Note: This review only covers the second season of Aldnoah.Zero.

Do you know Shiryu? He was one of the five main heroes in Saint Seiya, an old school shounen that became the pillar to the genre. He was a noble fighter with outstanding dicipline and was perhaps the wisest of the group, but what marked him for me when Saint Seiya aired was the fact he was basically an immortal man. Whenever you thought he was killed, something would happen so he would be back to life. This happened to other characters in Saint Seiya as well, but the memory of Shiryu stuck with me throghout the years.

Now meet Asseylum, a cute princess of Mars in Aldnoah.ZERO (Aldnoah). She is weak-willed, has basically zero influence over her subjects and her only super power is activating an engine made by ancient civilization. Yet she has now been revived thrice. First she was killed in a terrorist attack, but fate worked so she was ill and the one attacked was just a double. Later she was strangled until her heart stopped, but fortunately a boy managed to revive her with basic CPR and first aid training. Then she was shot twice, one shot apparently hitting right in her head. She was done. Her good friend, Inaho, was also shot at point-blank range, a shot to kill, not to incapacitate.

Yet she lived again. Yet he survived. My fears of how Aldnoah could work around its interesting first season finale became real. Instead of reworking the cast, presenting new players, shifting focus, and developing the interesting setting, the show decided to keep every single important character it killed in that epsiode alive. Miracle. Magic. Plot-Armor. Call it however you want. The fact is that it simply disrupted this second season from the start.

Not only alive…

Inaho not only survived, he gained a superpower in his recovery. The cold-hearted bastard that could fit in Gundam Wing’s cast now has a magical eye that can calculate more stuff than any other technology presented in the setting. His strategies to kill uber-powerful mechas can now be “oh, I calculated every move you made so you can’t beat me”, and his dull and boring personality just outgrew itself.

19 months later? Seriously?

Aldnoah also has a timeskip of 19 months. You notice that when the big letters pop in the first episode, but perhaps that is the only moment where it counts. The cast is a hundred percent the same as before. Personalities, appearance, voices, size, jobs, hobbies, whatever. They haven’t changed at all. Even Eddelrittuo, a twelve-year old girl that now is basically fourteen haven’t changed any single bit. Not only the cast remained frozen in time, the warfare did as well. Nothing progressed, nothing changed. Why the hell did they need to say a timeskip happened? 19 days would be enough considering what happens after that. A shame, because timeskips can work wonders when you transform children into wiser people, when you advance the setting without the need to detail every boring information, or when you want to depict events from a new perspective.

The dramatic atmosphere continues

Regardless of taking the wrong route, there is much of value in Aldnoah’s production. The art and animation continue to amaze, the sound-direction is outstanding, and even with all the girls the voice acting is mature and decent. This second season, far more than the first, offers an intense use of its background music to boost some major events. Whatever lack the scale of war had due to cast and plot elements, the music and art department manage to cover.

The cast still struggles

Inaho is perhaps one of the most boring protagonists of recent seasons. He started as the kind “brains beats muscle”, yet he managed to annoy with a artificial lack of emotion and was only smart because no one around him had brains at all. This season though, his new super powers and role makes him even more boring and unexciting, the typical guy who knows everything, never fails, never learns, never has emotions, never cares for his friends, yet everyone loves him, he alone has more power and intelligence than the human race combined, and his only struggle is how his uber-power robot eye is slowly killing him (or turning him into HAL, I don’t know).

Slaine lost his shine as well. The guy who suffered and struggled in the first season is now a power-hungry madman as his fellow martians always were. Any form of thinking is beyond him now, his love makes no sense, his plans are crazy and doomed to fail from start, and he of all people turn out to be the biggest player from the martian side. Those like me, expecting other nobles and important figures to appear and take that role will be severely disappointed. A lazy choice for a lazy plot.

No ones matter

In fact, besides Inaho and Slaine, no one matters anymore. Saazbaum does have his reason and is perhaps the saving point in the villain side for a few episodes, but the rest is just cardboard material, with basically zero influence in how things happen. Asseylum remains in coma for too long and even after that she does basically nothing, only struggling to the arms of her next savior-dude. The new princess is a lame excuse for royal family, although she is a interesting character. The human allies are useless, Inaho alone kills more enemies and devise more successful strategies than the Earth Union ever dreamed of.

This “only these two guys are important” reaches extreme levels and take out the fun and guarantees no surprise will happen in this season. For a show that ended with a boom in the first half, watching this is truly sad.

Sadly, Aldnoah failed miserably in recovering the mecha genre. At first I thought A-1 Pictures’ light presentation would be its doomfall, but what truly brought everything down was the lazy, dull, and unfit cast. Instead of a war drama filled with mecha combats, what we have is a generic mecha shounen with a boring cast and terrible event choices.

Yet, it can be a fun experience for those missing better ages for the genre. It is not as terribly stupid as Valvrave, it is not generic and unexciting as Argevollen, but when compared to Buddy Complex it feels right onthe same level. Like Valvrave, it is also helped by absurdly high production values and great animations, although the combats this time are far too boring in terms of coreography and strategy.

Once again, a show that teases some nice possibilities with the first season only to bring another generic mecha shounen to the fray.