Aldnoah.Zero

[Ryllharu]

In Aldnoah.Zero, the only reason why Inaho is "special", is because he keeps figuring out trivial stuff, like in this last episode the weak point in the joints of Saalbaum´s mecha.
...
And worse, the veteran soldiers around him were absolutely incompetent. That combined with Inaho´s lack of emotion (which, I guess, was only so to make him "unique") made it truly annoying to watch.

You're missing the point and forgetting what his sister keeps saying. Inaho is "special" and successful against Martians because he is both insanely reckless and doesn't lose his shit under ridiculously stressful situations...and frankly, Inko isn't much different.

Inko is a little more cautious, but neither of them realize how insanely dumb they're being. The adults perform worse because they're not dumb teens. Teens are always reckless, it's part of being a teen. The difference is that occasionally Inko realizes that she's about to die and freezes up, usually cringing (adorably) in her cockpit.

Inaho just keeps his cool. He logically or rationally realized early on that if he doesn't act he's gonna die anyway so...why the hell not?

Contrast the two of them to Rayet. She's far more like the adults and carefully plans and plots revenge, though still has that impulsiveness of being a teen. It screws her over time and time again. She's way more competent than either Inko or Inaho, but she's cowardly and cautious and it bites her in the ass. She's reckless when she has plenty of alternatives (killing the princess), and methodical when she doesn't have any options and can't really afford to be. Rayet is far and away the cause of most of the implausibility in the series. Unlike the others, she's not trained as a pilot and none of the students or teachers recognize her, but they frequently let her pilot anyway, and there's never been any basis for why she isn't completely clueless getting into cockpits the first few times.

As for Saazbaum's mecha's weaknesses...Inaho already fought them all. They knew the trick with the barrier and they understood that they could easily counter-attack the joints of the flying arms because he was fighting them close up with them like an arrogant fool. I suppose it was weak that the creators never bothered with a more original mecha for him, but he didn't really have to "figure anything out" there. Saazbaum had no idea Inaho was the one doing all the killing so far. Hubris brought down every single one of the Orbital Knights prior to that as well.

Saazbaum was the dumbass in that fight. He went inside the castle, rendering the drones that let him see outside the barrier worthless (resulting in needing to frequently drop the barrier), and used the flying arms up close where they could attack the body. Had he kept them outside, he would have defeated them easily with his mech's speed and agility alone.

[Ryllharu]

Aldnoah.Zero - 13 [HorribleSubs]



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Well...it wasn't completely as bad as I was afraid it would be, but it sure was close.

Slaine takes Princess, becomes well respected, and they have another princess they pulled from god knows where to play the amnesiac Asseylum that has "come to her senses."

I guess I can accept that Inaho has a robotic eye now, and that brain damage actually made him more sociable. Capturing the castle gave the Terran forces access to some nicer technology and a lot of intel on kataphracts. It's a little bit more reasonable now for Inaho to make these amazing attacks on kataphracts because he already knows how they operate and can try something reckless, but now fully informed.

That said, it was a nice touch that Inaho realized right from the start that the Princess was a fake because she doesn't remember a private discussion they had where he told her the secrets of the Earth's pretty blue colors (that Slaine is too stupid to know).


And yes, Inko is still the best part of the series.

[Buffalobiian]

And yes, Inko is still the best part of the series.

I don't know. Rayet's hardass attitude is pretty cool now that she's not a bomb (but is a bomb). Everybody staying alive is kind of meh, but at the same time I'm kinda happy to see them again.

Especially Slaine - I'm so glad I can continue hating him for the next season to come.

[shinta|hikari]

The entire combination thing was a bad idea I think. Maybe it was done to sell figures or something?

@Mfauli - I'm not saying that you're right, but imitating a popular series or format is a normal and accepted way of getting popular and selling. That by itself should not have a negative connotation.

Personally, I don't think Aldnoah is up to par with Code Geass and Shingeki, but we have only seen the first season.

[shinta|hikari]

Really mixed feelings about this. I dislike how they chickened out by Sunraising everyone from the dead, but at the same time, this keeps InahoXAsseylum alive.

If, and only if, that happy end happens will I forgive such a Kira Yamato/Nunnally level resurrection.

@Ryll - Excellent image. I almost missed it in my haste to post.

EDIT: Really, they could have made S1's ending less conclusive-looking (not showing all those blood pool camera shots) to make room for this. It simply feels like I was trolled right now.

[David75]

I'm sorry, but Inaho alive after a bullet traversing through his eye, not meeting any bone, then going through his brain and probably exiting at the back of his head... is a lethal wound no matter the technological level they have *. Aldnoah isn't an explanation either because Vers knights die too, and even Assylum seems to be in a dire state.

* I continue from the techno level:
It might remotely be possible to act if very quickly without moving the subject too much and waiting for too long.
But he's been shot like at least 10 minutes ago and was brought inside Deucalion without any proper care at all.
Blood loss seems incredible too.

Then there's the ass pull vers princess getting out of nowhere.

Regarding Slaine's new Assylum SM caged pet, well I had a smirk honestly. But that's about it.

That first ep failed on so many levels.
I knew shit would happen, and it did.

[KrayZ33]

I'm sorry, but Inaho alive after a bullet traversing through his eye, not meeting any bone, then going through his brain and probably exiting at the back of his head... is a lethal wound no matter

I don't like it myself but people survive and survived things like that or even worse, shotwounds are weird, minor ones kill, others that appear to be fatal don't do anything at all.
If I'm not mistaken its actually more likely to survive a bullet to the head if it doesn't bounce around and enters + leaves in a straight line... even if it passes through half the brain. Location matters too.
So it's not like I can't believe it, but I would have prefered to see something else here

Well, the first fight this season was weak and thats more of a problem for me. I hope that all they wanted to do with that is to set everything in motion again.

[Ryllharu]

Yeah, my take was that the bullet passed through his eye and straight out (through the back or temple), hence the cyborg eye. I assume they reconstructed that side of his face and a sizable piece of the back of his head.

From the dialogue between Inaho and Inko as well as Inko and Nina, he's been gone this entire time. It isn't like he's been dashing around activating Aldnoah drives, he probably finally got certified to return to duty and was assigned to his own unit. It seemed to me he was driving the truck that had his mech on it to bring it to the Ducalion prior to launch.

Inaho's miraculous survival, subsequent return and Asseylum's survival, hell even Saazbaum's survival bother me a whole hell of a lot less than the Secret Princess that was conveniently added so that the Knights can continue to have aldnoah drives without the emperor himself showing up.

There was no foundation for Asseylum having a cousin, sister, or half-sister. At all.

[David75]

I'm OK with a very high mid season cliff-hanger. But if you can't even write a passable transition from there...

Yeah, while writing my rant about the headshot, I was remembering some weird cases too. It's just too convenient here and not the only over convenient case too.
As for Inaho's rehab, the other rant is that 19 monhts isn't that much and it doesn't even feel like he lost any mobility or anything at all. But let's close that rant for now. We knew shit would happen, and it did, big time.

Somehow, I'm not even sure I want to watch the other eps after that, but I know I will.

[Buffalobiian]

I thought the episode said the bullet went through his eye and damaged his temporal lobe (which is on the side). The temporal lobe does a few different things, like high order visual interpretation (not "seeing" something, but recognising that the object in front of you is an apple etc), language in your dominant hemisphere and memory.

Movement is largely your parietal lobe, unless the bullet cut the subcortical white matter.

[Ryllharu]

Since they did specifically mention that he lost part of his temporal lobe, I hope that comes into play somehow. It didn't seem like it hurt his recognition or memory though.

Rayet/Inko did say he was showing some more emotion, so perhaps he's slightly less...whatever he was before.

[KrayZ33]

Wiki research tells me damage to it might cause savant syndrom... how fitting.

I remember reading something about how brain-regions can switch functions and take over for other regions of the brain whenever they don't work properly. Like.. I don't know, if the dude is blind, the region responsible to analyse visual imput might switch over to language instead or something.

[Buffalobiian]

I assumed that by getting injured he gained an infra-red, 80x optical zoom camera eye with an integraded supercomputer inside it or something. In other words, I expect this Inaho to be upgraded, not downgraded.

[shinta|hikari]

Screw it. I still enjoyed myself when Inaho showed up with amazing music and used sharingan to analyze the shit out of the Kataphrakt, making the deaths of fodder soldiers as meaningless as usual.

Using grenade launcher explosions to heat up was pretty cool as well. I think S1 established well enough that expecting realism from this show is like expecting realism from Code Geass.

[MFauli]

Three characters were sure to be dead.
Three characters magically survive.

Ugh, this was superbad.

And the rest of mankind continues to be stupid, because NOTHING Inaho did in the fight against the ice kataphract was impressive. Anybody who´s played a videogame in his life could have come up with that "strategy". It really is a pitty that this anime puts so much focus on having Inaho be this genius, but fails so hard at it, because instead of actually having him be a genius, the author decided to make everybody else a retard.

It´s still enjoyable enough, but these flaws really prevent that this anime will be anywhere near my all time favorites.

[shinta|hikari]

I don't think normal people would think of using grenade launcher explosions to keep their mech temp high. I certainly didn't. I'd be impressed if you did before Inaho did because the speed at which he came up with the solution is part of his excellence. Retrospect revelations don't count.

[MFauli]

i dont know about using grenades, but it should be any person´s normal train of thought: enemy uses freezing attack, we cannot approach him - only solution: unfreeze the path towards the enemy.

From there, you´d use whatever means are available. Id say putting some napalm all over the place would have been my first idea. But if grenades are the only thing available, then yes, that wouldnt be hard to come up with, either. You use what´s there. But apparently Inaho is the only person to realize "fire beats ice". Guess nobody but him played Pokemon :/

[Buffalobiian]

I usually need a few lives before I learn how to beat a boss. I thought that was pretty normal, but according to MFauli I'm just dumb.

[shinta|hikari]

@Mfauli - The mechs had anti-freezing equipment, but it didn't work. They went in there thinking it would. They didn't randomly go near Mr. Freeze knowing they would get frozen.

@Buff - I'm sure Mfauli has perfect win records in all his games. That, or he is just as dumb as we are.

[MFauli]

i actually beat most bosses in a Zelda-game on first try ... and that´s the kind of difficulty Inaho is facing here. He wasnt under serious time pressure.

@shinta: So their anti-freezing equipment didnt work and they ... gave up? Tbh, what would have happened if Inaho had gone in first? Or worse: Did he know the equipment would fail, but let the other pilots run into their demise? Really makes no sense whatsoever.

When Im watching Death Note, Im truly impressed by Light and L. Their plans arent predictable or obvious, they really are geniuses. Inaho isnt, he´s just being called it.