Aldnoah. Zero is the most disappointing thing since my birth. I’m surprised there’s barely anyone who trashed this anime to death already, but I’m here to perform the task. Because I DO NOT LIKE THIS ANIME, I barely like it ironically. This isn’t a guilty pleasure anime, cuz I don’t feel any pleasure anytime I watch or think about it, only guilt. You have to be gullible to think this anime is good. I know this, because I was gullible. I remember watching this during middle school when I just started to watch anime, and I was pretty invested to some degree. Militaristic Mecha fighting alien Mecha, that concept alone interested my newbie weeb brain. And I love Mecha bro, I’ve loved it way before I began watching anime. And then High School came around and Darling in the Franxx became popular, instantly making this anime obsolete as A-1’s best Mecha (keep in mind: this was way before 86 came out). And once I rewatched Aldnoah, I was like “Jesus Christ, WHAT DID I LIKE ABOUT THIS ANIME”. That’s when I realized I didn’t really liked this anime, that it’s dumb and it’s filled shit I don’t like. Once my generation realized this, there was peace in the Mecha community for a brief time as we were enjoying new Mecha shows. There was no more war, we as a community have moved beyond this anime, we solved the gunpla shortage, everything was at peace. And then Darling in the Franxx ended in a not so good way.

AND NOW, YOU PEOPLE ARE CALLING AD GOOD? WHEN THE FUCK DID WE GO BACK TO THIS? I’ve seen so many people unironically defend this anime and shit on other anime like Ren-a-Girlfriend, even though it has the same problems, anime with bad writing and worse characters. But people say Aldnoah.Zero is redeemed, because it’s better than Darling in the Franxx. Now 1st of all, Darling in the Franxx ain’t even that bad. I don’t love everything about it, but I can’t legitimately call it a bad anime. I have full respect for Mecha fans who hate Aldnoah and Darling, that’s completely understandable. What hurts me is when people say DitF is bad, and AD isn’t. And before you say “at least it’s a realistic view of the Mecha genre”, I’ll say “WHO THE FUCK SAYS THAT”. Being realistic isn’t enough to be good, and besides, an anime can be unrealistic and be really good. Gurren Lagann has nothing realistic about it and yet it’s the best anime out there, everyone loves it. Aldnoah.Zero is a realistic look between real and super robot, yes. But it’s not done well at all. If you think I’m gonna be praising these 2 short seasons, then I’m sorry, you people don’t know me very well. Maybe we can be friends in another lifetime. Cuz now, imma take this anime down a peg, cuz I hate them and when people don’t agree with me I get uncomfortable.

But before I tear this anime apart, I might as well talk about the stuff I do like. It’s not the worst anime ever so it gotta have some redeeming qualities, right? (*Let’s see*, I like the music a lot). Side note: everything positive I’m gonna say has a huge “but” in the end

• I wanna say both the character and mechanical designs are really good. A-1 Pictures has a lot of anime with good character designs and this anime is no exception. Masako really designed these characters very well. However, none of that matters if we aren’t invested in the characters. Keiji Teraoka worked on Gundam 00 before this, so the designs of the Sleipniers are really good. But that doesn’t apply to the designs of the Martian Kataphrakts. And the 3-D animation doesn’t do it any favors
• The voice acting is not bad. They got A-listers like Christina Vee, Patrick Seitz, Matthew Mercer, and best boy Bryce Papenbrook to voice these characters. But the acting can only get your so far with a poor script
• The start of the 2nd episode and the fight scenes are the only time I don’t feel like I’m in a death like coma. But it start falling apart what I start realizing that I don’t really care about what’s going on
• I do like this arc of Marito dealing with PTSD from the start of war. It’s a good arc that deals with something that not alot of real mecha touched upon. It just sucks that it doesn’t really get resolved. He’s probably one of my only characters I actually liked in this anime, along with Calm and maybe Magbaredge.
• Speaking of Calm, there’s this piece of dialogue I really do like. While watching everyone train in their Kataphrakts, Calm is so eager to become an official pilot. And then Yuuki tells him “You have to remember that this is a war”. It’s a simple and fitting way for her to tell him to be careful what he wishes for, while reminding us of the brutal situation at hand. And that’s the last time I’m gonna say anything positive about the characters, so enjoy it
• But by far, the best thing about this anime is the music. The Hiroyuki Sawano original score is always on point, I just can’t hate it. I want to believe that good ol’ Hiroyuki San saw this anime and went like “alright I gotta fix this somehow”. Sawano just knows how to make epic soundtracks for any Mecha anime.

And that’s it for praise, this anime fails at every single level of storytelling. It just goes downhill from here. However, I’m gonna use a bunch of Mecha anime (mainly Gundam) and even SAO as a comparison (you’ll find out why soon.)

Season 1:

• Plot:

You know how a variety Mecha (or just any anime in general) explains their world in the 1st 2 minutes of the anime? With the OG Gundam it explains what started the One Year War, Sword Art Online showed us a kid entering the Virtual world, Code Geass explains how Britainia took over Japan, etc. It tells us everything we need to know about the world we are about to enter. And how does Aldnoah start? I guy talking about Earth to a blonde lady and then it pans out to a spaceship with no explanation. This sets the tone of the anime, IT’S FUCKING UNINVESTING. It doesn’t give us a reason to get invested in this world or its characters who we just met. We don’t even know what’s going on until later in the episode when we’re given some lazy exposition.

As for the plot itself, I’m gonna be honest, I never knew the plot of the anime. Sure, you can just say “it’s just about people fighting aliens in giant robots’', but I’m pretty sure there’s a better way to explain it. So what I got, is after a planned assassination towards the Princess of the Vers, Asseylum Vers Allusia, the Vers Martian Empire uses this as an excuse to launch a full on tantrum on Earth and our cardboard standees have to fight to survive. Now the 1st question on my mind is, why does Mars want to attack Earth? Well I hope you’re ready to die with that question in mind, because this anime is gonna answer that question for you. None of the Martians ever give a solid reason why they hate humans so much or why they need to conquer Earth. They’re just mindlessly evil, and it’s ok for an anime to have the usual hammy mustache twirling villain, especially in Mecha. But this is an anime that’s trying to be as serious as other real mecha that came before, that had way more compelling villains with understandable motivations. Take Zeon for example from Gundam, they’re going to war with the Earth Federation for independence for the space colonies. They may have done some fucked up shit, but at least you understand their reasoning. But in this anime, there’s no solid reason as to why they’re doing this. Sure, they say that they want Earth’s resources, however none of us ever get a sense of why they need it. We don’t see any other Martians suffering without those resources or even see them hating Earth that much. There’s more that sucks about the Martians, but I’ll save that for later along with how most of the human characters aren’t that good either.

But for now, let’s the concept of Militaristic Mecha forced to fight Super Mecha. It’s a cool concept on paper, but I feel this anime doesn’t pull it off as well as it could’ve. The 1st few minutes of the 2nd episode really did a good job as establishing the Martians as a threat and the fights are strategically well planned out. But the more I think about it, the 1st 2 Kataphraks would have easily been dealt with in another way, and I’ll get to that later. But ya, I found the plot held back by the really poor writing.

• Characters:

I’m starting off with the main character himself, Inaho Kaisaka. And I have something to say, whenever people call Kirito a boring character, remember that Inaho exists. He only has one facial expression, and it never changes. At least Kirito shows emotions throughout SAO and actually has interests in the series. What does Inaho have that shows he has human emotions? Even when his fucking friend dies RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM, he keeps a straight face during and after his death. If that doesn’t cement how emotionless he is, then I don’t know what will. He doesn’t care about his sister, his friends, hell, it doesn’t even look like he even cares about the war going on. I don’t mind stoic protagonists, I just stated that Kirito is fine, as he still has moments where he cares about the people and the world around him in both the virtual world and real world. But this isn’t the case for Inaho, he just has zero emotions.

And I haven’t even gotten to the rest of the Terrain characters. Outside of Marito and Calm, who would’ve worked as great characters if they were better used in a better anime, the majority of the characters have barely any chemistry with each other. Zero, I mean no chemistry. We don’t care about these characters and we’re supposed to be rooting for them to survive. They only exist to tell us about what’s going on in the war and how powerful the Martians are. They don’t talk about how they feel or how much this war is taking a mental toll on them.

I think that’s why Marito and Calm are the only characters I thought had potential. Marito has experience fighting the Martian and has trauma from it, so it would’ve been interesting if he’s forced to confront his past. As Calm, he’s the only one who shows actual hate towards the Martians and unlike the Martians (who only hate Terrains because they’re told to), he has actual reasons why. His home was destroyed and his best friend was killed by the Martians, so it’s more understandable. So it would’ve been interesting if he found out if the Princess was alive and learns to let go of his hate. I honestly think that Marito and Calm should’ve been the main characters instead of Inaho, and have this mentor and student dynamic where they learn from one another. Magbaredge is another character who I thought would’ve been cool if she was given more to do. She could’ve been like Sumeragi from Gundam 00, where she’s fighting against her past demons, or in this case Marito’s. She reveals that she’s the sister of the soldier that Marito forcibly killed. This could’ve been a really good arc where Magbaredge learns to forgive Marito.

And then we have the Martians, both good and bad. Let’s go with good Martians, Slaine Troyard and Princess Asseylum. With them being the 1st characters to appear 1st in the series, you’ll think that the anime would focus on giving them some interesting traits to make us invested in them. And yet, none have any traits that make them interesting. And I know that people say that Slaine is the only good character, but only because he has an actual motivation to save the princess. Outside of that, all he does is do what his bosses tell him to do while being abused by him. The moment when he helped Inaho fight against one of the Martians, I thought he would’ve joined them to take on the landing castle. But no, he gets shot down, tortured by his abusive boss, gets saved by Sazbone, and joins him for no reason. And he doesn’t get any better as we see in season 2. And trust me, I’ll get to that soon, VERY SOON.

But now let’s move onto the next “good” Martian, Princess Asseylum Vers Allusia. But before that, there’s something I want to say, her loli maid, Eddeolrittuo, is the most annoying character in the anime and doesn’t need to exist. But on to Asseylum, and as a princess character, I think she is probably the worst one I’ve seen so far. She’s so gullible and arrogant, that it’s so unbearable. After seeing Martians more than willing to kill humans and seeing that her OWN PEOPLE wanted her dead, she still thinks that there’s still a chance for people to get along with the people of Earth. To the point where she makes a really dumb decision that leads to the last safe place on Earth to be attacked and destroyed. Also, they forced her in this love triangle between Inaho and Slaine, but not only it doesn’t work, but it also becomes meaningless in season 2 (trust me, season 2 fucks up a lot of shit).

Before I move on, I want to bring up Kudelia from Iron Blooded Orphans for comparison. She starts off similarly to Asseylum in the beginning of the anime, where she thinks that once she gives her speech, everything will be better. But there’s one major difference, Kudelia eventually learns that not only people from Mars are suffering, but also people around space are suffering as well. She finally gets shit done and calls out Gjallarhorn for the shady shit they’ve been doing. If Asseylum had a similar arc, she would’ve been a way better character.

Now onto the bad guys, and all you need to know is that they hate Terrains. That’s it, that’s their only personality trait and we don’t learn anything else about them. They are just cartoonishly evil, to the point where we can’t even view them as actual villains. To the point where the Orbital Knights were forgettable, to the point where their mecha are the only memorable thing about them. Count Cruhteo and Lord Saazbaum are the only recurring villains and they aren’t that different, with Cruhteo being a slight but not so good exception. Sure, he tries to help the princess eventually, But that was after he constantly abused Slaine, dropped his landing castle onto Japan, and tortured him for info. So it was not only very rushed, but also some wasted potential. He should’ve been someone who grew to see how immoral Martian’s invasion is and how he grew to see both Terrains & Martians as similar. And then there’s Lord Saazbaum, where they tried and failed to make his motivations understandable. He shows Slaine this PowerPoint of Martians hating Earth, while giving exposition explaining how Earth won’t share their resources. This honestly feels kinda weak, because we don’t see any of the Terrains rejecting them. I also found his other reasoning for hating Earth really dumb. His girlfriend dies while on a mission and now he blames Terrains for it. And want to know how she dies? Because the portal on the moon blows up and the falling debris kills her. If one of the Earth soldiers actually got a shot off of her, then I would’ve bought it. But her death was caused because of the arrogance of the Martians thinking their hot shit. Saazbaum should’ve been mad at the Vers for sending them on this mission. And he doesn’t become any more interesting as the series goes on.

So ya, the cast of characters on both the good and bad side really drags this anime down. They don’t develop at all and don’t have anything interesting about them. If they were given any motivations, arcs, or personalities, we might have cared a little more. But no, these characters are very forgettable. It would be funny if it weren’t so sad.

• World Building:

With it being a Mecha anime, you’ll think the world building would be interesting, right? Unfortunately, it’s handled pretty poorly. There’s so much shit that doesn’t make any sense. Like the assassination itself. For starters, why didn’t they just plant a bomb under the limo instead of putting a rocket launcher into a public parking lot? That place was very conspicuous and could’ve been easily witnessed by anyone. Also out of the multiple soldiers with guns, none of them bothered intercepting those missiles. And trust me, this is only scratching the surface. Now let’s talk about how the United Forces of Earth (UFE for short) handles the threat. When it comes to the Martian Kataphraks, I understand why they have a hard time dealing with them. They have far more advanced Mecha and have plenty of time for preparation, that I understand. What I don’t understand is why they didn’t counter the missiles while they were in the air. They could’ve prevented severe damage to their communication systems , especially since they already had jets in the air.

Another thing that bugged me was the Aldnoah Drives themselves, since we’re never explained how they work. All we know is that only people with the Vers bloodline, along with the Orbital Knights who swore their devotion to them. But, how exactly does that work? Especially since Slaine’s dad was the one who made them. So why would he make it so only one person and his family can use it? Overall, there’s so much that doesn’t make any sense in the world, to the point where I can’t even get invested. Maybe I’m missing something, feel free to call me out for it (just be civil about it)

• Mecha:

As I said before, the Mecha designs on the Terrain Kataphrakts are pretty good. The Sleipniers and Areions do look practical and militaristic, I can definitely see these 2 being used in real life combat. However, I do wish their load out is a bit better. They do have assault rifles (with a grenade launcher), sniper rifles, a pistol, and knife, which ain’t bad. But it wouldn’t hurt to have a bazooka and a heated melee weapon. It would’ve also been cool if they had different types of Sleipniers and Areions (like a sniper type, cannon type, melee type, etc.). I don’t know, that’s something I’ve always liked about Mecha, they have a variety of Mecha types for multiple situations. Take Gundam’s GMs  for example, they have a variety of types; there’s the GM Sniper, GM Cannon, GM Striker, GM Night Seeker, etc. Each of them are made with a specific role and use specific weapons to achieve their missions. But that’s just a suggestion, I still like their designs.

As for the Martian Kataphraks, I can’t really say the same thing. They look weird, and not in a villainous way. The Electris looks like a Gau (a Zeonic carrier) with arms and legs, the Argyle looks like white fat duke, and the Hellas is a metal octopus. Although I do like the idea of real mecha fighting these super Mecha with Strategic planning, I found that these fights could’ve been easily solved. The Electris may have a barrier that absorbs everything, but if it trips it’ll sink into any surface. The Argyle literally only has one melee weapon, so you could’ve handled it with long ranged attacks. The only ones I thought were cool were the Dioscuria and the Tharsis. They actually do look like a threat and are designed pretty well. The Dioscuria looks like the final boss, with the abilities of the 1st 3 Kataphrakts. But those long fingers are a bit too much. And although the Tharsis looks like it’s gonna help the Terrains, it barely does anything on screen. It only charges Into the fight at the last minute, and that’s it.

There are more of them, but they only appear for one second each and never again until season 2. The mechanical designs (at least on the Terrian’s side) aren’t half bad, but the one thing that kinda ruins it is the 3-D animation. They really do look out of place with the 2-D animation and don’t move that smoothly. A-1 Pictures obviously didn’t realize that Mecha can always be 2-D animated too. So overall, I would like to say the Kataphrakts are the saving grace of the anime, but would honestly be lying. If they were animated better and were designed differently (with the exception of the Sleipniers and Areions), maybe that wouldn’t be the case.

• Vertic: The 1st season was a very rocky start. There was so much holding it back to the point where I think that it would’ve been better if they went back to the ideas board and looked over what they could’ve changed. The right ingredients were there, good Mecha designers, good actors, a great concept on paper, but the series was plagued with bad writing, an uninteresting plot, and characters we don’t care about, this lead to an anime that will only be remembered as a massive disappointment. And it doesn’t get any better. Back when I saw the last episode for the 1st time, I thought a 2nd season would’ve been great. That it could’ve wrapped up everything in a perfect bow. And couldn’t be more wrong in my entire life

Season 2: I think season 2 is probably the worst Mecha anime I’ve seen. There’s so much wrong with this anime, to the point where it makes the last one look worse. There’s barely anything redeemable about it, and I’ll tell you why

• Plot:

It’s literally the same plot as the last season. Martians bad, Earth good, they fight. But one slight difference is that now Slaine is now the leader and Princess Asseylum is now siding with them. Now first of all, those 2 differences are going to be the key difference of why this anime straight up sucks, but I’ll get to that later. But all I can say is that this anime tries nothing new. That’s the best I can put it. Even the 1st few minutes of the anime is a recap of what happened in the last episode. So there’s barely a plot, believe me when I say that this isn’t even the worst of it

• Characters: Now this is where the true rotten meat of this shit show comes. Because MY GOD, these characters take character assassination and under development to the next level.

Now let’s start off with the man himself, Slaine Troyard. And saying his character change from hero to villain came out of nowhere like saying the change from Zeta’s dark tone to ZZ’s goofy tone came out of nowhere. Because his change in personality makes no Goddamn sense. To give you some form of context, in the last episode after Saazbaum shot Asseylum, Slaine then shot him multiple times and then shot Inaho for trying to reach the princess. And after that he took Saazbaum back into space. Let me remind you, he dedicated his life to protecting her and even killed one of the Orbital Knights after one of them revealed he wanted to kill her. So his switch to the dark side is just absurd. And yes, you can make the argument that he did that to save her life with Martian medical equipment, but that doesn’t matter since he goes behind her back towards the end.

Speaking of bitch, let’s talk about the “Princess”. She’s a fake. She’s actually Asseylum’s sister, Lemrina Vers Envers. Now 1st of all, when did Asseylum ever mention that she ever had a sister? Sure she’s her half sister, but she never even mentioned she had any siblings in this damn anime. So what’s her Half sister’s motivations? Well I can’t tell you, because I don’t know. She basically exists to take Asseylum’s place and that’s it. It’s basically like what they did in Gundam SEED Destiny with Meer pretending to be Lacus. But that anime at least gave her some motivation as to why she wants to be Lacus. Here, we barely get anything from Lemrina. All we know is that she barely interacted with her sister when they were little and they have different mothers. She also introduces a plot hole in the story, but I’ll get to that later.

Now let’s talk about Lord Saazbaum, there’s not a lot to talk about. Especially since he gets kicked out of the story 3 episodes in. How, you may ask? Slaine backstabbed him after a battle between him and Inaho. Ok, he really should’ve seen this coming. Especially after shooting the princess right in front of Slaine. Speaking of wasting, the new cast of Martian characters suck. None of them are memorable in the slightest. Half of them exist to give Slaine a hard time while the other either support him or the real princess. I should probably get to her too, right?

Well she’s literally in a coma for half the season. And once she wakes up, she escapes the moon, has a chat with her grandpa, and marries some random dude we barely met or cared about. If you didn’t like her in the last season, you definitely won’t in this season.

Now let’s go to Terrains characters, they’re not as bad as the Martians, but they aren’t much better either. Inaho Kaizuka is as much of a machine as he was in season 1, especially with him becoming a Cyborg with his robotic eye. And although I keep complaining about Inaho being boring, I honestly thought this could’ve been a good way to show his descent into him giving into the war. Let me explain, if he started the series with some form of human emotion and progressively show less and less emotions, this could’ve easily been a great example of the war taking his humanity away. But I digress, let’s get back to another problem with Inaho, his rivalry with Slaine Troyard. This is probably the worst rivalry I’ve seen in any anime I’ve seen for one reason, there’s not a connection to make them rivals. They barely interacted with each other in season 1 outside of them teaming up with each other to fight a Kataphrak and when Slaine shot Inaho. The only thing they have in common is that they’re from Earth and they like Asseylum, which isn’t enough to make an investing rivalry. Let’s talk about Lelouch and Suzaku’s rivalry really quickly. Both were once friends and now they’re fighting each for similar reasons. Lelouch is fighting his family & people for revenge while Suzaku is fighting his people for peace within both the Japanese and Britainians. Both have different and conflicting goals, but are fighting in a similar situation from one another. It’s called a juxtaposition, which a rivalry heavily depends on. Without this, Inaho and Slaine’s rivalry feels very weak and uninteresting. Since neither of them have conflicting goals that we agree with, differing personalities that we find appealing, or tragedies we can sympathize with.

As for the other characters on the Terrain side, they’re just as boring and forgettable as the last season. They barely do anything significant enough to affect the plot. Not even Calm has anything to do. However, I do like how Marito gets more involved in the fights and even manages to score some kills on some Martians. But I find his relationship with Magbaredge kinda weird. Like, last season, it was revealed that she’s the sister of the man Marito killed. And Now they’re cool with each other? When did they work things out, especially since Magbaredge never brought up her brother in the whole season. These 2 should’ve had an arc where they worked out this drama and maybe have some form of romance, especially since Magbaredge always uses the line, “you know why you have trouble finding a date”. Or maybe not, I don’t know. Moving on to another character who’s not used poorly, Rayet. Like the last season, she’s supposed to be a Martian who works with the Terrains, and yet it doesn’t work well. Especially in this season with her hating herself for being a Martian, and we’re supposed to care. And it really doesn’t work. And it’s not just her, basically everyone else on the Terrain side has nothing to do.

So overall, the characters on both sides are either unchanged for worse, bastardized, or forgotten about. So both the plot and characters sucks shit, and I haven’t gotten to the worst part.

• World building (Plot Holes):

For being the second season, you expect them to at least expand on the world. And it does…… And make a lot of plot holes in the meantime. If you thought the plot holes were bad in season 1, it has nothing on season 2. So let’s start with the most glaring plot hole, how both Inaho and Asseylum survive getting shot in the head. Believe when I say, this makes Kira Yamato’s survival in a FUCKING NUKE look more realistic than this. I may be a mad man for saying that, but I’ll stand by it. But that’s not the worst of it, the next worst plot hole is that both sides have a military base on the moon. WHEN THE FUCK DID THEY HAVE MOON BASES? Both sides could’ve used the extra resources during the war. And sure you may say, “they could’ve built it during the 16 months between season 1 & 2”. I don’t need to be an engineer to tell you that 16 months isn’t nearly enough to build a space station on the broken moon. Especially with the situation both of them are in.

And oh wait there’s more, apparently there’s another thing that doesn’t make any sense. You wanna know how Lemira passes herself off as Asseylum you may ask? By shapeshifting herself as her sister herself. Now this is writing 101, but how the fuck can they do that? Is it like Aldnoah, and it’s an ability that only the royal bloodline? Can all Martians do it too? This is something that was also presented in season 1, but I thought that Princess Asseylum only had this ability. But once I saw Lemira turn into Asseylum and Asseylum turning into her, that’s when I began to ask questions. Like was killing the Princess even necessary if you have someone who can disguise as her and make the Martians think the Terrains tried to hurt? Or is attacking Earth even necessary when you disguise yourself and invade it secretly via Marvel’s Secret Invasion? But that’s all the plot holes I wanted to point out, the rest of the world building ain’t worth remembering.

• Mecha:

I will say this, Mecha designs are pretty good (if you ignore the CGI animation). I do like the new variants of the Sleipniers and Areions for space, but I would’ve liked it if it had a booster instead of grappling hooks. However, with the amount of debris in space it makes a bit of sense. I also like the Martian Kataphrakts here a lot more than season 1, since they’re better designed, more of an actual threat, and made the fight scenes more creative.

However, I find it weird that the other Martians use these octopus looking fighter ships instead of mass produced Kataphraks. That’s another thing I never understood, you have a handful of powerful Mecha and yet never attempted to make a Kataphrak easy to use by regular Martians. There’s that cloning Kataphrak, but that is not really the same.

And the final battle between Inaho’s Sleipnier and Slaine’s Tharsis was probably the best fight scene in the whole series. If I just shut my brain off and pretend it’s a short Mecha film, it’s actually pretty good. However I like this fight until the ending, when I’m reminded that this is a bad anime. Because Inaho tries to save Slaine when they try to re-enter the atmosphere, and the anime cuts the whole thing with Inaho just straight up arresting Slaine. Ok, that’s my opinion on the Mecha designs and fights, now let’s shit on the ending.

• Vertic: Before I end this massive tangent of this anime, let’s talk about how the ending is. And let’s just say, it makes Darling in Franxx’s ending look like a masterpiece. So after Slaine gets arrested, the war just ends, Earth has an Aldnoah Drive, our side characters go back to their usual lives, and Asseylum marries a guy who we know nothing about. And the cherry on top of this shit show, Inaho literally just visited Slanie just to say that he just saved him because Asseylum told him to. A reminder that Inaho never developed as a character. Ya, from lazy writing to really poor characters, season 2 is the worst Mecha anime I’ve seen.

Finally thoughts: I think the worst thing about this anime (as you can probably tell from this review) is that it tries to be like a variety of mecha anime without understanding why they’re good. It tries to be like the original Gundam series with the villains but not giving them compelling motivations, It tries to be like Gundam 00 with the real mecha vs super mecha fight but not balancing both sides, and it tries to be like Gundam SEED & Code Geass with the princess & rival thing but not making their princess likable or giving the rivals compelling character traits. It fails at everything that made the aforementioned Mecha special. Did no one on the writing team ever think that any of this would be better if they tweaked it a bit and wrote it in a more compelling way. At this point I just doubt that anyone on the development team actually gave a shit. So the anime is over now and I feel dead inside. It baffles me that people watch this anime and think it’s good, because I’m not kidding when I say I hope I go the rest of my life without ever watching this anime again. I hate it. I would rather watch Sword Art Online (an anime that actually gets better over time despite it’s faults) over this garbage any day of the fucking week. If you think that I’m a contrarian for saying that, then fine. Because outside of the music and the Mecha fight scenes, this anime falls flat in every single way in writing in the most noticeable way possible, which is why I don’t like it. If you actually like this anime and think I’m dumb for say all of this, feel free to argue you’re piece in a civilized way.