anything inappropriate. There didn't even seem to be any innuendo type jokes, which wouldn't have worked anyway. However, the last episode was a little dark at one point. I did actually enjoy some of the weapons work, though! I also enjoyed Kinji in his special agent-type hysteria mode. It was funny. So, yeah, it was good. It's not at the top of my list, but I wouldn't stop anyone from watching it.

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Move Over!: Ozuma