Aldnoah.Zero is an anime series by Olympus Knights and A-1 Pictures. It is a fictional story of the Vers Empire's 37 clans of Orbital Knights' second attempted at conquest of Earth using the power of Aldnoah technology they discovered on Mars years ago. Scripted by Gen Urobuchi with direction by Ei Aoki, the series features Japanese voice acting by Natsuki Hanae, Sora Amamiya and Kensho Ono.
It has a two 12-episode seasons, with Urobuchi, Katsuhiko Takayama and Shinsuke Onishi, and then Hiroyuki Sawano and Kalafina, respectively. This will be my review of the first 12 episode of the two 12 seasons of Aldnoah Zero. Also Ill try not to spoil anything but spoiler flag just in case.
The story and plot of Aldnoah Zero is pretty decent for the most part but quickly dives into copy paste of existing plot of mecha genre anime that came before it. If you haven’t seen any mech anime before watching this then you are probably safe. But if you watched your fair share of mech anime you will notice a lot of similarities to this one to the other robot animes that came before it. Right down from the political clichĂ© of power hungry individuals to the racial genocide of our race is better than yours so you need to be conquered or wiped out of the face of the planet.
The idea of an ancient super technology uncovered on mars was great. Who left it there? Does it have to do with anything with how Mars is now a red dead planet? Answers to these questions would have made for a better plot if done right. But no the show doesn’t focus on that but instead dives into the usual mandane territory a lot an robot anime that many a Gung-Am stories swim through. And the rip off doesn’t stop there too. Im not even going to stop how bad of an invasion plot it was.
The MC of the Aldnoah is Inaho a stoic calculative character who is at the top of his class who seems super fit and is a super genius at the same time. He has a plot armor that can only be broken during certain points of the story. Outside of him and Slaine a lot of the characters felt like plain. Even if the show tries to explain how unpowered Inaho is by explaining his plot the chances of a school kid knowing this science stuff and still be fit and strong enough to execute it on a mech breaks the realism of her personality. He is far too perfect that it almost mirrors another mecha MC but at least that character has well written emotional dialogue.
If Im really comparing is that Inoha is pretty much a male version of Rei Ayanami from Evangelion with a devoid of emotion and a do as your told personality. Where as Evangelion explains this as Rei being a clone of the original and a lot of the scenes in Evangelion tackles on her regaining some human personality like knowing to smile Aldnoah does nothing of the sort outside of admitting that the MC is a stoic bad ash and he likes egg….yes I kid you not about that last part.
The show uses a lot of CGI for its giant ship and mech battles and although its really fun to watch it does looks clunky and off at times. The music is good though and its kind of funny how a certain BGM is playing and you just know the MC is going to be bad ash and swoop down and save the day. Its good at the beginning but its become predictable and boring later on as you know the heroes are going to win this fight no matter of absurd they scientifically deducted a certain boss mechs weakness.
The show is not so bad and Id admit I do enjoy the fights but as Aldnoah takes inspiration from a lot of already existing robot shows you can see the plot twist a mile away and it losses the valuable shock factor. So like your enjoyment of the series really hinders on how much you know about the mecha genre and how much you know about it. The show have very little in originality and those original ideas it has aren’t really explored making the show fall into a just another mecha anime.
If you like mecha anime and if rather new to the whole robot genre series then this is a show I could probably recommend as it has the most bare minimum in terms of plot and character development when it comes to robot in anime. But if you’re a long time veteran to the genre there is really nothing in Aldnoah that hasn’t been done and done better. The only saving grace is probably the music. Still the show is probably good to watch at least once for mech anime fan who want to watch anything and everything mecha anime show under the sun.
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