Is it worth? Who knows! I’ll let you decide, but first, you’ll need to give it a watch 🙂
Like the first season, the sequel begins directly from where the season 1’s events left off except with a time skip. Characters still look the same but some things have changed. Included with these include the absence of Asseylum on Earth. Then, there’s also Slaine who has now devoted himself entirely to the Martians. And in a state of war, Aldnoah Zero Season 2 seems to continuously shove down the audience’s throats of the personal struggles of certain characters. Don’t get me wrong though.
I like how the show expresses its interest to show how our main characters’ lives are going in season 2. The problem I find is how it constantly recycles the same ideas over and over again. In general, it fails to keep the viewer’s interest with the frequent ideology clashes. Less emphasis is put on the development of our characters but instead showing them their roles with a lot of badly stitched tropes. Furthermore, season 2 seems to highlight on even more problems with plot holes and writing for certain supporting characters. Logic itself also makes the audience question sometimes if the show knows what it’s doing.
For our main characters, most of them play their roles in the war. Although many characters has certain objectives, it’s clear that the show has a weakness with its character development. Only on occasions do certain side characters shine in this second season. This is because the sequel seems to emphasize on building up the story with various interconnected events. However, the grim reality is that it’s predictable down to the earth and nothing really stands out besides our main characters. Season 2 also seems to have forgotten some of the major supporting characters on their development.
New character such as Harklight and Lemrina doesn’t gain any strong characterization at all. For instance, Harklight seems to play the sort of devoted servant for his “master”, Slaine. On the other hand, Lemrina is has a borderline obsession with him. It’s kind odd really. The sequel almost seems to devote its entirety on Slaine’s ambitions and ultimatum. Some of the diverting romance sub-plot is hardly anything interesting with the lack of interest between Slaine and certain characters. In general, it’s messy with its characters.
Although not overbearing, some good portions of the show concentrates on action. However, it still remains the style it portrays with its gimmicky fighting. In particular, certain mecha now has ability to clone themselves, use piercing threads to slice and dice, or even make frost out of their enemies. Technology seems to have unlimited boundaries in the series as we even see the conscious of an electronic eye take hold of a person’s mentality. As fascinating as this all sounds, there’s really not much to get hold with these creative ideas. No matter how outrageous some of these ideas gets, the end result is almost always the same. The familiar strategies used through teamwork or taking a chance by calculations. Season 1 did that and the sequel doesn’t really express itself any differently.
On the more technical side, I do give praise to some of the artistic direction the sequel handles itself. Action is fluid and the coordination is attractive. Even some of the new style of the music can be appealing when combined with the intense elements of sci-fi warfare. The OP and ED songs also holds some degree of symbolism along with a few recapping of the first season. They are also the stronger points to the Anime. Aldnoah.Zero had very powerful OP and ED songs. Which made up for the poor performance of the Anime; which in itself is an actual shame.
Is it worth watching? Probably not, I would pass on the second season.
One response to “Aldnoah.Zero 2nd Season | Oh dear.”
The second season really does go off the rails a bit.