So, Slaine made his escape, and came to aid our humans, and Asseylum. Is this going to be ye olde Gundam-esque “Two villains who don’t get along” meeting, a-la most such series ever? Except where will the disagreement stem from here? They’re both humans, they both want the war to end, and to protect Asseylum.
Well, we also have the brewing trouble within Marito’s soul and how Magbaredge thinks he’s to blame for something(might be his giving up on hope), and the Martian invasion, and stuff.
Thoughts and Notes:
1) Past Events:
1) Everything revolves around Orange-kun (Code Geass!)! The princess, and both the defeated Martians. In Orange-kun we trust.
2) Ah, yes, thank you for showing me the fight again. Fights often are there to make a point. Inaho kept missing, and we could see him getting stressed and agitated, but it was mostly a “plot-reason”, he failed so Slaine could swoop in and save the day. More than that, so Slaine could be seen as an ally. Still, that was a “plot-fight”, rather than “Stakes-fight”.
3) Again, Cruhteo isn’t even interested in trying to figure out why Slaine does what he does, only that it makes him look like a fool.
4) Those glory-hunting Martians… so he shot at one of her fists, which only stopped it from killing the terrans? Well, time to kill him then!
5) This is how such trauma goes in the first act, eh? Guilt over failure to save one person in the past either fills you with desire to save others, or stops you from being able to save others now. But guilt is not the best of motivators, you can never erase the past, as Marito himself said.
2) Visions of Helplessness:
1) A-yup, mecha-rider telling you to cover your ears isn’t enough, gotta have a girl repeat it! But ouch, yeah,huge caliber, metal and closed chamber. Not the best combination for puny human ears.
2) Seems the Martians might have worrying memories of Tanegashima as well. Can’t wait till we see the full details in Marito’s flashback, there, with the Kataphrakt staring him down.
3) Inaho has a point. If their only goal is to buy time for their allies, they can keep shooting down the fists, but at some point their ammo will run out, and their allies are still within an enclosed space. To win, they have to go on the offensive.
4) Poor Princess Asseylum, always we see her just sitting, helpless, useless, amidst the other refugees.
5) The Princess coming to earth was the cause. The reason, however, would be feelings of enmity and superiority, resentment and seeking to prove one’s worth, held by others.
6) “If I hadn’t come, there would have been no assassination.” – Technically, since you’re alive, there hadn’tbeen one.
3) Begin the Counter-Assault!:
1) So, a hidden Kataphrakt, which humanity sometimes managed to obtain, but how, considering the Martians are supposedly superior? Saazbaum didn’t seem happy about Tanegashima, so perhaps there was a failure there, a demonstration of Martian weakness, or humanity’s triumph?Also, “What is that?!” and then they don’t show us, boo! I bet Asseylum will power it up or give someone an Aldnoah Drive.
2) Each hand is named, and the Martian cries over the loss of each of them. To her, they’re more than tools, while the lives of other Martians are less than that.
3) For all her talk of quashing bugs, that Martian was ran over by a big-ass battleship. Guess that’s what they say, and that indeed, Asseylum revealed herself and helped. Welp, that sure is going to change the odds some.
4) “All Martians will pay for father’s death.” And Rayet indeed told Asseylum she’s the reason for all of it happening, so does she blame her? Will she try to kill her? Even though she knows it only happened because her father tried to kill the innocent princess? Duty to justice, duty to her people, and duty to the princess may all collide. Justice being both to repay for her father’s death, but also to protect the innocent princess.
4) Inaho’s Choice:
1) Ah-ha! There we have it, back to Gundam-esque “We have differing goals, we have differing ideals, so we must fight!” type frenemies. Usually they start out as enemies and work towards cooperation, but here they’ve had to start out by cooperating.
2) So, what’s going on here? Inaho is asking Slaine why he searched for the Princess. That seems like a dumb question, right? Well, keep in mind that Slaine had known the Princess is alive for a while now, but the war didn’t cease, and only resumed. Asseylum was already exploited, to start the war. So, Inaho wants to know why Slaine is looking for the Princess, knowing she’s alive. Reasons could be – kill her, which is ruled out since if that were the case he’d have shot at the ship rather than side with the humans. Uncover her identity and her being alive, but in which case, he’d be putting her at risk, and “exploiting” her – he’d be using her to stop the war. So, what does it leave us with? Slaine is planning to go the selfish route, of protecting the Princess while keeping her hidden, and letting the war rage on.
Inaho plans to exploit the Princess. Will he reveal her to be alive? Possibly, but even this victory involved exploiting her to give humans Aldnoah, even if by proxy. Inaho needs the Princess to win, and will not let such selfish reasoning stand.
Post Episode Thoughts:
“In Inaho we trust.”
The action in this episode was pretty good, and we’ve had all sorts of cool revelations – humanity took down a Martian Kataphrakt and battleship in Tanegashima, humanity now has some serious firepower. Inaho has his own plans and designs, including for Asseylum, and will treat people with differing goals as enemies, with whom he will cooperate, until they are no longer useful.
But honestly? Aside from the spectacle, this episode was just way too long. Did we need so many minutes spent on shooting down the flying fists, on showing people evacuating from the ship? This episode felt like 10 minutes of content, but since it had 20 minutes’ worth of “revelations”, or at least they needed to make it distinct from anything that’s to follow, it’s been dragged on.
So, where do we go from now? Slaine might still be rescued from the sea, since Asseylum cares for him, and I don’t think they’ll just abandon him behind. A story works better when there’s constant tension. But the real question now is, what is Inaho planning to do with the Princess, what will humanity do about her, and what will they do with their newfound firepower?
Mostly plot concerns, for now.
Geekorner-Geekulture. 
I’m still really torn when it comes to this show. I don’t like the whole “teenage main characters fighting a war” angle, nor do I like how overpowered and “cool” Inaho is. I mean, it’s interesting to see a cool-headed MC, but at this point, he takes the tension and the excitement out of the battles. Really, the only reason Inaho can’t single-handedly destroy the Martian fleet is because he doesn’t have access to equipment large enough to do so(that is, before the humans acquired the space ship). I find the action and strategy aspects of this show to be really disappointing.
What I do like is the political intrigue stuff that is going on amidst the Martians. I’d be totally ok if this show was all about Slaine sneaking around and the Knights backstabbing each other, but that doesn’t seem like a probable development. However, there’s always the potential for a twist, which is the thing that gives me hope for this show. Everyone’s calm reliance on Inaho’s strategies, as well as Inaho’s and Slaine’s conversation at the end, hint at some really interesting possibilities, such as Inaho dying because his strategies are suddenly countered by the Martians, or even Inaho becoming an antagonist of sorts.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that if Urobuchi has the balls to kill of the main character, this show could end up being very memorable, and not just because of shock value.
Eh, teenagers have been fighting on the front lines of conflagrations since time immemorial. It’s only relatively recently in human history that outfitting youths for active combat was something the majority of the world frowned upon. Even then, that’s not stopping some adolescents from joining some military or paramilitary where it’s allowed. That’s not even touching the subject of child soldiers.Do you dislike “teenage main characters fighting war” in general, or do you dislike how it’s being portrayed in this instant?
The political intrigue’s simultaneously simple and try-hard to me. It’s very straightforward and singularly focused, to the point of impulsive and childish, but the show spends a lot of time trying to highlight its importance.
Ah, right, I should probably clarify. It’s not the fact that the characters are young that bothers me(as you said, it’s historically quite common), what bothers me is the fact that this specific scenario is really, really common in anime. Now, I must admit that the premise makes this more believable than usually(wartime is one of the settings that makes stuff like this actually seem natural), but still, why do the characters always have to be high school students? Is this pandering vital to the success of the show, or are the writers just not capable of writing older characters?
As for the political intrigue, yeah, it’s simple(probably due to the fact that not enough time is devoted to developing it on screen), but I find it more interesting than anything else in the show. If given more screen time, I think it could be a really cool aspect of the show.
I think a big part of it is that this is how “Hero’s Journey” and “Coming of Age” stories often work – teenagers are still finding their ideals, and you have an easier time doing the whole “Here’s what really is really like” arc, as well as them changing.
With adults, it’s harder, and you actually have to spend more time on showing how they used to be. At least we’ve got at least one adult whose past plays a part here, and several more that aren’t ridiculous villains or just helpless clowns here, which beats most anime.
Huh? That sounds like if he does that, that’d be exactly what it’d be memorable for. I think you meant if he killed him soon it could be memorable because it’d remove the least interesting part of the show ;-)
I think currently it’s a solid show, above average for its ilk, but far from great.
Ah, yeah, that’s what I meant. Inaho’s death could pave the way to a storyline that, for instance, makes Slaine more interesting. It’s clear that Slaine needs more backstory, but it’s kinda conflicting with the massive amount of focus given to the earth people.
Though I guess killing off Inaho would remove the only actual earthling main character, which might make it hard to care about earth.
I don’t really know, it’s a complicated situation. I think Inaho is boring, but I see no way to kill him off without wasting the large amount of time that has already been spent on developing the earth people.
Well, damn. Now that you’ve gone ahead and explained it all, the SHOCK TWIST of this episode doesn’t seem that shocking at all. I legit got really riled up over it and started cursing at the screen lol.
I hope Slaine survives too. I like him as a character better than Inaho.
Well, it’s just my take on it, I could always be proven wrong. That section was literally me working it out as I typed it, trying to make sense of it.
Regardless, it feels too much like the “slow episodes” in No Game, No Life, the ones where almost nothing really happened, so they gave you a big “COOL!” or “WTF!” moment in the end to make you forget how dreadfully dull most of the episode had been.
I’m sure he’ll survive, he’s a main character. Just like everyone knew Asseylum survived in the first episode.
It’s great to finally get some semblance of real politick calculations being invested into the show, what with “Inaho’s Choice” and all. Nothing’s much has been seen yet of the U.E, and Vers’ politics have been mainly been childish and impulsive. Hopefully this proves to be a turning point.
I’m inclined to agree with your beef about all the action in this episode, and I’d apply that problem to the show in general so far. I’m also inclined to believe this is something of a directoral issue because Fate/Zero happens to have a few of the same issues in regards to pacing. Half of the show’s action could have been cut and replaced with time spent getting to know these characters better.
Series Composition is hard work. And the padding you sometimes need when you have 18 episodes’ worth of story but must fit them into 24 episodes’ worth of time :-/
I had been a bit more excited than usual about seeing this particular episode, since I knew from the previews that it’d be the one where Inaho and Slaine finally meet up. Slaine is by far my favourite character so far, and I’ve been waiting for the inevitable meeting between he and Inaho for a while now. The conclusion left me fairly unimpressed though, mostly because of how completely predictable it ended up becoming. I actually turned to my friend I was watching with about halfway through the episode and said something like, “Haha, in any generic mecha anime, this is the part where Slaine and Inaho figure out that they’re way too similar to each other and/or both want the princess for themselves, and decide they’re gonna be enemies for life.” Lo and behold, that’s exactly what happens.
Well, I did wonder, and said in the beginning, “Frenemies” is predicated on a rough-start, so can’t have them too chummy from the get-go. Then again, they could’ve just done away with the concept of frenemies altogether.
Also, we didn’t really get all that much Inaho-Slaine interaction, did we? I feel like this entire episode could’ve been covered in 10 minutes, if not less. So yeah, there just wasn’t much here.
Not too much direct interaction, no, but I felt like most of the episode was basically leading up to that specific point. I could be misremembering, but there seemed to be quite a bit of juxtaposition going on.
I just watched episode 12 of aldnoah zero. [redacted spoilers – Guy]
I’m sorry, I’ve removed most of your comment, because people might read these posts as they watch the series, and you’re spoiling material they might not have gotten to yet, wait for the episode 12 write-up to go up.