In reply to Helonia VS Helvetica - Curious dearth of information:
Interesting post Joshua, and I find merit to many of your points, so I am glad you elaborated. Mind you, the differences between Helvetica and Arial are not subtle to me, even as one extremely new to typestyle minutiae. I would love to respond in greater detail, but my answer would be general, even philosophical, and too far removed from the topic of typestyle, so I will have to take your advice and do more studying first.
I will only say that there is something oddly fascinating about Helvetica. For the time being my conjecture remains that it indeed possesses some intangible quality not found in other typestyles, but I reserve the right to be wrong.