Aldnoah Zero is an anime produced by Aniplex that came out in the summer 2014. It set in the future where mankind has successfully colonized mars, and in the process discovered the ruins of an ancient alien race, which possessed an incredible power known as Aldnoah. The power of Aldnoah allowed civilization on Mars to flourish, but since he was the one who originally discovered the power, only the Emperor and his direct descendants have the ability to use it, they can however, give the right to use Aldnoah to knights who swear their loyalty to the crown. The story itself takes place two years after the Martians invade Earth, nearly conquering it, until an accident during the attack triggers an event referred to as the Heaven’s Fall.

It centers around two main characters; Inaho, a student training to become a pilot for one of Earth’s giant military robots called a Kataphract, and Slain, the son of a Terran scientist who serves under one of the Counts of Mars. It all starts off when the Martian Princess Asseylum is murdered by terrorist on a peace visit to Earth, in response to this the Martians begin a second invasion of Earth by landing their massive Landing Castles which they had just kind of had sitting in Earth’s orbit, all the while trying to convince Earth that they weren’t going to attack. Which is just absolutely brilliant, right? Everyone knows that the best way to convince someone of your nonthreatening nature is to amass military forces on their border and point guns at them. So when the landing Castles hit the surface it’s like the apocalypse. They land them in the largest population centers to maximize casualties, and it’s like that scene from Armagedon where the meteor destroys Paris, but more bleak, dark, and gritty.

I really felt like this show had me at episode one, but there is a somewhat surprising change of pace and mood in the next few episodes. It goes from people be evaporated by the landing castles, to Inaho fighting a giant robot using nothing but his wit and Sherlock Holmes style of deduction skills. At this point, though, the story seems to shift its focus to the characters and their interactions, and several small side stories, and suddenly the end of the world takes a back seat to the conspiracy and betrayal of the Martian knights.
Over all I thought that Aldnoah Zero was one of the best animes to come out in that season, however, I don’t think it was that good of an anime. While I it was good, I don’t think it was anything close to what it could have been, and that seems to be the case with the obscenely vast majority of recent animes.

Aldnoah zero has a very interesting world and the story keeps your attention and always keeps you wanting more. The entire premise of the feudal system in place on a slowly starving, poverty stricken Mars really intrigues me and I always seem to want to seem more of Mars than Earth. Most of the characters have very good back stories and motivations, and this makes many of the side stories one of the best parts of the show.
This show, however, suffers from many flaws, some of which made the overall experience unsatisfying. First and most obvious is the terrible CG robots. Every Kataphract and all of the parts thereof are done in this horrible CG, and while the CG In Aldnoah Zero Survivors is definitely not as bad as most animes with the same issue it is still a very obvious and one of the worst flaws.

Now, when I said earlier that almost all of the characters are good with good traits and motivations, I only said most because Inaho, the main character, is one of the most non-characters of all time, and that doesn’t mean that he is a stereotypical cookie-cutter male protagonist, it means that he mostly just sits with no expression or emotion as he just kind of Sherlocks his way through the heavily militaristic, super advanced nation’s greatest war machines because he knows physics and… stuff. It isn’t just that but there are multiple times where he does something with almost no reason or justification for his actions, things that could be easily considered treason, or most people would be upset about, or are just really stupid ideas, and worse yet, when he does them, no one cares, they all just sort of go along with it or ignore it completely. He shows up on a military warship and when he just sort of starts doing whatever he wants, everyone just goes,” oh, what are you like 17, yeah, sure, you can just do whatever with our giant robots I mean, who am I the captain of the ship? Oh wait, I am. By the way what happened to that guy that saved us? Oh, you shot him, that’s cool.”

And don’t even get me started on the end of the show. While that was one of the best endings to a show I’ve ever seen, it ruined my whole week. Luckily Aldnoah is getting a second season in January, so we’ll finally get the closure that was taken from us in the span of like two minutes.

The anime as a whole is still worth a watch, and even if you don’t like it that much the ending is well worth seeing, and really at the current trends of the anime industry I am not expecting anything that good coming out for a while. Aldnoah Zero is also one of the best to come out in that anime season, and if you’re going to watch a quick twelve episode series from that season I would say to watch Aldnoah Zero, so at the very least you can join us and feel the pain.