What I Still Want to Do Myself, Even with AI
This post was automatically translated by AI from the Japanese original.
ARIA is one of my top three favorite manga.
In the far future, Mars has been terraformed into Aqua, a planet of water where people can live.
On Aqua is Neo-Venezia, a tourist city modeled on Venice in Italy, where gondoliers called Undines work as tour guides.
Akari Mizunashi, who grew up on Earth, dreams of becoming an Undine. She joins a small gondola tour company in Neo-Venezia and starts her new life there, training to become a full-fledged Undine.
Everyone in it is so kind, there’s a touch of fantasy, and I love how slowly time seems to flow 💕
One of its episodes is about a baked potato with butter.
In ARIA’s future world, Earth has advanced technology, everything is automated, and life is convenient.
On Aqua, on the other hand, people do everything by hand: the cleaning, the laundry, the cooking.
The city is a maze of canals, so getting anywhere means going the long way around.
In the rainy season, the streets flood and shops close, and in winter, people light the fireplace and knit.
The baked potato story begins when Akari meets an old man visiting from Earth, who is lost.
As they look for his daughter and her husband together, Akari shows him around Neo-Venezia.
The old man has his doubts about life on Mars, which seems inconvenient and behind the times.
“On Man-Home (Earth), you could never get lost, could you?” Akari agrees, and hands him a baked potato with butter from a street stall.
Why did she move from convenient Man-Home to Aqua, where things aren’t so easy?
When he asks, Akari smiles: “Because you can’t get a baked potato this good on Man-Home.”
“It’s because things are inconvenient that I get to do everything with my own hands, and that makes me happy.”
It’s an episode where you can feel how much she loves taking time and care.
My work is inseparable from my computer.
AI has become part of my life, too.
It helps me reply to work emails and pull together documents.
Even for images, there are templates, and changing a few photos or words gives you something lovely.
Things keep getting easier, and I lean on that convenience so much that I sometimes feel my laziness speeding up.
Honestly, there are fewer and fewer things that only I can do.
That’s exactly why I want to treasure the things I want to do, even when they’re a bother.
Like drawing.
Playing the piano.
Embroidery.
Cooking what I want to eat.
I’m not good at them.
And they aren’t useful for anything in particular.
They’re a bother,
and I can’t do them perfectly,
but I still find that I love this time spent moving my own hands.
I can love things that take time and care.
I want more of those in my life.
