[kuromitsu]

Originally Posted by miketyson

kuromitsu:

Spoiler for Alisia:

I think you're right: she doesn't look any older, but she's portrayed as a grandma, and I think that's why I remembered her in that picture as "older" than she really was. Doesn't help that white-purple hair looks fairly grayish. You made a good catch with that cat-ish teruterubozu. This brings me to my crack theory du jour:
(1) skies of Aquaria was produced for the Altairian market, not the Vegan market (hence the release delay, )
(2) Mykage used it as a propaganda piece (story of hope), to set the stage for her arrival
(3) Mykage brought her over in her movie outfit so the local populace would all hail her as a messiah figure (and praise Mykage for having managed her arrival)
(4) Mykage is in fact responsible for whatever's keeping her in the test tube (keeps her as a symbol, it'd be bad if she woke up)
(5) somehow the movie nevertheless did get its eventual domestic release
(6) (optionally) some of the movie shoot happened on Altair or with an Altairian film crew, via which venue Amata knew about cats ()

If nothing else it'd be a way to explain how Mykage came to prominence and why Alisia's done up in her movie outfit.

So basically, her story is an interdimensional morality tale about the innocent girl who gets ensnared by a seedy agent who promises her stardom but once he finds that she's "used goods" he throws her as a bone for creepy, obsessed guys (Izumo, Jin)? (Now I really want to see Mykage saying "heey baby, wanna be a star?" to Alisia. XD)

As for time lines, I don't know, it appears there's a discrepancy between the novelization and the anime. In the anime when Mikono wants to buy a pamphlet of the movie Amata says they don't have one because it's more than 10 years old. In the novelization he says it's 10 years old.