I guess since we're talking about recent stuff I absolutely love, I should definitely take time to address the show that managed to pull me back into anime.
To this day, I have no idea how this show ever managed to make it to production. It came out in a time when the state of anime was hotly contested, and in my opinion is one of the shows that really helped 'save' anime.
Let's talk about Aldnoah, and just why I love it.
Have you ever heard of Olympus Knights?
Don't feel bad, because nobody else has either. Prior to Aldnoah Zero, they simply did not exist. Period.
So who the hell are they? My guess is that they're a shell company, created for the sole purpose of giving great talent a hiding place from the world until the work comes out. Such was the case for Aldnoah Zero, which is quite literally the only credit they have to their name. So little it known about them - who is on their staff, where they're located, it's like they're a ghost in the industry.
But here's what we do know: Gen Urobuchi was the one who wound up penning the plot, and Ei Aoki directed.
These are some pretty heavy hitters, but their involvement was largely kept secret until after the show came out.
Nobody knew what to expect from Aldnoah. It literally just showed up one day, and blew our f***ing minds. This was just after Attack on Titan was sweeping onto the scene, a show that is almost Martin-esque in its treatment of all the characters, what with folks dying all willy-nilly constantly.
What did we know about Aldnoah? It had mechs. And maybe something about Mars? Then we watched that first episode. It gave me chills. Within minutes, people were dying during an invasion of Earth. The Moon had been blown to hell. This was not likely going to be a good time.
Yet, there was still that glimmer of hope, the idea that maybe things would be okay.
The show follows a young princess, making a visit to Earth as a peacekeeping effort on behalf of the Martians, who had wrecked shop decades ago and nearly destroyed Earth in the process. The moon was devastated as a result. Mars had won, technically speaking, but backed off because they knew they'd gone too far.
Earth wasn't going to let those damned colonists win a second time. They wanted to be prepared for those assholes to return. Which is the perfect atmosphere to stage an assassination to kickstart a war Earth can't hope to win. It just requires that some folks turn a blind eye to the fact that they are assassinating their own princess to justify another invasion of Earth.
The political angle is immensely fascinating, but they use actual science to justify the giant robots, and the Aldnoah drives which give the Martian's Orbital Knights their edge. See, Mars is so terrifying because their Orbital Knights, their elite units, all draw energy from the Aldnoah drive which give them devastatingly unique abilities - like the ability to completely disintegrate anything you touch.
How the f**k do you fight something like that? How do you even stand a snowball's chance in hell against a monster that, quite literally, appears invincible?
You pay close attention, identify its weaknesses, and exploit the f**k out of them. Which is exactly what one young man does.
Enter Inaho - the emotionally-stunted, possibly Autistic protagonist who is always the smartest man in the room. He doesn't brag about it - in fact I am fairly sure that it is impossible for the kid to have any kind of ego. This is the sort of character that a person should normally hate, yet their portrayal of Inaho is actually rather outstanding. He is devoid of any social skills, replete of emotions, and at best can be said to simply exist, and yet still manages to be someone we can connect to. Perhaps it is because he is the embodiment of what Earth should consider to be a 'paragon' in a post-galactic war that they lost.
You might say that Inaho is practically inhuman, and this creates distance between him and almost everyone else who doesn't know him. Yet I get the impression from his supporting cast, particularly the stereotypical love interest, that he wasn't always capable of defending himself, and often times his close friends rally to defend him immediately.
It is important to note that Inaho isn't anti-social. He legitimately lacks what we consider to be typical social skills period. Which makes him far more human than you might expect. It's why I suspect that he is actually autistic - I see a lot of qualities in Inaho that I've seen in high-functioning Autistics, and it pulls at my heart strings because it makes all of his victories that much greater.
The animation, the music, the writing, the characters, technology, plot and pacing are some of the absolute best I've seen in a very long time. Don't get me wrong, I like Attack on Titan, but in my eyes, this is superior in many ways. Admittedly, it's probably due to my mecha bias, so take that with a grain of salt, but if I had to choose between more AoT and more Aldnoah? I'd pick Aldnoah every time.
When I first sat down to watch Aldnoah, my first thought was that this was the original Gundam, if it were made today. It's got all of the same hallmarks. In fact, the entire tone of Iron Blooded Orphans, which came out a year later, felt a lot like Aldnoah in many respects - and IBO is my favorite Gundam series since Wing.
Aldnoah isn't just a show about politics and space and gratuitous giant mechs going at one another - even though it has all of those things. It's a show about humanity itself. It's about war, and love, and trying to do the right thing in a horrible situation beyond your control. This isn't just a simple story, even though the story can be distilled into a very simple portion, it doesn't do the whole justice, as there is a ton of nuance peppered throughout.
There's also a healthy dose of mystery throughout. What exactly is the Aldnoah? Who made it, and why? Nobody knows. Nor is it known why its power is tied to a bloodline. We know that it is intrinsically linked to the person who discovered it, but not why that is the case, and it is something that never gets to be explored because everyone is far too busy trying to kill one another.
At the end of the day, Aldnoah is far from a simple show. If you want to, you can find a great amount of depth in it. But if all you want is to see giant robots go head to head, then you'll probably like this too. Aldnoah treads some of the same waters that Code Geass did, but its execution is phenomenally better than its predecessor. I liked Code Geass, but felt it fell apart near the end. I love Aldnoah, and everything that happens does so for a reason, and none of the solutions ever feels like an asspull.
And that's a really important thing for a show like this, and part of what really makes it work for me.
Aldnoah Zero is everything I love in anime. It has great music, amazing characters you can empathize with on both sides, amazing visuals and an absolutely riveting plot. It has hard science that gets used to drive the plot, and tactics are hugely emphasized as being the most important thing. Best of all, it's all presented in an easy to digest way, and uses the standard anime storytelling tropes to deliver it all. There's love, heartbreak, rejection, betrayal, and questionable morals and ethics.
In short, it's everything about the human experience all crammed into a single show, and it's f***ing fantastic.
Watch this show. For the love of all that is good, watch it. Then you'll probably understand.
Plus, a year later and I'm still humming the opening theme.
That says something about this show's impact.
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