02.09
After a slightly disappointing episode last week, Aldnoah.Zero 2nd Season this week follows the previous episode in terms of pacing and tone, leaving the promise of more hilarious antics to be shown next week. In this week’s episode, however, we have a lack of Slaine once again, Inaho and Rayet bonding over angst and superpowers, and Lemrina being a little shit. Fun times.
The Vers Count taken hostage last week, Count Mazuurek, is interrogated by Inaho and Rayet this week and Inaho proves even more in this episode that he is a Gary Stu. He now has a lie detector planted within his extremely scientifically accurate robotic eye and that his powers of intiuition with enemies is inpeccable – he is always correct. This is the same scenario that happened with Inaho and Slaine during EP7 of the 1st season (The Boys of Earth), where after Slaine saves Inaho’s bacon from Countess Femieanne’s Kataphrakt Hellas, Inaho shoots him down because ‘he is my enemy’ or some shit, I don’t know, this show is really dumb. Inaho believes Mazuurek is honest and trustworthy and sends him on his way to his Landing Castle to provide proof that Lemrina’s Ass-hime is a fake (lovely dramatic irony usage here), despite the fact that Mazuurek has no reason to believe Inaho. Unlike the incident with Slaine, Inaho has been caught red-handed by Inko, thank god.
Rayet is still suffering from her identity crisis of being a Terran-Martian, and still proclaims that Martians suck and Terrans rule and that she hates herself the most, the really typical stuff. Rayet is also showing signs of being another member of ‘smooth move’ Eggy Azalea’s harem, by literally uttering dialogue you’d think belongs in shit like Golden Time or Nisekoi. That’s right folks, Rayet has become a tsundere, and Inaho will warm her ice-cold and traumatized heart in due time. That time may be limited, as Dr. No Name mentions that Inaho’s eye could kill him if it jams into his brain. That just reminds me of Drakengard 3 for some unexplained reason, and Aldnoah.Zero shouldn’t be doing that, but eye terror always sticks with you. I hope he dies, to be honest. I hope everyone actually dies in the ending. It’ll make up for the fact they didn’t. I love death in anime, it should happen more often.
Slaine is challenged to a duel by Cruhteo clone #2, who has possibly the best-worst animation Aldnoah.Zero has had to offer currently. I will point out I like how we can obviously tell Lemrina is disguised as Asseylum thanks to her quick facial expressions and her glare, even though the show actually shows us beforehand – it might honestly be something to due with the animation, or something entirely deliberate. It seems to be deliberate, as it lingers on some expressions for more than a second.
Slaine goes on a monologue this week about birds, which begins completely out of context and only serves to symbolize Lemrina’s imprisonment, that she is a ‘flightless bird’. It’s quite unsubtle, really, and it doesn’t help that it begins suddenly and just leaves the viewer slightly amused by the stupidity of it all. It’s so stupid. Come on, Ei Aoki, you can do so much better.
On a final note, I genuinely think the CG is getting worse with every airing episode. Next week promises a return to form, as Slaine must have a honourable battle with JoJo’s wannabe Marylcian in their Kataphrakts and Mazuurek must find proof to prove Inaho’s obviously right theory, because Inaho is always right even when he actually is, and that doesn’t make sense at all.
Also, Aldnoah right revocation is not a thing. You can’t magically turn off genes via kissing, biology doesn’t work that way. The show has said nothing to discuss the passing on of Aldnoah genes or how to revoke them, this time fanon doesn’t make sense. Unless somehow Lemrina or Asseylum can magically create antibodies or some virus to kill off the Aldnoah gene, you can’t just turn genes off. Science in Aldnoah or real-life have not gotten that far.
If you think Aldnoah.Zero is intelligent, just remember that Saazbaum died thanks to space wind. The wheel of fate is turning, folks, who knows what will happen next.