Story: 3/10
Picking up nineteen months after the first half, we find not much has really changed on a whole. We discover that Slain is now a knight under Count Saazbaum. Princess Asseylum is in a bacta tank recovering from her gunshot wound at the end of the first cour, and is thus comatose. Finally, we find that Kirit- I mean Inaho, is not dead and now has a supercomputer in place of his eye, as he was shot in the face at the end of the first half. It appears almost nothing has happened in the last nineteen months, as the war is still on, but none of the characters have changed, or have changed so little its unnoticeable. All major developments have been stalled, and it seems like the only purpose for this time skip was to make it more dramatic when Asseylum inevitably wakes up, making the time skip wholly unnecessary.
Without spoiling anything that occurs in the second cour, this show story clearly had a lot potential, as The Urobutcher himself created the original concept and first episode. Being a big fan of Urobuchi anime, (Psycho-Pass, Fate/Zero, Madoka Magica, to name a few) this show had a lot going for it. However, with constant nonsensical character developments, and the walking Deus Ex Machina of an MC, we get a very unpolished product. This show had a direction, but it felt like the directors wrote the story into a corner, and instead of re-writing it, they just had Kiri- I mean Inaho, fix all the problems magically. While this is less annoying in the second half and more realistic due to the introduction of Cortana in the form of Inaho's left eye, it's still extremely annoy to watch the supposedly vastly inferior Earth forces constantly overpower and win out over the technologically superior Martian invading forces, because some kid is far too intelligent for his age.
Art: 4/10
While the art is not godawful, for a mecha show, you expect your mechas to look nice. But when they are just mechas are all CG all the time, they look very choppy and out of place with the rest of the characters. The characters themselves are pretty boring, and only have a couple of unique features, but for the most part just look like your average KyoAni esque anime character. (Note, I realize Kyoto Animation did not animate this show, that's just the name I've given to characters that look like this, as they might as well be KyoAni characters) While I do like the KyoAni style design, it's getting really monotonous, when everybody looks the same. However, my major gripe and the reason why I score the art so low, is because the CG mechs. I cannot stand this trend of godawful CG showing up in shows. It's lazy, looks like garbage, and it needs to desist, as it brings down quality as a whole. Speaking of lazy...
Sound: 3/10
To me, sound might as well just mean soundtrack, and so that is the biggest factor for this low score. However, the voice acting in this show was of average quality, and I had no qualms with it. The actual SFX was decent as well, but wasn't anything all that unique, but was certainly not bad. Now my main issue with this series is Hiroyuki Sawano. This is a man who has taken the Call of Duty approach to sound design. The first show I saw that he worked on was Guilty Crown. Guilty Crown has one of my all time favorite OST's, and is a big reason I think so highly of it, even though it has some awkward plot lines here and there. The next show I watched that had Hiroyuki's name on it was Shingeki no Kyojin. This show also had a very good soundtrack, but I couldn't help but feel it was far too similar to GC's. Take Bios and The Armored Titan's Theme, for example. Both have German-ese vocals, loud orchestral music + bass. Not exactly the same but the style just feels stagnate. It only gets worse from there, as next was Kill La Kill, which like Aldnoah was also a disappointment. I feel this is also in part to Hiroyuki, but KlK had a lot of it's own problems. Again, the only song I even remember is "Don't Lose Your Way", and only because it's so campy. Finally, we get to A.Z's OST, and at this point it all just sounds like poorer versions of GC's OST, as if Hiroyuki has run out of conductive genius, and is just trying to emulate his previous successes.
Characters: 2/10
I've already said basically anything that needs to be said about Inaho Kirigaya. Kazuto Kaizuka is Deus Ex Machina, and nothing more. He's a kuudere, but without the dere. He's completely unlikable, and I was very excited at the concept of him being dead at the end of the first cour, as it meant we'd hopefully get less plot convenience and more actual story. However, he comes in and saves everything every time, so much so that he's not even a character, he's more like a force within the series that pushes it forward because no one knew how to write a story without the Eagles coming in and saving the Earth and Company.
Next is easily the best and most frustrating character in the series, Slaine. Slaine was the most relatable character within the series, and is thus the most frustrating because he is not given the proper development he needed to really shine and make this a series worth watching. In the end he just feels like a crappy version of Suzaku. He gets a very good arc that could have gone sooo perfectly for him, but you know he can't achieve his goals because the "good" guys have to win.
All other characters feel like set pieces, and are so distant they don't feel real. The only one I want to mention is Kouichirou Marito. This is a character that in the first cour gets a great amount of development and could actually be a great character fighting with his PTSD after encounter a Martian warship and his forces being devastated by it. But I can tell you exactly what's wrong with him, by simply quoting what is, at the time of writing this, is his bio on MAL itself: "No biography written."
Enjoyment: 1/10
Very few shows actually piss me off. Even shows I absolutely despise, like Mirai Nikki, were incapable of pulling this feat off. I knew exactly what was going to happen at every turn, and was never surprised. This show followed the most linear path it might as well have been a line on a piece of paper, it's about as generic as one too, so I'd have trouble distinguishing which was which. That's a lie of course, because one of the lines would make me extremely perturbed, telling me exactly which is which. I don't write reviews that often, but when I do, it's for shows that I love so much and think are underrated, or I hate so much I feel it's my civic duty to warn others to stay far, far away from them.
Overall, I personally rate this a 1/10, but I think it's actually closer to a 3/10. This was a mainly negative critic, but I felt this show had so much potential, and because it didn't live up to it, I personally feel like it stole my time from me. And I want it back.
