# Forum > News > Community Chat > Anime >  [Review] Aldnoah.Zero - season 1

## [Soul Eater]

*Episodes:* 12
*Genres:* Mecha, Action, Sci-Fi, Drama

*Short summary:*

Aldnoah.Zero is a mecha anime that revolves around a princess that is visiting Earth for peace. For starters, the premise of the show is that in 1972, astronauts found a hypergate to Mars on the surface of the moon. Upon landing, they discovered an enchanted utility that is later referred as “Aldnoah”. During this period, many humans have relocated to Mars and have adapted to the name “Martians.” 
Fast forwarding to the year 2014, it has been fifteen years since Mars declared war on Earth. Once the war was over, they (the people on Earth) realized that their technology and weaponry was lacking in comparison with Mars. As a result, during those fifteen years of peace, Earth began to advance in technology and machinery. This led to the construction of building giant Mechas called “Kataphrakt”.
To bring eternal peace between Earth and Mars, Princess Asseylum, a royal Martian princess, decided to go to Earth to make a treaty between both planets. During this time, for reasons that will be explained in episode 1, the Vers Empire (Martians of royal blood) declared war upon Earth. Together with their advanced technology of Aldnoah embedded in their own Kataphrakts, they are fighting against the forces of Earth in an attempt to overtake Earth and its resources. But on Earth, there is one young stoic boy with brilliant intelligence, called Inaho Kaizuka, trying to ward of their attacks together with his friends and colleagues.

*Story:* 7/10

The first three episodes of Aldnoah.Zero looked very promising, were as the first episode was a real ice breaker. It was after those first three episodes that it rapidly began to lose its charm. Without spoiling too much, the first three episodes contained so much development. It introduced the world they are living in, the characters that are relevant to the story, a premise that no one expected etc. After that, it was the same basic formula for every single other episode: Synopsis of previous episode > Talking > Random mecha-with-special-ability fight action > Plot twist/Cliffhanger that makes you want to watch the next episode. Basically the story is about fighting mecha’s from each side (Mars and Earth) and trying to conquer over them for their own ambitions with some plot twist inbetween and some deathflags that triggers but never occurs.

*Animations/Graphics:* 8/10

An 8 is for me a standard, the art style is generic and for the mecha’s they use CGI, which in my opinion isn’t that bad but it detracts the quality a bit. The scenery in the anime was beautifully done and the designs for the mecha's and such were overall nice. Again, all the mecha's or anything technology related in the anime are made in CGI, don't let the cover fool you if you are looking for mecha's that are drawn.

*Music/OST:* 10/10

The only good thing that stands out about this show is the soundtrack. Every single piece of music is easily remembered and are truly fitting to the scenes that they are used in. From the opening and ending to the insert songs, every single piece brings out the atmosphere and conveys what the anime is about. Although most of the insert songs were overused, it was at that point that you knew what was coming.You just mindlessly enjoys the music that is played during fights, which increase the viewing pleasurement to epic proportions.

*Characters:* 6.5/10

The characters were good, but there is no development at all outside of one character, who happens to be the main antagonist at one point. Each character has his/her individual traits but at one point that’s the only thing that’s recognizable because they always repeat that. For example, the princess who always naïevely believes others and a character that always feel the need to say the same thing over and over again in different contexts. One major flaw is that there is almost no background story of most of the cast, so you don’t know how or why certain characters act that way. To give a somewhat spoilerish example, Inaho Kaizuka. For some reason he possess both the brains and brawns to win a fight, with an emphasis on the brains. In the show he is always the one who comes up with an solution to beat the Martians, and never really shows emotions. But it is never explained why he is so smart or why he acts that way, which leads up to the speculations of the fans. For me personally that is a big letdown because you just have to take the character for granted of how he is with no questioning about it. Outside of their visual appearance and somewhat charming characteristics, the characters felt too bland for me. 

*Overall score:* 7.5/10
Fighting mecha’s, add in some plot twists and something that should resemble drama and you get Aldnoah.Zero. Except the drama is most of the time unneccessary because of certain reasons. Thing is, this show struggled with its identity in my opinion. At first, it was a mecha show that involved suspense and drama in it, but after a while it was only a mecha show about fighting giant robots. Where as the latter it makes sense, because that’s what most mecha shows are about, but if you try to mix something inbetween, like drama in this case, what kind of audience do you target? For me, as a mecha show it was good. Nice fighting animations, nice abilities of certain mechs and nice diversity. But as a show that tries to make it more “serious” , for me it had a negative impact because of the way they folded things out. Without spoiling too much, there are certain events that make you really excited for the next episode, but after you saw the next episode, you were filled with despair and disappointment of how things turned out.

Overall, the show was certainly entertaining but unfortunately it will probably be forgotten in the next 10 years. Unless it's being rebroadcasted/more franchise comes out of it.

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## TheDanishGuy

Nice review. 

A bit too fractured, but that could be because of the lumped-together way I review things myself.

I was never a mecha guy myself, but it looks like it has a few gimmicks that make it stand out a little.

Which it NEEDS, considering the extreme influx of mecha anime which thankfully petered out in the beginning of the millenium.

~ TDG

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