DHBirr Wrote:As a sort of amends for the viciousness of my last suggestion, consider a story set in Aria, before Alice, Aika, and Akari graduated to Prima.
The focus is a visitor from Manhome, not just a tourist but a businessman whose work brings him to Neo-Venezia a lot. Still, almost if not every trip, he makes time for at least one tour with an undine -- nearly always a different undine, because he wants to enjoy the city from a new perspective each time. He's been making these visits for long enough that he rode with "Grandma" back before she retired ... maybe even when she was still with Himeya Company.
He's not one of the difficult customers; this is as laid-back and cheerfully undramatic an episode as any in the canon, and his personality is rather like a male version of Alicia's and Akari's, though he could have daughters their age (and perhaps he does). Humor may result if Aika is mortified to catch herself starting to tell him that embarrassing remarks aren't allowed.
So, this would be somewhat like the episode with Amaranth, but without all the (self-inflicted) pressure on Akari...
DHBirr Wrote:He also provides a bit more fleshing-out of what Earth is like in the 24th Century. He comes from the Submarine Kingdom of the Netherlands -- sea levels were rising so much a century or two ago that the Dutch realized that they couldn't make the dikes high enough for much longer. So they roofed the polders over with transparent high-strength materials, and at least half of the country is warm and dry under a meter or three of seawater. They were so proud of that accomplishment that, yes, they formally added "submarine" to the name of their nation.
http://www.behindthename.com/names/gend ... sage/dutch]Dutch masculine names
Of course, you only need the ones that start with "A"... and there are a few of those that look like they can be pronounced easily by native Japanese speakers.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012