Change appearance of italic \ae symbol

Question

I need to use \ae symbol in my article both in standard and italic forms.

Text \ae\textit{\ae}in my .tex file looks like this

The italic symbol seems unfamiliar when it's a small letter on a page. Is there a way to change its appearance so it will be, for example, like this one ?

The document has the following content

\documentclass[10pt,twoside,book,a5paper]{ncc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[english,russian]{babel}
\usepackage{indentfirst}
\begin{document}

\section*{Введение}
...
\ae \textit{\ae}
...
\end{document}

Answer 1

You get a better shape with

\documentclass[10pt,twoside,book,a5paper]{ncc}
\usepackage[T1,T2A]{fontenc}

\let\tg\relax\let\ctg\relax
\let\arctg\relax\let\arcctg\relax

\usepackage[english,russian]{babel}
\usepackage{indentfirst}

\DeclareTextSymbolDefault{\ae}{T1}

\begin{document}

\section*{Введение}

\ae \textit{\ae}

\end{document}

The two \let lines are to avoid four error messages one gets because ncc wants to define things that are defined by babel-russian afterwards.

Answer 2

And a solution based on @egreg’s that uses Unicode OpenType fonts and runs in LuaLaTeX or XeLaTeX:

\documentclass[10pt,twoside,book,a5paper]{ncc}
\tracinglostchars=2
\let\tg\relax\let\ctg\relax
\let\arctg\relax\let\arcctg\relax

\usepackage[english,russian]{babel}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\usepackage{indentfirst}

\babelfont{rm}
          [Ligatures=Common]{CMU Serif}
\babelfont{sf}
          [Ligatures=Common]{CMU Sans Serif}
\babelfont{tt}
          {CMU Typewriter Text}

\begin{document}

\section*{Введение}
...
\ae \textit{\ae}
...
\end{document}