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Jul 20 2014

Categories: aldnoah zero, episodic review
Tagged: aldnoah zero

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“Leave at once, you ill-mannered ruffian!”

(I haven’t do an episode post in a while. Time to rinse off the rust!)

Inaho’s sister’s expression for most of this episode reminds me of Satsuki-sama or at least Catsuki-sama. I do like that she is worried about Inaho, but the dude is a Tess-class military genius. He is so bad-ass, making omelets is more important than evacuating.

OH FUCK YEAH GRENADE LAUNCHERS! It’s pretty clear that the Scandinavian girl is the Princess, as the loli meido servant is a dead giveaway for the viewers, but one that isn’t afraid to do shit? It’s like Gen Urobuchi is trying to subvert typical Gundam storytelling (i.e. ragtag group fighting ultrapowerful mecha and useless Marina/Relena). Asseylum has been more useful this episode than Marina the entirety of Gundam 00. It’s almost like A-1 & TROYCA decided to jump into the combat mecha genre with style by creating their own super team: Ei Aoki (Girls Bravo!), Gen “I need help writing Madoka” Urobuchi, Kenji Teraoka (Aa! Megami-sama Movie), and Hiroyuki Sawano (Zombie Loan).

(If you do know the names, you probably realized I didn’t list their best work… except for maybe Teraoka as Aa! Megami-sama‘s movie has fantastic mechanical design. The animation of that movie still holds up today. In a knowledge vacuum, if you watched that and Sailor Moon Crystal back-to-back, you’d think the movie was animated in 2014 and Crystal back in 2000. Now that I think about it, we really need more Adventures of the Mini-Goddesses. Tiny Skuld and Urd tormenting poor Gan-chan is infinitely better than the premise of many shows this season. Seriously? We needed yet another anime about three girls, one boy, and a terrible after school club that isn’t about foursomes?)

(And A-1 has four high value shows airing right now with SAO 2, Persona, and Black Butler airing at the same time. How can they do this? Do they have a thousand monkeys drawing all the time? Why can’t Toei finish an episode a week for Sailor Moon Crystal? And how much has Shaft delayed Monogatari? What is A-1’s secret? Do they just replace their water with Red Bull? Do they secretly pump cocaine into their office’s air supply? Do they hold their animator’s puppies hostage until they finish a scene? It’s incredible. Four series at once.)

And… wait… what? Asseylum is also a magical girl who transforms with her brooch? Oh Urobuchi. I like how her pendant features a red stone, a moon crescent, and a tear. The red stone to symbolize Mars, a moon crescent to show that when Luna showed up, she did the right thing and killed her and harvested her crescent since all magical girl familiars are evil, and the tears represent the tears of anime fanboys whenever Urobuchi kills another character. And then waits a season or movie before bringing him/her back from the dead.

Totally thought Inko would make a move on Inaho (names… too… similar…). She should have boned him, or at least given him a good luck kiss. She even had a perfect excuse, “Well, since we turned the heat off, I can think of another way to keep warm.” Oh who am I kidding? His response would have probably been, “Gotcha. I’ll make us some omelets.”

I like how Inaho is projecting his phone, but why does he have an “unlock” icon on his app view? Wouldn’t the phone be unlocked already to get to this state? And if we discovered Martian technology in 1999 (this is way before even a RAZR) and ended up in a huge war against Mars, would we have developed app phones as they are today?

Sniper girls seem to be hot at the moment. Quick! Sell your shares of trap meido and loli Sherlocks! Buy more haremette sniper stocks! It’s rising! It’s all rising!!!

(The hip readers will point out, “Yep. Told ya so. Shinji Ikari ushered in the petite haremette sniper trend back in 1996.” Oh wait…)

Deploying helmet airbags? I like that! A nice touch.

Huh. Whenever I hear “cataphract,” I think of the original horse armor DLC for Morrowind. The fact that Urobuchi is using “kataphraktos,” which is a handful to say during battle, for referring to mobile suits means… he’s actually referencing the other original Greek version of Oedipus Rex! The sequence is actually 2-4-3! How could we have missed this?!

(Belisarius is a German-born Byzantine general who was a genius at command… get this… cataphracts. He used Asian techniques of given his armored horse riders crossbows. He also was renowned for winning against superior foes. Also, the FOV Boundless logo looks like an eyeball, which doesn’t have a boundless FOV. And I have no clue about Asimov as it’s a piloted machine rather than AI. If they were shooting for the Greek/Roman/horse commander theme, wouldn’t Socrates be a better fit?)

She definitely wants to bone Marito. So far every military commander has been incompetent, and they have all been outclassed by a high school kid. It’s just like every other anime! According to anime, militaries are run by the guy who thought New Coke, Microsoft Bob, and invading Russia were good ideas. Obviously, they totally forget that militaries are generally run by guys like Belisarius, Robert E. Lee (not to be confused with Robert F. Lee), and Admiral Kunkka.

Three MVPs…

1. Inaho.

2. A-1’s animation staff.

3. Techies.