.png)
The unfortunate reality of being an ardent fan—a passionate fan—of anything at all is an inevitable encounter with Sturgeon's Law. Delving deeper into a medium means to explore all of its facettes, and unfortunately, many of those facettes are going to be disappointingly mediocre; anime is no exception.
However, there is enough incentive to keep searching, and what's truly tragic about this particular outing is that at first, it seemed to be exactly what I was hunting for.
What we were promised
If there's any reason for me to be watching and reviewing Aldnoah.Zero in 2022, it's because the beginning of this show was actually quite promising. The premise did seem a little forced (compared to your average real robot anime), but it created a relatively interesting world, and a conflict worth following.
After space exploration led to the discovery of a highly advanced civilisation of lost technology on Mars and some humans broke off to create a feudalistic "Martian" faction, the fragile ceasefire between Earth and Mars falls apart, forcing our civilian main cast into militaristic positions as they struggle to survive.
It... sounds like a Gundam premise, doesn't it? Except for the part with the magic Martian tech, at least.
The good news for our main characters is that this show isn't penned by Kill 'em All Tomino, so their wartime experience is much softer than their Gundam counterparts. The less realistic premise works in the series favour as well, creating a strong underdog narrative in earlier arcs. The Terran military were on an obvious backfoot against their feudalistic yet superiorly equipped "Martian" foes, a setup demanding our protagonists to fight smart, gathering information and applying real-time problem solving. The solutions weren't exceptionally novel, but they were still entertaining to watch, and drove home the theme of combating privilege.
The more stylicised background of the war also brought different perspectives and motivations to the characters, especially where race and personal background were involved. Myriad points of view were of particular import in keeping the supporting cast relevant: a PTSD-ridden war veteran, a protective but helpless older sister, a contrarily racist survivor; the side characters were nothing if not interesting (back when they got plenty of screen time).
These conceptual differences in worldbuilding (compared to real robot) did play a role in distinguishing—but also oft underselling—the stakes of the story. The scale of the war was frequently miscommunicated by reckless decision making and haphazard logistics. Slightly unrealistic developments aren't damning in a medium meant to entertain, but they did reveal some of cracks that would become problematic later.
Nonetheless, the first season held my attention with differing ideologies, inventive mecha battles, fast-paced developments, and a somewhat fleshed-out world. As for the note it left us on... Well, let's just say going from Tomino to the Urobutcher isn't much of an upgrade...
The first season finale takes the cake for impact, leaving us in the middle of nowhere with half the main characters chock-full of bullets because war doesn't give a $@%#. About anyone. It was sudden, it was jarring, and I'll be damned if it wasn't plain gutsy to end the first cour like that.
What (the hell) happened
The first season, while full of redeeming qualities was fundamentally incomplete, but not necessarily in a bad way. Not when the series had twelve more episodes ahead of it... to completely $@#% everything up.
I will clarify immediately, however, that this second season was by no means redundant, nor unintelligible. It just happened to butcher its handling of its characters and ideologies; enough to conclusively discard most (if not all) of Aldnoah.Zero's potential.
My biggest peeve, of course, would be the complete discarding of the side characters. Most of the interesting storylines and perspectives that the side characters brought to the table were either forgotten or resolved with too little attention to leave us satisfied. This problem even extends to new story lines; if you were introduced in the second season, don't get your hopes up about leaving an impact, because that rushed ending has no time for any of you.
This is also where the logistical pitfalls from the previous season really glared their ugly head. The underdog narrative was still present, the Martians were still shown to have an overwhelming advantage, but in spite of that, they were periodically defeated by a single opponent, and a single battleship was shown to shift the tide of an entire war. Look, I don't care how advanced this single ship allegedly is. Even the White Base could never...
I can't truly complete a critique, of course, without addressing the main trio. Our MC, Inaho Kaizuka, might just be the single most boring character I've ever seen in mecha. I'm sorry, but every scene he's in is plain dreary, between his phlegmatic expressions and monotone voice (sorry Natsuki Hanae, but you might have tried a little too hard) it was hard to give a damn about anything around him, as nothing he did or said lent gravity to his actions.
And that was all before he got his mechanical Sharingan and became the second coming of Kira Jesus Yamato. (For those of you who don't know, there are few things I hate more than "perfect" protagonists.)
His only meaningful interactions were with the female lead, Asseylum, and while there were interesting parallels being portrayed between his robotically pragmatic use of violence and her hopelessly näive idealism, their violence-innocence dynamic had no real resolution, leaving their relationship nothing but a plot device at best, and shipping bait at worst.
Speaking of Asseylum, it feels to me like the writers initially intended for us to contradict her. The largely emotional stance she took towards the violence and diplomacy—all in line with her general representation as a pillar of hope and purity—were repeatedly stressed to be too unrealistic and wide-eyed, to the extent that she was nothing but a pawn in others' schemes for the most part of the series.
I suppose the intention there was to drive home the contrarian consequences of her good-natured actions, but it... never really happened. In spite of all the build-up for it, the story just dropped the ball with her, abandoning any real conversation about the impacts of idealism and the role of authority in conflict.
It feels like there should have been more substance here, but every question raised by this girl was completely undermined by the finale. I'm forced to reconsider the possibility that the ending was rushed, and Asseylum's character arc was an unfortunate casualty of a desperate attempt to tie together plot threads, but ending on her almost single-handedly defusing the war downplays every nuanced point the first season made about the insignificance of authority when power is handed out callously. It's heartbreakingly sad to think that the resolution to a war founded in political intrigue was loyalty to jurisdiction...
And this is before addressing the elephant in the room: good ol' Slaine Troyard. The deuteragonist of the series, he had a fairly strong start in the story: started off on a considerable back foot, discriminated against and with nobody to trust. Heck, in one of the most impactful moments in the series, he's snubbed by the MC as well. Even the supposed good guys aren't willing to give him the benefit of doubt, and boy does he suffer for it.
It's impossible not to root for him in the first season, as he stumbles around from one disadvantaged position to another, confused by the complexity of his circumstances and suspicious of basically everyone. And if you'd believe it, the end of that particular character arc in the first season was not a happy one, so suffice to say I was interested to see where this character would go.
The second season built him up to be the new villain of the series, and while the direction he took was compelling on its own, his actions and personal beliefs were so spectacularly inconsistent that I found myself questioning if he was even stable, in the general sense of the term. If you take his character arc as a Fall of Man narrative, it's almost fascinating to see how thoroughly he screws up towards the end of the series, something both Slaine and the writers seem to acknowledge, having him discard all hope of recovery and attempting to go out in a blaze of glory. The fact that he's denied that easy release is the icing on the cake.
Slaine's side of the story was messy, inconsistent, and ultimately pointless, especially in light of his personal resolution. At the same time, it carries forward what we've always known about him: he's a vacillating kid misreading his circumstances and screwing up. It doesn't excuse the poor writing and questionable developments in the second season, but watching a well-intentioned human being pile on regrets, only to realise it served no purpose at all, is the very definition of a flawed character. This is a rare application of an even rarer trope, making it unconventional enough that I low-key have to give Slaine props for it... even if he dragged the show through shit to make it happen.
Closing thoughts
If anything is true of me as a person, it's that I criticise more readily than I compliment. That said, there really is a lot to complain about, and I honestly can't recommend Aldnoah.Zero to your average anime fan, but the reason I can't make a concrete case to just forget about it is because as a whole, it was a phenomenal balancing act of spectacular lows and redeeming qualities.
Even at its worst moments, this was an engaging anime that kept me clicking for the next episode. It raises the question of how high you need to peak to cover up obvious flaws (looking at you, Demon Slayer). Aldnoah.Zero is not a great series, not by a long shot. Yet, a strong start, fluid mecha animation, and a kickass soundtrack make it a strong binge, standing out enough to appeal to avid fans... if only as a fascinating experiment.
Comments