Aldnoah.Zero Episode 1 Discussion

ollythirteen said:
@ Jao Zangetsu,

And Psycho Pass. And Gargantia. And Blassreiter (his involvement in both).

Haven't seen Phantom, But 1/5 does not a good writer/character creator make.

And due to the praise he's gotten off of PMMM and F/Z, two mediocre shows save for their music (which they share) and animation (like Ufotable, hate SHAFT) has made it so he doesn't mess with the formula.

But dude's formula is in need of messing with.

Over-reliance on shock-value will only get you so far.

To me Psycho Pass is the best thing that guy came up with. He managed to fuck that up too with bland characters, though.

Kaioshin_Sama said:


Yeah I find it pretty funny that most people seem to think the last 5-10 minutes of the show were the most exciting when for me it was the most predictable and obvious part of any of it based on the trailer and the person writing. I mean it's just such an obvious generate an "epic" moment scene, and I guess MAL loves it's "epic" moments, but like it just felt so heavy handed. It's not like it didn't fit or anything, but the shock value intent behind it is just so played out by Urobuchi that it really didn't have any impact to me. Plus you've got the textbook "epic" blaring Sawano music playing over it reminding me of things like Guilty Crown and that one song from Kill la Kill they never stopped playing like multiple times and episode after what seemed like it was going to be a return to greatness.

It's like the show felt it had to blow it's load and shock and amaze people as quickly as possible and I guess it's one way to get peoples attention, but how it follows up on it is going to tell the real story about this show. Can it make me care about the cast or the ongoing sequence of events or is it just going to be another Guilty Crown kind of clusterfuck of Versians massacring Earth civilians and "despair and suffering" for the next 23 episodes because I can see that getting really old really fast.

And yeah it's funny how Gen Urobuchi always seems to start with every possible advantage for his shows. Everything he writes for gets a ton of budget and focus and is planned to be this huge hit by producers as well as the most popular music artists and composers (notice I didn't say best). He doesn't always get the best director though (IMO Shinbo is a hack and can only harm whatever it is he's involved with) but yeah it'd be nice to see if he can ever elevate a show that doesn't have everything already set up for him to be able to just shock people and hold their attention. The few times it doesn't feel like he's been afforded every advantage and enhancement in staff and budget we've gotten shows like Suisei no Gargantia and Blassreiter.

Obviously that's not happening here though, this show is as big budget blockbuster as they come this season at least initially. A-1 kind of has a habit of having their animation quality absolutely tank after the first couple episodes of a show and while hopefully the split cour can help with that I'm still not expecting the remaining episodes to look anywhere near as flashy as this one did unless they really are just equating surpassing Gundam with creating as much carnage and "kill em' all" atmosphere as possible. I mean Aniplex could certainly try to rely on shock value and over the top characters again like they did with Guilty Crown and Valvrave, but it'd be nice to see a little change of pace and them actually managing to capture a little bit of that Gundam gravitas which is about so much more than just the juxtaposition of cutely designed characters (they're really trying to go for the whole use a designer that has primarily worked on slice of life shows for max"suffering" route like Madoka again which is kind of lame to be honest) dying horribly.

ex_necross said:

I don't think you know what cheesy means. This episode had no cheesy parts in it.

thedryness said:

ha. no. there was definitely cheese. that end scene was very heavy handed. i like at least a little subtlety with my irony. not to mention the scene with the kid calmly watching missiles.

ex_necross said:

Dude honestly it seems like you're pretty biased against this show based on the director.

ollythirteen said:
@ Jao Zangetsu,

And Psycho Pass. And Gargantia. And Blassreiter (his involvement in both).

Haven't seen Phantom, But 1/5 does not a good writer/character creator make.

And due to the praise he's gotten off of PMMM and F/Z, two mediocre shows save for their music (which they share) and animation (like Ufotable, hate SHAFT) has made it so he doesn't mess with the formula.


But dude's formula is in need of messing with.

Over-reliance on shock-value will only get you so far.

To me Psycho Pass is the best thing that guy came up with. He managed to fuck that up too with bland characters, though.

Haytin said:
Man the trailer for this anime was a giant piece of shit. I wasn't expecting this anime to be that good but man was I wrong. Only things I didn't like was the main character being emotionally retarded, and the first set of mechs they showed looked weird. Also I was thinking killing the princess was planned by the martians but I hope I'm wrong. Definitely a 5/5

Haytin said:
Man the trailer for this anime was a giant piece of shit. I wasn't expecting this anime to be that good but man was I wrong. Only things I didn't like was the main character being emotionally retarded, and the first set of mechs they showed looked weird. Also I was thinking killing the princess was planned by the martians but I hope I'm wrong. Definitely a 5/5

DawnJ said:
Good episode except the kids scene before the ending credit, too cheesy.

Amon-Raw said:


Lol the trailer was bad for real.
The animation was crazy I looked back and thought it was some some of movie or OVA.
The art is really nice. Lets hope the story is good.
The music gets you hyped as f***

Kaioshin_Sama said:


On a meta level I'm definitely a little put off as a result of the really obnoxious and braggy ad campaign the show had going into it as well as it being another pretty blatant collection of what Aniplex thinks is a catch all super team of staffers. Almost as much time has been spent talking about the staff involved in discussion on this show and promotion of it as has been about the actual show itself if not more and I think that was pretty deliberate. I just would like to hope that this shows carves out a place for itself in the history of mecha anime rather than just being remembered as yet another collection of big names that delivered a dubious show like Brain Powered or Guilty Crown.

Like I said in another thread too there's more to making a memorable mecha show like many Gundam series than just shocking twists, carnage and mass death events. That's the sort of thing I expect out of what I consider the weaker entries in the franchise like Gundam Seed Destiny, not the ones that put it on the map to me as my favorite sci-fi space opera franchise in any medium. That's really it as far as the show goes itself, I just hope there's more to it than the Aniplex formula of playing blaring Sawano music over "epic scenes" cause Guilty Crown and Attack on Titan already did that quite adequately.

Kairu1991 said:
I thought it was rather funny and to be frank would of been even more funnier if one of those martian ships landed right infront of them lol.

KeiSoo said:
Agreed. I just took it as Urobuchi's cruel sense of humor, haha.

fshah said:
That was a pretty decent episode. 1st half was kinda a slow start but the 2nd half lived up to my expectations.

This is how I feel back then when the 1st Gundam UC episode came out. Maybe because of mecha + Sawano's vibe in this series. OSTs are powerful indeed.

Yukari_Hiwada said:
Watched this for Urobutcher and Hiroyuki Sawano. Indeed, I got what I want: Character death and godly music. The last track gave me goosebumps. Damn!

But I'm sure the princess is alive. She's supposed to have some powers right? (Or did I hear that wrong?)

Anyhow, that was a good first episode.

DawnJ said:
Killing female main is the next big thing

no really tho