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The Winter 2015 Anime Preview Guide
Aldnoah.Zero Season 2


Nick Creamer

Rating: 2 (3 if you're in on the joke)

The end of Aldnoah.Zero's first season was essentially a slow descent into total self-parody. Though the show lost a lot of momentum in its middle episodes, it was the last episode that in particular that clinched the show's status as a kind of unintentional comedy. Slaine's constant status as the show's whipping boy was highlighted in ridiculous ways, Inaho's inhuman hyper-competence was pushed to the furthest possible degree, and the show ended with a set of cliffhangers so extreme they seemed unbelievable.

Aldnoah.Zero 2 picks up exactly where the first season left off in terms of silliness, making it difficult to say how I should actually evaluate this episode. In traditional storytelling terms, this episode doubles back on every single twist of the original's ending, reinforcing both the absurdity of Inaho and the lack of trust the audience should feel in Aldnoah's storytelling. It's clear the story is indulging in twists for twists’ sake, and that there isn't really a hand guiding the wheel outside of the “must have cliffhangers” directive. This first episode features Slaine as a knight, Inaho as a cyborg, and Asseylum in a coma, but there's no use speculating on what direction those choices will go in a show that hasn't respected any of its own previous narrative choices. The aesthetics are still fine (decent CG integration, nice use of soft lighting), but they're illustrating a story that you just can't invest in.

On the other hand, as a continuation of the first season's self-parody, Aldnoah.Zero 2 accidentally shines. If you're evaluating this show in terms of good writing, Slaine is the easy best character - but if you're judging it in terms of entertainingly bad writing, Inaho is a gem. His reintroduction in this episode might as well be accompanied by a choir of angels, and his effortless takedown of a new Orbital Knight is the natural extension of his logic-based superpowers from the first season. Aldnoah is funny in spite of itself, and though we're sadly long past the point where it seems possible it'll be a good show, my affection for the silliness of its narrative does make it a decently entertaining one. If you're looking for a legitimately satisfying followup to the dramatic twists of the first season's finale, you're going to be disappointed. If you're looking for an endearingly bad continuation of the first season's problems, you might just have a good time.

Aldnoah.Zero 2 is available streaming on Crunchyroll.


Hope Chapman

Rating: 2

Full disclosure: this review is written from my odd perspective as a viewer who was "hatewatching" the first season and fully intends to "hatewatch" the second season of Aldnoah.Zero. Why would anyone do such a foolish thing? Well, because some things in life are so bad they're good, and Aldnoah.Zero fits that bill for me. I find its plot extremely silly, always seeking to top itself in arbitrary twists that land with a wet and emotionless thud, if you can even process how or why they happened at any given time. The show feels rushed and directionless all at the same time, somehow! Its characterization is almost nonexistent, as if it were written by a robot that grasps human emotion and motivation on a tangential level, but seems to respect neither of those things in its baffling decision to glorify the terminally boring Inaho and stomp poor Slaine under its big boot to a laughable extent. Characters frequently explain their motivations in five-minute monologues following hollow and often ridiculous action extravaganzas, and the whole disaster continues to fold over itself endlessly, twisting and turning and changing its plot to no end, all sound and fury signifying nothing.

All the same, I did watch the whole enchilada, and I think it's worth writing a preview of the second season up because I'm well aware that I'm not the only person with this response to the show. In fact, there seems to be a large contingent of viewers just salivating eagerly to see how Aldnoah.Zero will trip over its own feet again and again, trading off Sad Slaine memes and crazy Asseylum faces in the interim. If my perspective fueled purely on ironic enjoyment is not useful to you, feel free to ignore my writeup, but if you are among the "hatewatchers," rest assured that this continuation of A.Z is riding high on the wave of embarrassing incompetence that it closed with last time. Callooh, callay!

First of all, the ending to the first season that resulted in everyone suddenly dying one after the other was a fakeout: they're all fine. Yes, Saazbaum, Asseylum, and Inaho, who were all suddenly killed off before the show went on hiatus, are all totally hunky-dory. It's like a big long drumroll followed by a tiny confetti popper with a banner inside that reads "WE WASTED YOUR TIME!" The first season ended that way because the show has been making junk up as it went along from the start and they needed to make up a way to keep people from forgetting about it inside of a month. It worked! Moving on to the bigger picture, however, Earth is now almost completely under Martian control, and Slaine is now serving Count Saazbaum even though he shot him full of holes at the end of season one. Is it because of Princess Asseylum? Perhaps, but it's also because of her sister, who is now heir to the throne in the catatonic Asseylum's place, even impersonating her in order to fuel the war. Remember that sister Asseylum totally had? No? Well, that's probably because Katsuhiko Takayama is continuing to pull this story straight out of his bottom as he flies across the great blue yonder.

Anyway, Slaine is now responsible for fighting Terrans and teaching not-Asseylum about Earth, as the remains of the United Forces prepare to fly into space and launch a counter-offensive on the Versian Empire in a last-ditch effort to save Earth. There's even more pointless "baddies of the week" in Mars robots that make a mess of Earth robots, with everyone helpless until Captain Perfect Inaho shows up. After getting shot in the head last season, he now has a cybernetic eye! That just makes his emotionless perfect whitebread ass even cooler, right? Right?

Still, the cherry on top of this gigantic eye-roll sundae is the "twist" surrounding Slaine's ability to use Aldnoah and Inaho's impossible survival that this entire season break was relying on to pull everyone back. Three months ago, mere hours after the first season ended, I and some friends on Twitter put together a crackpot bananas theory that by our estimation had to be true due to the monumental stacks of evidence in its favor, no matter how stupid and terrible that twist would have to be in execution. I am enthralled (probably too enthralled) to report that we were right all along. It only took a couple chowderheads on social media a few hours to figure out the show's story-shattering cliffhanger twist...and it's a colossally stupid twist, plowing straight into season two on broken wings. Here's to more Aldnoah.Zero, more ironic entertainment, and more sad Slaine as this show continues to implode in a glorious supernova.

Aldnoah.Zero 2 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.


Theron Martin

Rating: 3.5 (of 5)

Review: After a season off and a 19 month time jump the story of the battles between the Vers Empire and Terran forces continues, with the first episode of the new season being numbers as episode 13 overall by Crunchyroll. For some viewers, their greatest hopes are realized, while others may find their worst fears made manifest.

First off, no one who appeared to die at the very end of episode 12 actually did. Inaho's still alive but with a new cybernetic left eye. So, most surprisingly, is Count Saazbaum, as Slaine cut a deal with him rather than finish him off. Princess Asseylum is also still alive, too, although on this point, leaked picture stills and clips have been very misleading, as the person we see sitting in a wheelchair before a podium making some kind of speech actually isn't Asseylum but another Martian princess, Lemrina, using a holographic disguise. I had initially suspected that the writers might be pulling some sort of “she lost her memory due to a head injury” ploy here and that was actually Asseylum, due to the presence of Eddelrutio at her side, but no, she is later confirmed to be an entirely different person (and she has a much smaller bust than Asseylum does anyway), one who apparently curses her bloodline but is still willing to work with the new Saazbaum/Slaine alliance against Earth; my suspicion is that we will eventually find out that she is wheelchair-bound due to injuries sustained in internecine conflict over the Vers Empire successorship and ability to activate Aldnoah devices. Her separate identity is clear because Asseylum is being maintained in some kind of comatose state in what looks like a healing tank, although that point has its own issues; if Aldnoah tech is advanced enough to have healing tanks, I would think that 19 months would be an inordinately long time to be needed. Perhaps we'll find out that she is being deliberately maintained in stasis as part of some kind of compromise between Slaine and Saaznaum.

That's not all, either. As last season played out, speculation ran rampant that Slaine was able to activate Count Cruhteo's Tharsis because of one of two reasons: either he was secretly a Royal Family member or had gained the trait when Asseylum had given him mouth-to-mouth as a child. The latter seems to be the case, as now Inaho, who gave the princess mouth-to-mouth after she was nearly choked to death, also has Aldnoah activation ability. The other possibility is that contact with a Royal Family member's bodily fluids is enough to grant the ability (in fact, perhaps that is the mechanism for bestowing the power on the Knights). The latter raises some pretty interesting potential repercussions, but will the writing have the time and energy to get into that when it looks like some pretty dense plotting and action scenes are going to be afoot?

Much of the first episode is taken up with these revelations and showing the details of how they came to pass. Most of the rest is a couple of battle scenes, one in space where Slaine gets to show off and one on Earth against another Knight's Kataphrakt where Inaho gets to step in, save the day, and show off in the process; while the way that he gets around the Kataphrakt's freezing field is cool and inventive, it does not assuage complaints about his annoying level of battlefield genius. Despite what some of the other girls claim, his personality hasn't really improved, so the fact that he now has a cybernetic eye and Aldnoah activation power will, I suspect, only heighten the disgust level many viewers have expressed towards him. Otherwise the other major development is the Deucalion blasting off to do something in space as the episode closes.

Neither the new opener nor the proper closer debuts here, but the technical merits and music are on par with a typical episode of the previous season. All of the revelations here leave a lot to be explained, especially Slaine's exact motives and intent but also how the Earth Forces were able to hold out for 19 months given the state that they were in at the end of the first season. This is the first episode, so there is plenty of time for more elaboration. What's unquestionable here is that Aldnoah 2 is not starting passively or gradually working its way into anything. It throws out an awful lot of hooks to catch and keep viewers’ interests and impel them to keep watching, whether happy with how things turned out or not.

Aldnoah.Zero 2 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.


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