Reviews Anime / Aldnoah Zero

The kind of anime I would love to be able to hate

While you can feel the enthusiasm in its production, Aldnoah.Zero suffers from the same problem which plagued and made so great Guilty Crown: misguided, erratic quality.

The biggest fault of the anime is the sheer outdated of his premise. The timetested plot of the mecha show with space princesses and Earth invasions is something you have seen a million times with Mobile Suit Gundam SEED or Code Geass, while its characters are also archetypes of the genre: Inaho, the Kelvin 0-blooded, strategist hero who defends Japanese society; Slaine, the traitorous native who turns towards the Victorian-looking invasive empire; Asseylum, the pure and naive imperial princess who desires the good for everybody and is forced to face the cruelty of the world. Their fates are set to clash, very much like the exotic Kataphraktos collide in old school space battles.

However, the way those faces are handed lacks success. Though not unlikable, the crowd has it difficult to relate to Inaho due to his unexplained, plain weird emotional hermetism, and his perhaps too impeccable battle plans. The hammy Vers villains's vicious, feudal ideals make them desirable to punch by this Spanish troper, if just a punch could make them more credibily conceived antagonists. The one who makes the difference with her pals, Asseylum, is another character who barely saves herself to be an one-dimensional stereotype - she is the cute narrative device that happens to have a mind, getting eventually redefined by her relationship with Inaho. Her marriage with Newguy-san at the finale stands clearly as a middle finger to the audience. Slaine, however, fails in attracting both love and hate from the audience: his motivations are too valid to dismiss and too flimsy to sympathize. The rest of characters have some color, but are mostly anime cliches, like the drunken veteran Marito, Inko and her classmates, and the troubled loner Rayet, whose art design, by the way, I found fascinating.

Aldnoah's soundtrack is for me its greatest point: Sawano and Kalafina bring here a solid contender for the Cieloazul Award to the Best Soundtrack of 2015. It uprises the adrenaline during the battles and manages to save narmy moments through tracks you'll immediately will look for.

In short, if you are looking for some frustrating awesomeness, Aldnoah.Zero is must see for you.