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[Basileus777]

Aldnoah.Zero 5
That twist at the end is so ill-conceived and poorly executed. Slaine is really the worst part of this show.

 

[DarknessTear]

I'm enjoying it. I always go into anime with the mindset that it shouldn't really be taken all that seriously and that it probably won't be well thought out. So naturally, I haven't been disappointed. Ina-pro is pretty amusing anyway with his expressionless... ness.

 

[kurahador]

Inaho being emotion-less is a plus for this show. I hope the ending boss battle will have him doing debate with the all martians about the superior race logic being dumb.

 

[Turin Turambar]

The thing to learn in this (bad) episode was how old, senile and powerless is really the Emperor. It seems the entire war was started with his knowledge or confirmation (!) and at the end he is easily manipulated by the evil noble.

 

[victreeb3l]

Slaine is an idiot. Hes going to be captured and tortured probably.

Inaho is still a boss. So many wasted Kataphrakts..just let Inaho and his squad do all the work. Idiot adults.

Especially the emperor of Vers. Hes the biggest idiot adult in the show.

Still enjoyed the episode. Really cant wait for the soundtrack, it does a great job of keeping me pumped up, regardless of how dumb the writing can be sometimes.

Am I the only one who wants to see Inaho have a painful death? Because I'm getting tired of that idiot not showing any kind of emotion. Hopefully Slaine gets more time on the next episodes.

He smiled at the red haired chick bro. She totally wants the D

 

[DiscoShark]

Aldnoah Zero 4-5

... Kinda disappointing progression for the series! I had high praise for the series up until this point but I think the last couple episodes have taken a decidedly different approach to threat management and it kind of subverts the main reason why I think the previous 2 episodes were so good in their execution. Episodes 2 and 3 created a believable situation for how and why the Earth forces were totally screwed over when the initial attack from Mars came down on them. They were exposed to a decidedly "alien" type of technology that they had no real defenses against. The protagonist found himself in a situation where:

1. He Survived an initial attack from someone
2. Was able to test the properties of this technology and its potential limitations in a controlled environment.

And this was fantastic! The show showing off the process of learning how the technology works, explaining its potential limitations given the way it works, and then adapting to it stands as one of the highlights of my limited experience with mecha shows. The protagonist handled the threat not in a shounen style of burst of rage of incredible piloting skills but with the knowledge that he gained from surveying his previous attack.

Episodes 4 and 5 took a different approach to that though. No longer is the situation that the protagonist is just some observant kid against an overcocky opponent really all that believable given the piloting prowess thats displayed by him. Remember that he's just some highschooler that up until this point has had no formal combat training outside of what is required by his school. There's no reason that his PILOTING skills should be any better than whats displayed by the actual soldiers with much more extensive training in the suits. But this isn't what's shown. The actual soldiers acted more or less like sitting ducks when the Orbital Knight with the sword began his attack, no dodging or ducking or even attempting to catch the arm that held the blade. If there was but a single soldier who had the competence to stop shooting their gun and try to engage him in close quarters then the others could have easily shot down and disabled the single Knight. And this same behavior is mirrored in the way that the soldiers handle the Knight in episode 5 as well. It seems that our protagonist is the ONLY pilot capable of actually using evasive maneuvers during a fight and as a result it looks like he's pretty much the only competent fighter the Earth forces have shown to actually have at their disposal.

It amounts to a really disappointing shift after episodes 2 and 3 and where I was willing to commend the series for how they handled the actual skill of an untrained protagonist before now it seems they're willing to hunker him down with plot armor that brings down the show as a result. I'm in agreement with others about the way the ceasefire was handled, if they had at least used that time to properly train the protagonists and show off and give some credit to the skill of other Earth soldiers I think we could have easily delayed the fight with the Sword wielding Orbital Knight and created a situation where at least his maneuverability was an explainable phenomena. Instead we have a situation that just sort of takes you out of the action of the series.

 

[Jex]

Man, the writing in this show is as poor as I had initially feared. There's nothing satisfying or exciting in watching this series, it's just the same old rubbish. The Martians are all assholes led by an idiot. Slaine wants to do the right thing but doesn't know how to. Every single pilot on Earth has no idea how to deal with the Martian robots, but Inaho can solo them in his training mecha in about 30 seconds flat.

It's just lame.

 

[Dynedom]

Aldnoah Zero - 05

So not only are my fears of his enemies being idiots come true but every single adult in this show seems to be stupid (except for that one evil Count

Spoiler

who foiled Slaine's day

).

You don't need to devolve everyone to the level of moron in order to elevate the protagonist. Maybe the whole point of the show is a brains vs brawn thing but that is going to get real old, real fast.

I initially wanted it to be Inaho in

Spoiler

a training mech outsmarting everyone

but I wanted it to at least show a progression of challenge. Their first encounter with

Spoiler

Trillram actually required observation and planning. This new knight was a complete scrub in comparison

. When do we get the intelligence escalation?

 

[Haly]

Aldnoah Zero - 05

You don't need to devolve everyone to the level of moron in order to elevate the protagonist. Maybe the whole point of the show is a brains vs brawn thing but that is going to get real old, real fast.

Yes you do, but only if you don't know how to write a genuinely smart character. It's one of the pitfalls writers fall into, creating characters who are really intelligent, but being unable to convey it properly because the writers themselves just aren't that clever. So, the only recourse is dumbing down the supporting cast so the protag seems smart in comparison.

See:
Zankyou no Terror
Sword Art Online

 

[kiunchbb]

Episode 5 is really disappointing, I really hope they won't be

Spoiler

destroying the next orbital knight with water again.

Why didn't they savage the destroyed knight from episode 3? Wouldn't that be the most important mission? Obtaining and studying alien technology, even small piece of might change the outcome of the war.

It might be dangerous and you risk killing all the civilian on the ship, but what is the use being so merciful when the earth population going to be wipe out soon.

 

[Mortemis]

Episode 5

Inaho is such a genius. Dude can probably solve 2*2, wish I could say the same about the rest of the cast.

Like how can a leader and founder of a civilization that lead a move from earth to mars be so stupid. Is he just a figurehead or something. Jeez.

 

[CornBurrito]

Pretty much seeing how zero tactics are used by the others its no wonder why they all get slaughtered. Let alone learn anything from previous actions...

Kinda bad writing personally which brings the series down.

Thats ok though as long as Inko is on the screen Ill keep watching~

Yeah I do wonder if the rest of the Earthlings will ever advance past "stand in place and shoot uselessly." They don't even fucking bother to try and dodge.

I keep expecting the Terrans to (re)discover some long-lost/new-model giant robot, with which they can kick Martian ass. I mean, it's called Aldnoah Zero for a reason, right? Right? I'm expecting them to dig up the prototype or something.

Not even needed though. None of the Martians can even think. They only win because of superior tech. But Inaho can counter that.

 

[Werewolf Jones]

The writing isn't as good as hoped but it's very entertaining regardless. The music pretty much makes the show really, but Sawano has never disappointed. I really do love Inaho though, he barely cares or shows any real emotion too used to angsty teen pilots it's a nice change.

 

[JoeFu]

Mars emperor is so stupid. The adults are all so stupid. Everybody is stupid except Inaho I guess. Still like watching him wreck fools with his power of thinking and planning. Other people in the show should try it.

 

[ambientmystic]

Episode 5

Okay-ish episode, but the B-plot involving Slaine and the Emperor was just stupid.

Inaho is still good in my books, but the rest of the cast were definitely window dressing for this episode. The Plasma Saber dude got unconvincingly dispatched imo, those Martian Knights have got to step it up, how on earth did they get access to such tech without having the brains to discover and to implement it into their mechs lol.

 

[Aureon]

Episode 5

Okay-ish episode, but the B-plot involving Slaine and the Emperor was just stupid.

Inaho is still good in my books, but the rest of the cast were definitely window dressing for this episode. The Plasma Saber dude got unconvincingly dispatched imo, those Martian Knights have got to step it up, how on earth did they get access to such tech without having the brains to discover and to implement it into their mechs lol.

They found the mechs.
The power is hereditary - of course the royals are morons. It's practically a given.

Foiled Slaine is okay. Misguided kid got politically owned.
Martian Knights dying like morons is okay too - they are, indeed, bull-headed morons one-hundred percent of their superiority - while they don't even understand their own tech.

I really expected the Ship Captain to step her game up and not to have Inaho drum up the win again, though.

 

[Dynedom]

Yes you do, but only if you don't know how to write a genuinely smart character. It's one of the pitfalls writers fall into, creating characters who are really intelligent, but being unable to convey it properly because the writers themselves just aren't that clever. So, the only recourse is dumbing down the supporting cast so the protag seems smart in comparison.

See:
Zankyou no Terror
Sword Art Online

Zankyou no Terror has one intelligent foil in Shibasaki.

 

[Jex]

There really isn't anyone in the show who we've actually been made to care about and it's now 5 episodes in. This is a serious problem.

- Inaho is still an emotionless lump. Does anyone care whether he lives or dies? What's his motivation? His objectives? His desires? Why does he rise to the challenge again and again?

- Slaine hasn't really had any development besides being slapped around. I know he's committed a certain act but he's still horrendously underdeveloped if he's supposed to be the shows emotional core.

- There's a bunch of other secondary tier characters with various levels of importance that have essentially one line of motivations that they've been repeating since the start of the show. They all feel extremely static and I don't care for any of them.

- Below these characters are one off stupid villains who do stupid things and speak silly, old timey dialouge. The only excuse for these villains to act as they do is because they're like, Knights and Emperors and so they have the characteristics that you'd typically associate with these character types in other stories. But that's not characterisation, that's just mindlessly borrowing stock characters from other stories and inserting them into this one. Knights care about pride and honour and rank and such, so these characters will care about these things too! But wait, what actually are these characters beyond the vague idea of what a knight is? They aren't actually characters at all, they're as poorly drawn as the rest of the cast.

I just cant connect to anyone or anything that's happening.

 

[Pooya]

This show is about teaching Physics to middle-schoolers in fun, explosive ways, nothing more!

 

[ThatChairMan]

Am I the only person who found the Slaine sections more engaging than the Inaho sections this last episode?

 

[Jex]

Am I the only person who found the Slaine sections more engaging than the Inaho sections this last episode?

How can anyone be engaged by Inaho? He isn't even a character!

 

[Pooya]

Episode 5 is really disappointing, I really hope they won't be

Spoiler

destroying the next orbital knight with water again.

Why didn't they savage the destroyed knight from episode 3? Wouldn't that be the most important mission? Obtaining and studying alien technology, even small piece of might change the outcome of the war.

Spoiler

the area was getting nuked and then it was occupied by the enemy, they had escape. They have their excuse there.

Now for this one they really should go get those pieces from under the ocean before it hits rock bottom... but then I guess this mecha just sucked anyway, why would you want it lol.

Yeah, I'm not expecting anything sensible to be accomplished by anyone other than Inaho at this point. It's just a dumb show.

Valvrave was doing a somewhat similar plot and characters right for most part so that it was entertaining and maybe dumb in a good way, this is just terrible and dull so far.

 

[Jex]

Can we also take a moment to talk about how bad some of the lighting and colouring looks in this show? There's a lot of shots with practically no sense of depth or space because the lighting is complete even with no visible shadows. This creates images that look flat and cheap, almost like a bad visual novel. The extremely uniform and washed out colours really don't help either:

 

[CornBurrito]

- Inaho is still an emotionless lump. Does anyone care whether he lives or dies? What's his motivation? His objectives? His desires? Why does he rise to the challenge again and again?

I care if he lives. He's Earth's only chance against the Martians. I identify as an Earthling.

 

[Haly]

Zankyou no Terror has one intelligent foil in Shibasaki.

I don't consider nerding out over Oedipus and Japanese word-play "intelligent". Frankly, he only stands out because everyone around him are morons.

 

[Jex]

I don't consider nerding out over Oedipus and Japanese word-play "intelligent". Frankly, he only stands out because everyone around him are morons.

Hey man, it's way smarter than Pyscho Pass, therefore it's the best.

 

[Raytow]

Am I the only one who wants to see Inaho have a painful death? Because I'm getting tired of that idiot not showing any kind of emotion

You have my axe.

 

[Haly]

Hey man, it's way smarter than Pyscho Pass, therefore it's the best.

A bar so low even a baby on all fours would have difficulty limboing under it.

 

[Jarmel]

I don't consider nerding out over Oedipus and Japanese word-play "intelligent". Frankly, he only stands out because everyone around him are morons.

I call BS on that, nobody here would have figured out that 2nd riddle and seemingly a large chunk of Japanese people wouldn't have gotten it either. That 3rd riddle was really only easy because we the audience know much more information than the police did.

 

[Haly]

These riddles... are stupid. Riddles of these kind are always stupid, but it's particularly stupid here because of the subject and tone. Zankyou no Terror demands to be taken seriously, but relies too much on a cliched and implausible plot device to drive the narrative.

Shibasaki's solution to the first riddle is pretty much all literary analysis. It wasn't a logical, objective answer at all. It's only one of many potential interpretations of the allegory of Oedipus. If 9 and 12 were real terrorists, and were only using the bombs to draw attention to some greater problem, they would not risk all their credibility on the off hand that someone managed to solve their riddle. Conveniently, the police station was empty, so their moral position as hacktivists (who are good), as opposed to extremists (who are bad) was preserved.

The second riddle had the same problem as the first. Except this time, the police manage to disable it with the help of Shibasaki, saving the occupants of the building (if any), and preventing further damage.

By the third riddle, it wasn't even a bomb anymore. 9 was just trolling the police at that point.

It's really amusing, and painful, watching Watanabe tiptoe around the ethical issues inherent in a story about terrorists. The "There were 27 injured, but they were all minor injuries," line in the second episode made me laugh in particular, bringing to mind the ridiculous parachutes in Legend of Korra that appeared every time a biplane exploded. By then, it was clear that Watanabe couldn't bear to have 9 and 12 actually kill people.

And yet, he still leans heavily on the allure of terrorism: the desperate acts of people betrayed and abandoned by the world. Unfortunately, he undermines this idea every time 9 and 12 succeed at a bombing without any significant consequences, particularly not consequences that might make the duo unsympathetic. He is either unaware of, or unwilling to address the reasons that make terrorism a compelling social phenomenon.

So, yeah, my problem with this show is that the writing is too cowardly. If it seems I'm holding Zankyou no Terror to unreasonable standards (in the context of anime), it's because I expect much more from someone with Watanabe's pedigree.

EDIT: Lol I forgot this was the Aldnoah thread.

 

[Turin Turambar]

I call BS on that, nobody here would have figured out that 2nd riddle and seemingly a large chunk of Japanese people wouldn't have gotten it either.

That's actually the problem. The same way it's incredibly implausible that someone here would figured out most of the riddles, is the same implausibility when Detective-san guesses it. Chances of a random person having knowledge of fields A, B and C (unrelated to their field of work) and then doing exactly logical jumps D, E and F to connect the data (and not any other possible ways of connecting and interpreting the data, from the thousands of possible variations) all needed to guess the riddle are basically 1 in million chance.
And narratively speaking from a meta perspective of a fiction work, riddles are more interesting if there is at least small but fair chance for the reader/viewer to guess it by himself, it just not interesting otherwise.

Also basically this

These riddles... are stupid. Riddles of these kind are always stupid, but it's particularly stupid here because of the subject and tone. Zankyou no Terror demands to be taken seriously, but relies too much on a cliched and implausible plot device to drive the narrative.

But uhh... we crossed the streams here??? This isn't the correct thread!

 

[Maximilian Kolbe]

Episode 6 preview
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUZxgL15N6c

 

[Pooya]

Episode 6 preview
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUZxgL15N6c

Slaine gotta save this this, I hope

 

[JCG]

Slaine gotta save this this, I hope

Well...who knows what will really happen this time, but I assume most people are already hoping he'll defect.

It would certainly help to shake things up, at least on paper.

 

[duckroll]

Hopefully the next new enemy mech is more interesting in functions than the last one. Inaho's magic genius tactics are only fun when he's up against something which is more interesting than "What's Better Than One Energy Sword? TWO Energy Swords!!!!"

 

[Andrew J.]

Episode 06

If you had told me that Urobuchi would put

Spoiler

Rocket Punches

in his serious military robot show, I don't think I'd have believed you.

We also get an explanation for why the Earthlings all seemed so unfamiliar with the capabilities of Martian weaponry, which I believe Jexhius and others were wondering about earlier.

 

[Pooya]

6

possible spoilers, I'm not marking.

a little bit of info dump here, maybe it was necessary though you probably guessed as much before I posted the same earlier, still it was an issue to some people, it's a poor excuse though. Really how could everyone have died including those commanding on Earth?

Slaine was wrong, Slaine never had a chance, game over for Slaine.

This week's mecha is super dumb. I liked the first one and I would say it was relatively compelling even and overwhelming to be an entertaining encounter but everything since is just dumb and out of shonen action tropes. If it was like that from the start maybe it wouldn't suck as much.

You still have PTSD uhhh, seriously.

Inaho didn't really have a trick up his sleeve this time and he was screwed almost, that was good to see. Hopefully not the last time.

After last week's terrible episode, this was a little bit better and with Slaine I could actually look forward to whatever is next and hopefully some character development at last.

The show still feels very formulistic.
Captain has PTSD
Princess is cute
Everybody acts like headless chickens
One Mecha per 2 episodes
etc

It's like Gen wrote a draft before jumping out, saying continue like this and they literally did just that.

 

[Shard]

Aldnoah.Zero Episode 6

Well, from grand stupidity back to basic competency this week. Finally we get some backstory on the Aldnoah and it your bog standard an ancient super-weapon technology story. I will say that at this point Koichirō Marito is about the only character I actually care about, mainly because he is coming across as an actual human and it important to the proceedings.

 

[sonicmj1]

Episode 6

Writing is absolutely sinking this show.

As much as I like to make fun of some aspects of Urobuchi Gen's writing, the Earth side of the story has been spinning its wheels uselessly ever since he stopped writing episodes after episode 3. Inaho is stoic and the only competent pilot in the entire world. His sister is worried about him. Calm hates Martians. The princess wants peace. Morito has spent three consecutive episodes hopping in a mech and getting crippling PTSD flashbacks while sitting in the cockpit. Nobody has developed at all. They've just moved closer to some undefined point where they can get off the ship, while dumb mechs fight them.

What's the point of creating a large, diverse cast of characters if none of them change, or do anything surprising? They're just wasting the viewer's time. It's boring. The formula of each episode seems so obvious and trite at this point that there's no tension.

Hopefully the events at the end of this episode mark some kind of turning point, but I'm not hopeful.

 

[Finalow]

^pretty much. this is just getting boring and dumb.

I liked the idea of this new enemy mech (which could have destroyed the whole ship in 30 seconds but hey, just toying with ya) but the rest was just, ugh. also villain #3 appears, power rangers villains probably had a better writing than what you see here.

at least Inaho should bang the princess anytime soon, "was S-Slaine wrong about that thing too?"

 

[victreeb3l]

Episode 6

The princess and Inko are so cute :3

Surprised Slaine joined the fold so quickly. I love how useless the martians were in trying to capture him. I guess he grew some balls between killing that guy and escaping.

 

[Parakeetman]

Episode 6

The princess and Inko are so cute :3



Surprised Slaine joined the fold so quickly. I love how useless the martians were in trying to capture him. I guess he grew some balls between killing that guy and escaping.

If Inko ever vanishes from the show that will be the point where I stop watching. D:

 

[Dresden]

Too bad Inaho only has eyes for the sea.

 

[duckroll]

Episode 6

The best thing I can say is "this was wasn't as stupid as last week's episode". There really isn't anything here which is moving anything forward in a particularly interesting way. The character art this week also looked pretty bad throughout. The only passable scenes with some effort in the visuals were the two scenes with characters talking on the ship while wind is blowing their hair. The new Martian mech seems pretty dumb, but at least it's not dual wielding energy blades while charging blindly. I can't believe the Martians are so incompetent they couldn't even stop Slaine from escaping from their -own- fortress. Pathetic!

Bad writing aside, it's really noticeable how the direction has taken a dip right after Ei Aoki stopped storyboarding every episode after episode 4. He either needs to storyboard more, or find more competent people to handle the storyboards. The supporting staff here certainly aren't as capable as the crew he had with Fate/Zero,

Oh well at least some of the backgrounds are really nice:

 

[Andrew J.]

Too bad Inaho only has eyes for the sea.

Because he was never programmed to feel romantic attraction, obviously.

 

[Haly]

The most important lesson Aldnoah can teach us is that if you're going to make a super robot anime with an enemy-of-the-week formula, you should just make it, instead of presenting it as a serious military sci-fi story.

 

[Xamdou]

Inaho is just like Heero Yuy, emotionless face but too damn OP for any foe.

 

[Cloudy]

And Slaine enters the fray. Soooo goood

Maybe I'm easily impressed but I really like this show. Great art, music and likeable characters. Why are some of you being so critical? Just sit back and enjoy the ride without overthinking

The mark of a good show is when you want to re-watch the key parts right after. I have done that with every ep so far. The music is just glorious and really gives the scenes more impact IMO

 

[kiunchbb]

This show is getting very predictable.

I going to sad if the plot going to be [wild prediction]

Spoiler

The emperor wanted to stop the war after finding out his daughter really is alive, the emperor got killed by the knights and kidnapped the princess to activate the robot. Saved the princess and both Earth and Mars live in peace.

 

[sonicmj1]

Maybe I'm easily impressed but I really like this show. Great art, music and likeable characters. Why are some of you being so critical? Just sit back and enjoy the ride without overthinking

I understand this kind of thinking (haly's Terror in Resonance criticism frustrates me), but it's not really a matter of choosing to be critical or not. I'm sure we'd all rather enjoy the things we watch. But not everyone enjoys the same things.

I was able to enjoy Aldnoah by not thinking too much about it through the first four episodes, but for me, problems have piled up to the point that the action scenes don't even excite me anymore, because I don't care about any of the characters.