5 August 2014: Aldnoah.Zero is the best show of summer 2014 so far
Reading, writing, arithmetic, and robots.
The name Urobuchi Gen makes some anime fans uneasy because he's perceived as an author who occasionally embraces a certain unpredicable malice towards his own characters. However, Aldnoah.Zero couples this pervasive unease with excellent execution to give us one of the more satisfying starts you could hope for in an anime.
Mahoro handled this so much better.
This is not to say that anyone could die at any moment. There are still certain guidelines and restrictions that we can expect Aldnoah.Zero to follow. The soldier with an unexplained mysterious past that haunts him? He'll stay alive at least until we figure out what's eating him. A major character's friend who has enough charm to get noticed but not enough charisma for me to remember his name? Friend-guy, your sacrifice will not be forgotten. At least not until the next sacrifice. Speaking of which, I hope Assey's stupid handmaiden dies next. She's dead weight.
The handmaiden is an anchor, but she does have nice hair.
What? Fine. Assey-hime. What? Look, I ain't calling her Asseylum-hime. It's a preposterous name, even for a robot anime. P.S. Spoilers, the princess doesn't die in the first episode. Nobody believed that, right? I mean, she's right there in the OP doing all sorts of shit, and killing her off that early would keep viewers from being fully invested when Slaine inevitably starts losing his shit. Without a fresh princess in the refrigerator, Slaine's only other motivation would be to stop racist Aresians from thumping him upside the head all the time.
Slaine gets beat down a lot.
I'm totally counting on either Slaine and/or Assey to go wholesale aggro, by the way. Inaho is entirely too chill to pull that off. Not that this is a bad thing. Inaho's preternatural calmness is a refreshing change from the usual uptight spazzes who generally populate these types of anime roles.
Discipline.
I realize I've only obliquely referenced the actual elements that make Aldnoah.Zero so good, but you can probably find that information in anime blogs that wax about its animation and fight scenes and production values. Me, I'm telling you it's worth your while because there's a 50/50 chance an anxious handmaiden might meet a woeful fate just so the blondest character on the show can awaken her superpowers—the superpowers that have to do with giant robots, not her incredible canonical abilty to suck life back into limp dudes during an interracial Meet Cute. Sweetie, where were you when I was siphoning gas all those miles ago?
