Headscratchers / Aldnoah.Zero

• How did Mars diverge so radically from Earth? The gate to Mars was discovered in 1972 and the Vers Empire declared it's independence of earth in 1999. Even if we assumed that colonization began in 1972 that means there was 26 years between first settlement and Martian Independence, little more than a generation. Even with Aldnoah technology aiding their development that's a stretch.
  • No idea. It's very odd seeing all these characters act confused about birds and blue skies when they're almost certainly first-generation at most.
• Why did the Vers Emperor just buy Saazbaum's claim that Slaine's report about Asseylum's survival is evidence for the untrustworthiness of earthlings? The fact that Saazbaum came with such an extremely specific prediction should actually have set off quite a few alarm bells, since it would be a clear sign that he knows more about what is going on. It should actually have given the Emperor more reason to maintain the armistice and investigate Asseylum's assassination, not the other way around.
  • As you can see, the Emperor is old and bedridden, and probably isn't working at full mental capacity. Plus, he's still the same Emperor to ordered the first war against Earth 15 years ago, so he's obviously not concerned about Earth's welfare. He was just more irritated that the Knights acted without notifying him. Plus, who is he more likely going to believe? It's Saazbaum's word against Slaine's, and Saazbaum is a high ranking Knight that's served him loyally for years while Slaine is just a lowly Earth refugee.
  • This Emperor, Rayregalia, was retired when the 1999 war broke out. That war was started by his son Gilzeria who was Emperor at the time, and he died when the Moon exploded.
  • Saazbaum said something to the Emperor offscreen to make Slaine's statement about Asseylum being alive sound like the words of a spy.
  Emperor: "Count Saazbaum, it is as you said. Slaine is a Terran spy."
• If the Martians want to seize power over Earth for its beautiful abundance, then why are they so hell-bent on tearing the place up?
  • If you're talking about Heaven's Fall, that was a complete accident, as neither side was expecting the gate to explode and destroy most of the Moon. In the second war, the Landing Castles have more or less limited their landings to places of strategic importance. They probably don't care as much about the cities since Earth tech is inferior to theirs. They're mostly concerned about natural resources and living space.
  • It's the bandit/raider's mentality. "Take everything you can, and destroy the rest because if we can't have it, nobody else should either."
• Saazbaum shoots Slaine's handcuffs off and the bullet magically disappears too. Wow. Guns Do Not Work That Way. Slaine is lucky that scene was running on the Rule of Cool, else he'd be a eunuch.
  • Maybe it was a magic Aldnoah powered gun.
• There's really nobody in Castle Saazbaum or on the Moon Base who would object to the assassination of the princess? Not one of the conspirators countless soldiers feel more loyalty to the royal family than they do to their Knight?
  • The Orbital Knights have basically been cut off from Mars for 15 years. It wouldn't be surprising if the soldiers grew more loyal to their individual lords rather than the Emperor, which was often the case in actual feudal societies.
  • Saazbaum has been setting this up for a long time. Any loyalists may have met with "accidents".
  • There may be some evidence from episodes 11 and 12 that not everyone in Castle Saazbaum is in on the conspiracy. First there's the fact that when Saazbaum assaulted the bunker, he took only only 2 carriers full of troops with orders to kill the princess, which is a rather Suspiciously Small Army to attack such a huge building. Then the Martian soldier who saved Slaine from the Areion in episode 12 was surprisingly open-minded and considered Slaine a comrade despite him being a Terran. It's possible the only people on Castle Saazbaum who saw the princess's speech were in the command center, who we see are already 100% loyal to their lord, and that aside from a few platoons of troops, everyone else thinks this is just part of the war against Earth.
• What's the deal with Saazbaum and the Tharsis? First of all, how would he have retrieved it? The last time the folks at Castle Cruhteo saw Saazbaum, he was in his Kataphrakt bringing down the house. So Saazbaum sends some dude down there in a sky carrier to say, "Hey I need the Tharsis, Count Saazbaum's orders" and the people at Castle Cruhteo just let him take it, really? Secondly what's the point of even giving it to Slaine if the Aldnoah Drive can't be activated? That's like giving someone a new car with a broken engine.
  • Everybody in Castle Cruhteo was dead, or at least that was what the show suggested, so there wouldn't be anybody to stop Saazbaum. Plus, it would be in his interest to kill everybody there anyways to make sure word of his betrayal never got out.
• When in the world did the crew of the Deucalion find the time to put together a bunch of inflatable Kataphrakt decoys and fill each one with chaff and flares? Especially since Inaho's plan was something that was more or less a last-minute effort?
  • Presumably they already had them. The Deucalion is designed to airdrop Kataphracts, so it would make sense to stock decoys for AA fire.
• In episode 10 Dr. Yagarai gives the captain a recording of one of Marito's therapy sessions, and the only thing he says is "Think of it as a prescription for you." Whoa whoa whoa, isn't this a huge violation of doctor-patient confidentiality? Or is there some kind of exception under military law I'm not aware of?
  • It probably is, but Yagarai probably genuinely believed it would help the both of them if he gave her the recording. Plus, since they're in the middle of a total war situation, some rules might get ignored.
  • Yagarai explicitly says that it would normally be against medical and professional ethics to do so, however, Captain Magbaredge needed to see it as part of her own therapy regarding that incident.
  • In our world, that's generally a huge violation. There are military exceptions - the US military has the Military Command Exception, which basically means that a physician can inform the proper command authority if a patient is unfit for a particular duty. However, that doesn't allow sharing something as direct as a recording. Then again, this is a world government that teaches high schools to operate mechas, so they might have different rules.
• Wait a minute - for the first half of the show, the Princess is concealing herself under a hologram. That means she was wearing that huge, poofy white dress the whole time. And nobody noticed that she occupied about twice as much space as she should?
  • Even before she revealed herself, I was noticing that she always deliberately kept some distance between herself and everyone else. For example, every time she sat down, it was in a corner isolated from anyone except for Eddelrittuo.
• Where is United Earth's air force? We saw the F-22s in the second episode and then nothing after that. Some air support would go a long way to evening out the odds, considering that a lot of the Vers mechs don't have ranged weapons and their sky carriers are not properly equipped for aerial combat. Just a few attack helicopters could have put more pressure on the Argyre Kataphrakt, for instance.
  • Most likely the majority of their planes were wiped out in the initial attacks, either trying to intercept enemy Kataphrakts or attempting to attack the Landing Castles.
  • We finally see a large aerial transport in Episode 21 for the Earth side, and the sound of helicopters can be heard outside the Deucalion as it resupplies.
• If Emperor Rayregalia is cuckoo when Asseylum attempts to talk to him, who gave Klancain his mission? Klancain said he was on a mission personally assigned to him from the Emperor, but....
  • There are two possible explanations. Firstly, if Klancain was on Mars when he received his orders, then it would have taken him several months to reach Earth. It's entirely possible the Emperor was still sane at that point but turned loopy after he left (he seemed sane enough during Season 1). Secondly, the Emperor still seemed to have some moments of lucidity; he was fine up until Asseylum asked him why he hated Earth so much. It's possible he gave Klancain his mission during just such a moment of sanity. Then, of course, there's the obvious possibility that Klancain made the whole thing up for some reason, but if he did, we didn't find out what.
  • A third option is that Klancain is part of that original "fact finding" mission that the Emperor ordered in episode 2. Although the Emperor openly declared war in episode 3 or 4, he never publicly called off that mission, and transit from Mars to Earth (or vice versa) isn't just months of travel time through space, but months of preparation in equipment, personnel and supplies.
• How come Lemrina suddenly stands up out of her wheelchair during Episode 24? The previous eleven episodes have all indicated that she's completely paraplegic, so how come she's fine all of a sudden?
  • The scene where she's standing up happens in the Moon base hangar, where the gravity is much lower. It was already established in Episode 14 that she's not completely disabled if it is in a low-gravity environment.
• What does Count Orga (pilot of the Ortygia) do after battles? If he wins through with 40 surviving quantum clones, do they recombine, have a battle royale, or what?
  • As suggested in the WMG section, the clones could "decay" in some fashion - perhaps in the space of a few hours - with the decay effect getting stronger the more clones there are. Ultimately, only one (random) would remain. That would also explain why the Ortygia isn't simply used as the Martian's mass-produced infantry or something of the sort.
• Was there any specific reason the Shame If Something Happened speech went over Cruhteo's head? Especially once Saazbaum said that it'd be a blessing if Earthlings provoked hostilities or how the Martians have been waiting to go to Earth for a while?
  • A combination of Fantastic Racism and Villain Ball. He beat Slaine in the first episode, purely because Slaine gave Princess Asseylum his pendant which was a Tragic Keepsake from his dead father, equating Slaine's action to a "dog pissing on the carpet, and the owner would have to answer for it." By the time he does realize his stupidity, he gets a giant plasma blade to the face.
• My apologies if I've missed something in the manual, but is it ever actually explained why Slaine found himself dangling off a rocket in the middle of Asseylum's bathroom? I mean, it's a pretty important element of the plot. Why was he in that rocket again? What was he doing there? How come that he crushed into the palace? Wasn't he supposed to be from Earth? Why would they launch a five years old in a rocket to Mars...?
  • He was being dragged along by his father who defected to Mars for some reason. Once there, he had no way back to Earth.
• Thanks to the Dioscuria's stealth system, Saazbaum deflected any suspicion that he murdered Cruhteo, but aren't the other Orbital Knights curious that the Tharsis in now in Saazbaum's possession? For that matter, why no one is investigating the attack on Cruhteo's castle?
  • Asskicking Leads to Leadership. Prior to his death in battle with Inaho (thanks to Slaine), he was the biggest, baddest Martian Kataphract pilot Mars had. The only one with the authority to override him was the Emperor, anybody else who tried to challenge him had to duel him, and in a one on one fight, the odds of victory against him are mighty slim, especially in space, where the ability to use environmental interference to find his shield's weak spot is quite limited.
• Is it ever explained what the deal is with Lemrina's legs? She's obviously not paralyzed - she can walk in microgravity. Did she break them or something?
  • You don't need to be completely paralyzed to be a wheelchair-bound. There are a lot of people whose legs do retain some function, allowing them to stand or even walk briefly, but who are unable to do that for an extended period due to it being too difficult or painful. The most famous of them was probably Franklin D. Roosevelt, who has hid his disability so well that only two photos of him using a wheelchair remain.
• How come Solis could shoot down missiles, but not shells from a battleship cannon, which would presumably move slower and have a more predictable course?
  • Contrary to the popular misconception, the artillery shells actually move much faster than most missiles, and are much, much more solidly built, featuring inches of hardened metal intended to pierce the equally sturdy armor. While most modern missiles could be easily destroyed by the common shrapnel (and, in fact, modern AAM have exactly such warheads), it would simply bounce off the battleship shell. The same logic stands for Solis' Frickin' Laser Beams: while it easily slices flimsy bodies of the missiles, cutting through a hefty chunk of a solid metal that is a shell takes much more time — by which moment the shell in question would already hit its target. BOOM! Moreover, even if the projectile is destroyed, the one that moves ballistically would still continue to do so (remember that Sir Isaac Newton is a scariest sonuvabutch in the Universe), and would still hit its target — there's been cases when the ships were sunk by the debris of the SAM they ostensibly destroyed, and, again, the shell is much heavier and more difficult to destroy than the missile.
• Sometime before the founding of VERS, humans came to Mars to build earth's first interplanetary colony and recover Martian technology. It would've been made a new era for all mankind, but instead, the Martian colonists kept Mars' secrets and tech for themselves, causing them to break away from earth and convert the colony into an independent nation. How and why did that happen?
• OK, I'm pretty new to this series, but it seems like this whole f**king war could've been avoided if the Princess was a biiit more proactive in letting EVERYONE know she was still alive, or informing someone before the assassination attempt that her body double was there, or just got the word out as quickly and efficiently as possible. Yet this series apparently drags on for TWO SEASONS without the Princess ever getting back to the Vers and stopping the war. Why is it so hard to end the hostilities?
  • There are a lot of plot holes like that throughout the show that can only be explained by bad writing. For example, the entire premise of why Vers invaded is completely flawed. Why would a civilisation that has near infinite energy, the ability to defy the laws of physics, and tech that can replicate matter have a starving populace?
• Why was Countess Femieanne stationed on Tanegashima even though she was unaware of the secret Deucalion ship?
  • The island was part of her claimed territory. I'd have to look at a map to be sure, but I imagine her castle was on the mainland relatively nearby. She could have seen/heard reports of the the Earth ship traveling around the area (given the two fights they had earlier) and had been patrolling the area.
• Why would you build an entire ship when you still couldn't figure out its exotic generator?
• How does invading Earth do anything to solve Mars's resource crisis? Yes, Earth has plenty of food and water - but how are they supposed to ship enough to feed Mars?
  • The first war still had the Lunar Gate (until it exploded), so I imagine the idea was to ship Earth resources to the Moon and then on to Mars via Gate. The second war that the series actually covers is just vengeance-fueled mostly.