How can you make the Martians in this so mustache twirlingly evil - literally the first episode of the series ends with them landing on Earth and incinerating all life in the surrounding area, the sci-fi equivalent of dropping a nuke on a city. And then the rest of the series acts like "Hmm, here we have two opposing factions, each of them with their own valid points to make." There are no shades of gray here and yet they think we're supposed to care about the "Martian perspective."
>literally the first episode of the series ends with them landing on Earth and incinerating all life in the surrounding area,
This is basically MSG.
They were going for the same thing here with A/Z. I'm pretty sure they even made that explicit. A lot of the Zeons in MSG were buttholes too, it was really just ramba, and the grunts that were sympathetic. The commanders were all buttholes.
Similarly in A/Z I didn't find most of the martians to be that evil, it was mostly the aristocrats. Though the series could've done a better job at highlighting the divide between the high-born martians and their subjects as well as the different attitudes of the various "houses".
But I was still pretty disappointed with how the series turned out.
It's a damn shame because I really liked how cool the pv art images were and A1 really poured resources into this show.
The whole super robots vs real robots concept was so interesting as a premise.
I'd like to see another series try it.
Even a sequel to A/Z may be able to do it, because I don't think the series ended badly enough that it wouldn't be salvageable that way.
The setting is still ripe for development, just focus on some new characters and deal with the repercussions of the last season.
All the named martian characters were nobility, except the handmaid.
There was also the girl who was a spy on earth then went on Inaho's side after her family got killed by the guy they were working for.
She essentially grew up on earth and fought for that side. Counted Slaine as a martian but he eventually got a title. Not unusual but both sides had very little culture anyways.
If they were able to make it less jarring and push out some of the high energy fight scenes like in MJP they may have had a point.
>I'm pretty sure they even made that explicit.
They flat out said that this is going to be their Gundam-killer franchise.
>Gundam-killer franchise
>with CGI robots
I think when the information of the show first came out, people were trying to hype it up perhaps a little too hard.
>ei aoki, who exceeded his viewers' expectations bla bla bla
>literally who
>google him
>barely 10 titles under his belt, mostly fateshit and CGI
I don't have appropriate reaction image for this
He's worked on far more than 10 anime.
He was really popular back then because he had directed Fate and that was during it's rise to popularity.
His last show ID:Invaded was pretty good.
>world building where no detail has been overlooked
Someone post the in-universe map - you know, the one where half of the continents were blown up which should've been a world-ending event x100 but nothing seemed to have been affected by it.
I remember the creators even saying that "CG will be the key for surpassing it" - I shit you not.
this unironically makes me say “oy vey”
how could they have been so short-sighted and stupid?
were they just meshugannah?
I think it would've been better received had they actually locked Urobuchi down for all the episodes.
I remember the show was really popular during the first few he directed then it faded away and by S2 less people were paying attention to it.
But they also should've continued to make sequels to it and support it with a stronger media mix if they really wanted to compete with Gundam.
Nowadays to start a franchise you have to do that even if the first entry isn't as well received as you thought it would be.
Just having it be consistently present will allow it to grow over time.
Things like mobile games, Manga, LNs, etc would've gone far to keeping A/Z alive.
It's a damn shame because I really liked the designs and concept of the world. It is still very much salvageable.
If Eureka Seven can somehow still exist in its current state there was definitely no reason for this to end up as it did.
>directed
meant to say scripted.
Also, if you want to tackle Gendum then you have to shit out toys and model kits TONS of cheap toys and model kits.
In the end it only got two kits that costed like three or four times the amount of your average 1/144 and three action figures by a company known for their hit and miss quality and high prices, with one being just a re-release with the dumb looking space equiment and another one being a web exclusive or something.
Yeah, we didn't even get RDs for this series, seems kinda rare because even the most low-profile mecha anime seem to get those.
Uro is a hack that does rely on directors and production staff to give his stuff proper style to cover for the substance.
>Uro is a hack that does rely on directors and production staff to give his stuff proper style to cover for the substance.
Gaim with Toei trying and failing to repeat its success proves that wrong.
Actually, so does A/Z. It's other writers trying to make a show the way he would have, resulting in something way worse than anything he'd ever done.
>I remember the show was really popular during the first few he directed then it faded away and by S2 less people were paying attention to it.
Not having retention after the first few episodes isn't unusual. It had a lot of advertisements and a big name attached. The show itself had a mediocre start and ended up redundant.
>If Eureka Seven can somehow still exist in its current state there was definitely no reason for this to end up as it did.
Eureka Seven is in a worse situation. It also had a full 50 episodes.
I still don't get why the frick they made Inaho so autistic.
It made his character so annoying to watch.
At least with Mikazuki you have a really good justification for why he's a brick.
But Inaho is just a normal high schooler.
Bad time after the moon blew up. I think that type of character was popular at the time, but it really didn't fit with the story. IBO didn't suffer as much because the protagonist wasn't that important outside of the gundam.
Wasn't the speculation that Inaho legitimately did have autism? As in actual autism spectrum disorder, not "this character behaves quirkily, must be autism" meme autism. I figure Japanese writers must have been squeamish about outright confirming something like that, but it seems incredibly obvious. Hence why they didn't justify it with a tragic backstory or something because he was just born that way.
He displays more characteristics of a sociopath than an autist anyway. Highly calculating and able to focus his attention at will, has tons of friends who think highly of him despite having the apparent personality of a wooden plank, makes decisions based on utility rather than sentimentality. He was just high-functioning and his desires aligned with those of the people he was around (this is true of most successful sociopaths).
>At least with Mikazuki you have a really good justification for why he's a brick.
I never bought that it was a good justification because everyone else in Tekkadan went through the same sort of stuff and while they all naturally ended up warped and stunted because of it, nobody else was even remotely like Mikazuki. It honestly seems to me that he was just like this inherently and his background only exacerbated it.
Mikazuki was shown that way from way back in his flashbacks.
So he's probably inherently psychotic or something happened deep in his past.
Not all of Tekkadan had the same background though.
Biscuit for example had a pretty normal upbringing, but he was just poor.
I'm pretty sure Mikazuki already had the "mute right hand man" thing going on even in the flashbacks to when they were homeless orphans
With Aoki Ei, I don't know if he had what it takes to make Urobuchi's writing shine. The story that the Urobuchi wrote was completely different from the one that Aoki Ei, changed AZ into becoming.
I think that they did attempt to start a franchise for AZ, but it never got off the ground because the anime's ending put people off from it.
>The story that the Urobuchi wrote was completely different from the one that Aoki Ei, changed AZ into becoming.
Wow, I had no idea the changes were that drastic.
Can you tell or point me to where I can read about more of this?
What were the original ideas?
https://karice.wordpress.com/2015/08/23/p457/#fn7
Dubious analysis, but I don't think there was ever any sources for there being a completely different story.
Aoki Ei took Ga-rei, a completely run-of-the-mill supernatural manga, and made Ga-rei Zero, a masterpiece that also had the effect of causing the mangaka Segawa to completely pivot from whatever direction he was initially going with the story because Yomi turned out to be so popular. I can see why they entrusted Aoki with AZ because he had proven himself to have a magic touch, but it's clear that Aldnoah had too many cooks spoiling the stew and it was too much for even him to save.
We're living in this newest age of media for over 70 years now, and there wasn't a singe [X killer] that succeeded, ever. Every time I hear about new one, it cracks me the frick up.
It's more prominent in video games, but anime and movies have its fair share too.
Gundam fricking killer, yea right.
I'm CGI-hater and I was shitting on MJP when it came out, but ever since then nothing came fricking close to it, like holy shit, we are going backward in terms of technology.
Even that Mazinger movie is a joke in comparison.
MJP had good designs but also played to the strengths with lots of movement and bright backgrounds.
Aldnoah covered the flaws in cg up a few times but often had vibrant mechs on grey backgrounds.
It was noted when the show was airing. IIrc it supposedly came up in an interview and it was confirmed he wasn't.
It seems that Orange has a magic touch when it comes to CGI. Even their non-mecha CGI anime like Land of the Lustrous look amazing compared to everyone else's attempts at CGI.
It's because they're the only studio that gives it a proper effort.
The others don't, they just use CG to fill in gaps where they don't have any talented animators.
MJP has been mentioned already, but it predated Aldnoah by like a year and showed that even back in 2013, mech CGI could look really good, but then AZ's CGI just... didn't. Like it was okay, certainly watchable, but with how much they were hyping up this show you'd think they could have put more into the CGI budget.
Hate it or not it's the future but done properly it can be pretty decent. Give Pac Rim Black a watch.
>The whole super robots vs real robots concept was so interesting as a premise.
This might've worked if they let characters other than Inaho figure out how to beat the Martians once in a while.
My favorite example of that was in S2 where they're fighting Jonathan Joestar and Inaho isn't anywhere close to the fight so it looks like they're gonna have to figure it out on their own but out of nowhere he literally snipes the guy from space and saves the day.
In Gundam it was more nuanced. They were doing a spying mission until a guy sperged out for military clout. Denim wanted to stop him and evacuate him, but his friend got blown up by Amuro. He tried to avenge his friend but died.
They are two dimensional
I remember when this show was being hyped up so much, and I remember seeing pictures of it getting massive advertisement on billboards in Japan, funny how it was basically for nothing as the show did poorly
ack ack
It's the exact same situation with the Vagans in AGE. Japan really went through a "they're human so they deserve to live no matter what they've done" phase in the early 10s.
I mean the entire Vagan colony certainly didn't deserve to be nuked just because Ezelcant was an butthole. Ezelcant dying peacefully in his sleep made no sense narratively and Flit going down in history as a hero was weird, but the protagonists choosing not to commit genocide was the correct ending for the series.
Just wait until you see the ending, you'll love it
They're a stand-in for America during the War on Terror, we were also "shock and awe obvious tyrants but now that we're here shit's kind of complicated not all of us wanted this mess."
Everyone but the princess was pro war.
That seems to be an accurate parallel to the WOT. It was only after the war started dragging on that people started realizing it was wrong. And even then to this day you got half the country insisting it was actually right.
They were still supporting the war as it went on. They either supported the war and wanted the princess dead or supported the war and were loyal to the princess.
If you want to talk about WOT go to /misc/
/misc/ is the last place I would consider talking about the WOT. At least on /m/ you have Gundam fans which means you have people that understand why war is bad.
Doesn't make it the appropriate place for a discussion
Figured it was the other way around he had more implants because he was crazy enough to go the extra mile.
You have a show that has a conflict within that show being a parallel to a real life one. I'd say it is rather apt.
Not only is it rather apt, but it is also deliciously witty.
>You smug earthgays get to BREATH AIR and EAT CHICKEN you can never understand how much suffering us Mars people endure so we're just gonna slaughter you all because justice I guess
I'm tired of non mecha fans telling me it's not like other mechas. Literally drop the sawano OST and high production and what are you left with ? A mess. There's a reason earlier MGS stuff still holds up and it's cos of the story and character. Also normies always tell me the "show doesn't focus on the mechs but the characters and drama". b***h please have you watched any Gundam?
I dunno if it was just that it was aggressively promoted, or if Urobuchi's name has this magic spell on people, but it really did bring in a lot of non mecha fans thinking it was something special despite it being completely bog-standard for the genre. Imagine if all that effort had been expended on getting them into an actual good mecha anime.
Its this weird fricking shit that they can't accept /m/ as """"Real"""" anime and thus recycle the Cinemaphile-tier arguments about the entire "It's TOTALLY DIFFERENT THAN MECHA SERIES" keeps showing up as a brainbug by those who never watched mecha series outside half remembered Robotech and Gundam Wing episodes...
I figured the 3 implants on his spine probably didn't help him much for the mental side
Even if we were to limit ourselves to Cinemaphile meme mecha series that they allow themselves to like despite hating mecha, Evangelion is a legitimate masterpiece that just also happens to be mega-popular. There's no reason to recommend Aldnoah when Evangelion is on the table.
the series is probably the worst part of Evangelion
Slaine did nothing wrong.
He didn't throw the princess out through the airlock.
The problem with this series was that S1 had the perfect ending. Amuro is dead, the peace princess is dead, the primary antagonist is dead. That just leaves Slaine, who has reserves of hatred, spite and ambition he didn't know he had, to claw and bite and kick his way to the top, because everyone who could stop him is now dead.
Oh wait, they walked it all back.
This series has a lot of back-downs like that, notably the alcoholic teacher trying to overcome his trauma. At the end, they just say he got over it, it never paid out.
Ironically enough this is actually basically what happens in the Mobile Suit Gundam novel written over 40 years ago so even if they had gone this route they still would have been copying Gundam. Aldnoah simply cannot get out from under Gundam's shadow.
Yeah, it's quite strange to think that the original novel ended like that. Even the characters (Notably Kai) seem very taken aback by the whole thing, with Char effectively winning everything.
Reminder the president of Aniplex said Aldnoah/Zero was going to "blow away" Gundam during its premier.
Name one time Aniplex has said anything worth taking seriously.
Whatever, it's not like Aniplex is starving for money. They are one of the biggest companies in the industry with many financial successes under their belt. This is the anime equivalent of saying "Hahaha look at how that Star Wars movie flopped, Disney is toast!!!"
star wars producer never said they're taking down star trek
They didn't need to. ST took itself down to Les Moonves hating ST.
Have no fear everyone! Banjo Haran has arrived to fixed AZ's plot and some of its characters with their development (minus Slaine). I also become one of the main characters in this show along with my friends, Inaho Kaizuka and Duke Fleed!
I don't get it.
>Urobuchi writes offensively bad slop as is his usual MO
>Other people try and fail to salvage it
>Anon ends up confused as to why the story is stupid
Many such cases.
Urobutchi's plans though made sense. Aoki Ei's changes were what made people unsatisfied.
Wait until the 2nd cour. You think the first episode is mediocre? You have no idea just how low this can go.
>cour
You think this is an anime or something?
I remember being incredibly disappointed by this show, it had such odd plot lines
>terrorist girl who helped start the entire war holds peace princess hostage
>inaho:she is not the enemy lets let her go guys
>slaine rolls up in a custom support ship and saves everyone on board by helping inaho, asks if the princess is safe
>inaho:this man…is the enemy
It’s so stupid, especially because inaho is supposed to be the smart one, yet his actions there directly frick over their side and create a completely avoidable conflict
I always figured Inaho was jealous of Slaine and made a rash decision because he had the hots for the princess, whereas he didn't see Rayet as a threat to his relationship. And the robot eye in S2 did indeed confirm that he loved her. But I agree that it could have been written better.
They should have just gone with the original plan and have characters become more and more aware of the fact that Inaho is just creepy.
I can't.
Maybe you should have.
You know, it made some goofy decisions in the first core; but I would have forgiven it all if that legitimately gutsy and surprising red wedding esque season finale had been allowed to retain consequence. So many named characters dead, including possibly the op protagonist and princess, the main rival character may have an arc that turns him around into an unexpected second protagonist, a lot about what we knew about the war’s power dynamic possibly turned on its head. I remember being legitimately shocked.
Then the second core starts and almost all the dead characters got better, protagonist who got SHOT IN THE HEAD just has a prosthetic eye now and is even more op, and the rival characters’ promise and potential is just thrown away so he can become mustache twirling villain but sad.
That. shit still pisses me off. What a waste.
It basically sums up the whole series. It acted like it was a subversive "different from other mecha anime" type of show, but any time it did something actually interesting, they immediately walked it back. As if they were expecting to be praised for something they refused to actually commit to.
I think they honestly thought that the people liked the Earthside characters.
I could have if they actually developed them. Instead everyone is a bog-standard archetype and they somehow managed to do nothing with all the time they had.
Nah, their issues were all just non-issues compared to the Mars characters and Inaho if they explored his past would have made people think that he belonged in a mental facility. He's an actual psychopath.
They never intended to kill off the MC they just wanted a good cliff-hanger and went too far. Deuterotagonist was never meant to team up with the MC, nor did he ever get to the point of mustache twirling villain.
The show just added drama for suspense, dropped character's development and bent backwards to follow a story outline that it no longer fit. You had characters dealing with ptsd, constant shifting of blame, struggles to understand conflict class struggles and a heir opposed to a popular war. They all go nowhere.
End of the show was similar especially bad. On one level it looks like it could be heading towards a repeat of the start of the war, the princess was on a goodwill mission, while various members of her kingdom are continuing the war. On another its supposed to be a happy ending.
They even changed it from what it was supposed to be just because they didn't want to give the Earthside characters a hard time.
Inaho was supposed to be an obsessive psychopath that the Earthside tolerated because he won battles. He was supposed to be seen as creepy by his peers. But they tossed it out in favor of trying to create another Kirito mecha edition.
Are there any mecha anime where the protagonist actually is a fricked up person like that and not seen or portrayed as strictly heroic? I'd like to see something like that.
Yeah
Bonus points if he's a bloodthirsty maniac who either lives to fight until he dies and speaks only through death or takes orders from a genocidal madman kind of like a First Crusade-like situation but with mechs
Godzilla is the hero protecting the planet from attacking kaiju in most movies. Do you even know anything about Godzilla? Your entire post radiates an aura of stupidity.
The whole time I was watching, I was saying "That's crazy."
One of the last non-gundam mecha anime. It has a place in history
They are still making non-Gundam mecha.
However A/Z is definitely one of the last few that felt like it had a very broad appeal even among western audiences while it aired.
The only others that have come after that achieve that have been Studio Trigger mecha anime.
>However A/Z is definitely one of the last few that felt like it had a very broad appeal even among western audiences while it aired.
This is not true. It rode on the Urobuchi hype train that plague anime fore 3-4 years and that's it.
Which is exactly why it had broad appeal. People follow Urobuchi rabidly. Trigger anime has broad appeal for a similar reason, because they're associated with being "the Gurren Lagann guys" which then if you trace that backwards you realize that Gurren Lagann only got so popular because it was by Gainax, "the Evangelion guys". Everything goes back to Evangelion in the end.
...which was memed into being "the greatest anime ever" by ANN homosexuals.
Secuckis is the one to blame for the state of the western anime fandom.
If the first season also claimed some interesting concept - super robots against real robots - then the second season spoiled everything that could be fricked up.
For a good sequel, they needed to kill the autistic pilot and dedicate the plot to the bastard princess and the commoner knight, and the Earth can go to hell ...
The show didn't even invent that concept. Real robots vs. super robots was invented by Armored Trooper VOTOMS in 1983.
whats the super robot in votoms? ypsilons bot?
Is this show any good? I hear it's Layzner for the modern age.
First 3 episodes were great stuff. Rest of Season 1 was edgy but entertaining. Season 2 was...something else. I did really like the low tech Earth mechs though. The Sleipnir has a good look to it. Though the huge wings tacked onto the feet always rubs me the wrong way
Did you know? The Sleipnir and Inaho having one eye are a reference to Odin.
>literally the first episode of the series ends with them landing on Earth and incinerating all life in the surrounding area,
That's every mecha villain
But they're not portrayed as good guys.
Hey I have an idea, why don’t you shut the frick up.
They could have saved this show if at the end Slaine turns to the screen and says "The Aristocrats!"
People in YouTube comments are insane.