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REVIEW: Aldnoah.Zero Part II Blu-Ray




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Alan45
Village Elder



Joined: 25 Aug 2010
Posts: 9853
Location: Virginia
PostPosted: Thu Oct 22, 2015 10:04 am Reply with quote
Good lord, I don't think I've heard anyone mention Buffy Sainte Marie in the last 30 years. You had to be a real folkie to know her even when she was recording. I'm surprised you didn't refer to One Tin Soldier by The Original Caste.
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Princess_Irene
ANN Reviewer


Joined: 16 Dec 2008
Posts: 2612
Location: The castle beyond the Goblin City
PostPosted: Thu Oct 22, 2015 11:13 am Reply with quote
I thought about it, but decided to go with the others under the (mistaken) impression it was better known. Very Happy My dad was (and still kind of is) a hippie, folkie, and general anti-war protester, and believe it or not, those were the songs he used to sing to my sisters and I when we were little.
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Alabaster Spectrum



Joined: 02 Sep 2015
Posts: 528
PostPosted: Thu Oct 22, 2015 11:15 am Reply with quote
I must be about the only person that hated the music in this show. I just never found it really fit well in a lot of cases featuring far too much repetition of the same intrusive vocal themes that the show seemed to insist trying to make the centerpiece of a lot of it's action set pieces. That said it showcased more personality than a lot of the cast of this show at the very least, but that's more because they just aren't made to be very compelling in the first place and the only character that really might have been is handled very poorly in the shows second season. Shows a C to me at best and mostly for the action set pieces.

Also I thought it handled things like one characters PTSD horribly and it's casts traumas horribly. It didn't want to progress that storyline and really to me it was used more to make the teenage cast look more awesome by comparison since you have this emotionless bland robot as a main character that is totally unphased by anything and then this character whose plotline and place in the story is largely abandoned and who the director admits largely lost what would have been his keynote scene of sniping a persistent enemy to one of the teenage girls simply cause a producer said to change it to her because he figured it would play better with teen otaku audiences. Never mind that all the build up during that arc specifically pointed to that character Marito being the focus of that key scene because simply put at that point he had been. Then you have the pointless hook scene at the end of the first season where spoiler[the main character gets point blank shot square in the head only to be no worse for the wear brain damage or vitality wise (99.99999% anybody would be dead in that situation and I swear I've never seen that before even in the most far fetched shows where characters lack superhuman powers) aside from having an eye replaced which somehow makes him even more of this one man army type of character.]

[EDIT: Spoiler tags are mandatory in general review threads. Unlike in streaming review threads, do not assume that someone reading the review has already seen the content reviewed. - Key]

The show just misses the mark so much on it's ideas through it's choices on the cast though. What is supposed to be a story about survival against the odds ends up pretty tensionless because you always know the MC has the magical idea and supreme piloting skills to see any character under 20 (and most of those over for that matter) through any situation and it's just a matter of watching it play out. Nobody important is ever going to die so for all the melodramatic music and scenes they try to play out it just falls flat. Really hurt what the extensive advertising campaign for the show claimed it was going for.

All the obvious meddling and corporate decisions surrounding this show as well as playing favorites in promoting certain staff and casts members and their ideas for it really hurt the show in the long run which might have been much better in the story and character department given more input from those that should have had a say in how things progressed.
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ryanvamp



Joined: 08 May 2007
Posts: 416
PostPosted: Thu Oct 22, 2015 1:10 pm Reply with quote
One of the worst animes I've seen in the past couple of years (of course there are many series out there worse than this, but not with decent production values). I'm only mildly surprised it didn't get a bad review. I guess the fact that I finished it makes it tolerable enough to watch through the end, though afterwards I felt like I wasted my time with it.
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ajr



Joined: 29 Nov 2010
Posts: 465
PostPosted: Thu Oct 22, 2015 2:26 pm Reply with quote
I don't know if the things mentioned here are included in the symbolism mentioned (it is hard to talk about it without spoiling things), but I thought it was nice to see writers reaching for a little more depth than usual, even if it wasn't particularly smooth.
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Princess_Irene
ANN Reviewer


Joined: 16 Dec 2008
Posts: 2612
Location: The castle beyond the Goblin City
PostPosted: Thu Oct 22, 2015 3:20 pm Reply with quote
^Yes, they were. It was hard to name specifics in the review because of spoilers, making this one of the harder ones to write. You don't want to know how many drafts of this I wrote...
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Calsolum



Joined: 11 May 2010
Posts: 898
PostPosted: Thu Oct 22, 2015 9:37 pm Reply with quote
huh this actually got a better review than i thought I personally loved the series flaws and all. First time i saw the themes in that reddit post so it was actually quite enlightening and the ending makes a bit more sense spoiler[even if the sequel makes the 'deaths' irrelivant] I guess people who caught on to those themes were the ones most enranged by the way the second series started. I hope the second season reviews will do well though.

As for this one i greatly disliked inaho because of his lack of visible emotions despite him being far more competent than most emotional teenagers, i mean one of your friends die in the first part and he's like "oh... that sucks" paraphrasing here since it was a while back. As for slane he was the buttmonkey for alot of shit and spoiler[inaho shooting him down somewhere in the middle is really what got me on the slane train... that sounds so homo lol]

personally i loved Saazbaum's reason for spoiler[starting this shit it was selfish, childish, idiotic, but passionate. Reminds me of Gyula from Trinity blood. What i got from it is that he was so pissed about the royalty starting a war for pointless reasons he started his own to drag them down into the dirt with them.] The way this is referenced in the second second is also quite beautiful IMO
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Key
Moderator


Joined: 03 Nov 2003
Posts: 18212
Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley)
PostPosted: Thu Oct 22, 2015 11:21 pm Reply with quote
Calsolum wrote:
huh this actually got a better review than i thought

While the series definitely has its flaws, not everyone around here thinks that it's the WORST SHOW EVAH. Rolling Eyes


Last edited by Key on Sat Oct 24, 2015 5:19 pm; edited 2 times in total
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kotomikun



Joined: 06 May 2013
Posts: 1205
PostPosted: Fri Oct 23, 2015 2:58 am Reply with quote
Key wrote:
While the series definitely has its flaws, not everyone around here thinks that it's the WORST SHOW EVAH. Rolling Eyes


Well, just to be pedantic, no one really means that when they say it; the true worst show ever is totally unknown because it's too bad for anyone to care about it. What they mean by "worst ever" is "most disappointing."

And even with my general disinterest in mecha shows, I'm having trouble thinking of a show I found more disappointing. It's got so many dimensions of disappointment, it's almost like they made it this way on purpose. Many interesting ideas are in there, as seen in the review, but they don't come together very well and there's too much cruddy content in between, so it feels wasted; less than the sum of its parts. The early episodes were vastly better than the later episodes, probably because they changed writers. Lacking any good writing direction to go in, the female characters transition from actual characters to damsels and/or sex symbols, and the lead dudes settle into their standard roles of Angsty Tragic Hero/Villain Guy and Invincible Shonen Genius Guy. All the deterioration happens slowly, so you don't notice until you're invested in it.

It's frustrating, because it seems like they were so close to making a really good, unique show... but they didn't quite get there, and ended up with something profoundly mediocre.
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jr240483



Joined: 24 Dec 2005
Posts: 4380
Location: New York City,New York,USA
PostPosted: Fri Oct 23, 2015 4:22 am Reply with quote
Key wrote:
Calsolum wrote:
huh this actually got a better review than i thought

While the series definitely has its flaws, not everyone around here thinks that it's the WORST SHOW EVAH. Rolling Eyes


true. however it definitely have one of the most disliked endings for a mecha series since eureka 7 AO. but both are definitely not bad at the least, though A/Z is definitely superior to AO.
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SilverTalon01



Joined: 02 Apr 2012
Posts: 2403
PostPosted: Fri Oct 23, 2015 10:13 am Reply with quote
jr240483 wrote:
true. however it definitely have one of the most disliked endings for a mecha series since eureka 7 AO. but both are definitely not bad at the least, though A/Z is definitely superior to AO.


Really? I thought the ending was a bit rushed, but it did manage to wrap things up in a way that made sense.

kotomikun wrote:
Lacking any good writing direction to go in, the female characters transition from actual characters to damsels and/or sex symbols


Funny, I thought it was the opposite. Early on in the series Inaho is literally the only pilot who isn't either there to die or by saved (by him), but later on Rayet and Inko actually hold their own, especially Rayet who really shows up for the team starting in the final battle of the first half.
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Fourteenthangel



Joined: 01 Apr 2015
Posts: 66
PostPosted: Sat Oct 24, 2015 5:17 pm Reply with quote
I didn't think Aldnoah.Zero was bad persay it was immensely disappointing especially as it got to its second cour and then every thing just feel apart. Well I watched all of it though so that counts for something. The soundtrack is one of the few redeeming qualities of the show.

Remember, kids! Slaine did nothing wrong.
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