STORY: War breaks out between the humans of Earth and those that immigrated to Mars.
—
There were large amounts of information thrown at us here. The animation was solid, and you can tell just by the dialogue that Gen Urobuchi wrote this. This show has a very consistent composer under its belt. Hiroyuki Sawano. This guy has done a ton of stuff. Blue Exorcist, Guilty Crown, Attack on Titan, Kill la Kill. All extremely popular series. Aldnoah Zero can be added to this list as well. I know that this will be one of the better soundtracks of the season, but I cannot see it beating out Yoko Kanno’s Zankyou No Terror. She’s the best there is in the industry.
The problem here, is that all his music sounds for the most part very similar. There were times I thought he pulled tracks from Guilty Crown moved them up an octave and put them in this show. Don’t get me wrong, this composer is really good at what he does, he just needs to branch out a bit more. A-1 Pictures has been busy this season! Kuroshitsuji Book of Circus, Sword Art Online II and now this! These series are the most overhyped productions of the season too!
I just hope they can handle the budget correctly with these 3 shows. Sword Art Online II looked just as good if not better than the first season, and Aldnoah Zero’s backgrounds were illustrated well. The Director sounds promising as well. We’ve Ei Aoki whose background consists of Fate/Zero and Hourou Musuko. These were at least two strong series that he has directed and ended up ending really well.
The main problem I have with this series is Gen Urobuchi. Yes he composed the first season of Psycho-Pass, which oddly enough from as it stands now he has no involvement in the second season. Strange. That series was amazing and his skills as a writer pulled off well with that work as well as Fate/Zero and Requiem for the Phantom. A great look at spy life. Another one of my favorites is Puella Magi Madoka Magica which he created himself. He revolutionized the mahou shojo genre with that series. The catch is Blassreiter was a mess of a mech series. Aldnoah is a mech series and I am a bit worried about this. He has his hands full with Gargantia OVA’s and a possible sequel TV Animation. I hope Aldnoah Zero isn’t too overhyped and falls off its tracks before developing a solid story. Don’t turn into the mess that Guilty Crown turned into. That series had such a strong production team behind they just did not have a clue where to take this series as it was progressing. Hope this really isn’t the case here. Keeping my fingers crossed, because the premise of humans inhabiting two planets with two different viewpoints on life is intriguing.
As for the first episode here it was rather difficult to pick up everything. The main cast had been introduced for the most part but there had been so much terminology thrown on screen in 24 minutes the first half felt rushed. The second half was awesome. It had its action sequences done really well! So the Princess decides to take a trip down to Earth, where she ends up getting terrorist bombed by an unknown group. It may have been cliche that it was bound to happen but they executed that entire car festival sequence so smoothly. There was so much going on here! The people of Mars decide to invade Earth within that span of 24 minutes which drops huge explosions on the land. This was intense!
Likely to Blog: 70%
—