Aldnoah.Zero - generic discussion thread

[Gundam888]

it is 24 ep last time i check.

[Irenesharda]

Originally Posted by ImperialKnight

Not really. In ancient Rome many of the teachers and tutors around that time were slaves who were employed even in higher levels of education.



Actually that might be one reason why he wants to bomb them as soon as possible before they escape.

Plus he said contact may be cut off afterwards so he wouldn't know.

I don't know, I just don't get that "ancient Rome" kind of government feel from them. They remind me more of feudal Europe. Where a person of lower class was expected to stay lower class and none of the classes mixed. Also, the way that not a single Martian character we've seen so far other than the princess has cared an inkling about the lives of the Terrans so far, makes me think they don't hold Terrans in enough regard to have them teach Martian royalty.

As for Saazbaum, he's to smart enough to know they've escaped already. They were gone before Trillram was killed. We'll have to see where he goes from here. Also, I'm almost sure that he's not at the top of this conspiracy food chain. We'll probably see how far this goes.

[Kazu-kun]

Originally Posted by Sute443

I'd also like to note that if Trillram HAD withdrawn as Asseylum ordered, he might not have been in position to be hit by the attack.

She ordered him to stand down, and he did stop (because he was surprised, but still). The point is moot though, because she was just trying to buy time for Inaho and the others to attack. She never meant to give him the chance to surrender. She was just trying to make him an easy target. In fact, even if he wanted to get out of his mech to talk to her, he wouldn't have been able to because they fired on him right way, giving him absolutely no time for anything.

She went up to Trillram's mech at the first chance she got and she tried to talk him down. If Trillram had been a good knight, he would have been the one to suggest taking her to Cruchteo to end the war.

Like I said above, he did stop as she ordered, but she was just trying to trick him so all he got in return was a surprise attack.

All this really doesn't add up unless she knows more than she lets on, and this needs to be addressed, preferably sooner than later.

[Sheba]

In fact, even if he wanted to get out of his mech to talk to her, he wouldn't have been able to because they fired on him right way, giving him absolutely no time for anything.

"You wiped an entire military squad like they were nothing, went after a civvie van for whatever reason and killed one of my friends (*). No hard feelings really!"

Yeah, Trillram would have no fucking chance and no rights.

(*) He did stomp the ground to make Inaho let his friend fly to his death.

[kyp275]

Originally Posted by Triple_R

3 episodes of anime is a significant stretch of total running time. It's not unreasonable to want to have a good sense of major characters/protagonists by this point in the anime.

*most characters fails Triple's test.*

While you'd have a point if it's about the MC, but for a character that's had no more than a few minutes of screen time in the first hour of 8, which consists primarily of action scenes to establish the premise of the story?

It's quite obvious the princess is going to get her screen time in, it's just not her turn yet.

[Irenesharda]

Well, we're one down, 37 other knights to go. (Trillram was considered a knight, but since he doesn't have his own castle, I can't consider him one of the 37.)


However, I did notice in the first and second episode, they specifically showed us certain knights over others. Who do you think will be next on the list for our heroes to face?

[Kazu-kun]

Originally Posted by Sheba

"You wiped an entire military squad like they were nothing, went after a civvie van for whatever reason and killed one of my friends (*). No hard feelings really!"

Yeah, Trillram would have no fucking chance and no rights.

(*) He did stomp the ground to make Inaho let his friend fly to his death.

And you think this is good enough a reason to waste a chance to contact her people and let them know she's alive, which could stop the war?

Unless she's got a reason to believe he would not submit to her, her actions don't make any sense to me.

[Elder]

^Why? A feudal system is by nature decentralized. The orbital knights act as their own semi-independent autonomous states. Your assumption that they act as one unified nation-state under the Ver Empire really has no basis here. The actions of the Orbital Knights in invading Earth are pretty much their own attempt at a territorial grab that they have been planning for a decade since the last war. The princess revealing herself to be alive is not going to stop their advances.

Originally Posted by Irenesharda

Well, we're one down, 37 other knights to go. (Trillram was considered a knight, but since he doesn't have his own castle, I can't consider him one of the 37.)

Trillram was a baron, a position lower than the orbital knights who are presumably all counts. Presumably A-1/Urobuchi is basing the system off the abolished Japanese peerage system.

[Key Board]

Originally Posted by Thess

Unlikely, because her father died during the war (before she was born). It's possible that Slaine is related to her grandfather, the reasons of Slaine's father's mysterious 'switch sides' which aren't disclosed. His father could have been the Emperor's nephew, for instance or older son who remained on Earth. However, I doubt he would let a relative be treated like a dog so it's still far-fetched. I think he's there because he's "adopted" in a way by Cruhteo and he's one of the main characters.

At one point I wondered if Slaine was really part Martian and if perhaps dad fell in love with a Martian spy.

But I'm not so sure about the timeline.

If he's related it would explain the treatment he is getting, though. They don't like him because of his Terran blood, but they can't outright kill him because of his lineage

[ImperialKnight]

Originally Posted by Irenesharda

I don't know, I just don't get that "ancient Rome" kind of government feel from them. They remind me more of feudal Europe. Where a person of lower class was expected to stay lower class and none of the classes mixed. Also, the way that not a single Martian character we've seen so far other than the princess has cared an inkling about the lives of the Terrans so far, makes me think they don't hold Terrans in enough regard to have them teach Martian royalty.

Oh no I meant that as a way of pointing out that slaves were used in such positions before.

Regardless though for a "dog" he seems to be privy to quite a few things I mean he has access to a Vers transport I mean what? They had no available martians to pilot it?

As for Saazbaum, he's to smart enough to know they've escaped already. They were gone before Trillram was killed. We'll have to see where he goes from here. Also, I'm almost sure that he's not at the top of this conspiracy food chain. We'll probably see how far this goes.

How would he know? He has no eyes on the ground, Trillram WAS his eyes on the ground and he was killed before he could relay that information over.

There's nothing stopping him from doing a wide orbital bombardment.

^Why? A feudal system is by nature decentralized. The orbital knights act as their own semi-independent autonomous states. Your assumption that they act as one unified nation-state under the Ver Empire really has no basis here. The actions of the Orbital Knights in invading Earth are pretty much their own attempt at a territorial grab that they have been planning for a decade since the last war. The princess revealing herself to be alive is not going to stop their advances.

No but it completely removes their justification for the war to begin with .

That and given how Saazabum is willing to bombard an entire area and even risk killing or attacking one of the other counts goes to show that the Martian populace in general looks up to the princess and probably the other knights as well that aren't in on it.

[Anh_Minh]

Originally Posted by Triple_R

How does she know it's Trillram in there?

By recognizing his mech.

And how is she in any position to think of him as a "major dickweed"?

They spent months on the same space castle. As good at it as he looks, that should be plenty of time for him to make himself hated.

[Triple_R]

Originally Posted by Sute443

Martian civilians. Martian knights. These are two different groups. How is that hard to understand?

It isn't. But you never made any such clarification in what I was replying to there. What I was replying to was...

Originally Posted by Sute443

I strongly disagree. In the absence of further evidence, we should make no assumptions about the popularity of her stance amongst the Vers Empire.

And later on in the same post...

Triple_R, you seem to be focusing a lot on Asseylum's actions not making sense from the perspective of her being a good princess. But the thing is, the empire she's the princess of are the BAD GUYS. Being a good princess to them would make her a BAD GUY from the perspective of the viewers.

In what I'm quoting here, you made no distinction between the Martian civilians and the Martian knights. You simply made a blanket reference to the "Vers Empire" or "empire", which seemed to me to be you using it as a catch-all term for both the civilians and the knights.

Discounting the terrorists (because they were working for the knights), the only Martian civilians we've seen have been the princess and her attendant. That's nowhere near a big enough sample to say that the Martian civilians are racist.

Again, what a writer chooses to show, and chooses not to show, matters. The old line of "show, don't tell" exists for a very good reason. What is showed/not showed causes certain impressions and suggestions to take hold in the mind of some, if not many, viewers.

As for the Martian knights, they were willing to defy imperial orders so that they'd have another chance at waging war against Earth. They declared war within (apparently) hours, without waiting for an investigation of the assassination to be performed. They focused their attacks on major civilian centers and attacked with the force of nuclear weapons. Since you seem to like looking at things from a meta-level you should be able to recognize that those are major signals for who the bad guys are.

Sure, but it's important to distinguish between what the viewer knows from what each character knows, because they're often not one and the same. The viewer has enough evidence to conclude "The Mars military are bad guys" without making any big assumptions, but did the Princess have enough evidence to conclude that without making some assumptions against them? I don't think that she did.

Nothing odd at all about someone trained in combat to think it's fun to fire a neat weapon in a way that doesn't cause any direct harm.

This is blatantly ignoring highly important contextual facts for this firing action. The full context includes, as major points, that the person firing off the weapon is striving for peace, and that the person firing off the weapon is doing so as part of a military operation against one of the soldiers of her people's military, where the end game could easily involve the killing of that soldier.

Taking this all together, this can easily be seen as an odd and out of character action. Maybe you personally don't see it that way, but it should not be hard for you or anybody else to understand and acknowledge why some of us see it as odd and out of character. There is definitely a certain contradiction between loving/wanting peace and downright delighting in firing off a smoke bomb in a military operation that could easily result in the death of one of your people's soldiers.

If those of you defending this show could just accept this much criticism of the show, this tiny bit of criticism of the show, I'd happily move on from the entire debate. After all, I had no problem whatsoever with this post here. Why did I have no problem with that post? Because FlareKnight at least acknowledged, and I quote, "A bit of inner conflict would have been nice."

Is that really so hard for you and Esclair to admit to as well? That it would have been nice if a supposedly peace-loving person had shown a bit of inner conflict over taking these sorts of actions against one of her own people's soldiers?

You can like a show, even love a show, without thinking its downright flawless. Yet some people on this thread seem to be insistent upon this show being downright flawless, given how some respond to the slightest bit of criticism that some of us voice of this show.

Episode 3, 17:37-40. You can tell he's broadcasting it outside of his cataphract because of the effects applied to his voice.

"Migurushii na. Nimo ni natte, inochi wo oite ha."

Basically, "How unsightly. Reaching out (to me) to leave you with your life."

So he expressed disgust over people trying to surrender to him. Without knowing Trillram personally, there's multiple ways to interpret that. One is that he might just be a patriot with too much pride to ever surrender to the enemy, so he finds similar behavior on the part of an enemy disgusting.

For comparison, Asseylum's lines to him were:

"Hikaenasai!" = Pull back/withdraw.

"Me ni amaru rouzeki, yurushimasen," = I will not permit such violence within my sight.

"Vers daiichi ojou no na ni oite," = In the name of the first princess of Vers.

"Sagarinasai! Bureimono!" = Stand down, you insolent!

My subs had stronger wording than this. What you provided here does admittedly seem more reasonable and less presumptuous to me. So, fair enough, I now have less issue with how the Princess addressed the Martian mech. I still find it puzzling why she didn't ask to be brought to Cruhteo, however.

You seem to be forgetting just how far below them the Martian knights consider Earth's people to be.

No, I'm not forgetting that, but surprises can happen in war, to both/all sides. It's not inconceivable.

You do realize that they've thus far had less than two hours to show us everything that's happened, right?

You mean like some full-length feature films with complete narratives?

Oh, so that's your standard for her being a good princess? It had sounded like your standard was that she try to make excuses for the Martian side. My apologies for the misunderstanding there.

In that case, Asseylum is a good princess by your standards.

Maybe so. But there's still elements in her portrayal that I find puzzling, as I explained before.

When given the option between finding an in-universe explanation for an event (It was fun to fire a neat weapon in a way that didn't hurt anyone) and an out-of-universe explanation (bad writing), it's typically better to wait until the show is over before resorting to the out-of-universe explanation

I simply don't find this particular in-universe explanation compelling, for contextual reasons I detailed before in this post.

Originally Posted by kyp275

*most characters fails Triple's test.*

Honestly, I think you're wrong, at least as it pertains to main cast characters that show up frequently in the first three episodes. I had a pretty good sense of the entire Madoka Magica main cast (other than Kyouko, for obvious reasons) after the first three episodes. I had a pretty good sense of the entire Love Live! main cast after the first three episodes. I had a pretty good sense of the entire Valvrave main cast after the first three episodes. I had a pretty good sense of the entire K-On main cast (other than Azusa, for obvious reasons) after the first three episodes. I had a pretty good sense of the entire Saki main cast (i.e. Team Kiyosumi) after the first three episodes. And I could go on and on, listing off numerous anime shows.

Now, each of these characters would be fleshed out much more throughout their respective anime shows as a whole, but the broad strokes of them were fairly clear and consistent within the first three episodes.

For reasons I have explained in exhaustive detail, I did not see such clarity and consistency with the Princess. I do not see why it is so hard for you and some other viewers to understand that, and accept that, and see why it would be displeasing to me, and possibly some other viewers as well (Kazu-kun, Dr. Dahm, etc...).

Originally Posted by Anh_Minh

By recognizing his mech.


They spent months on the same space castle. As good at it as he looks, that should be plenty of time for him to make himself hated.

This is pure speculation on your part, especially the idea that she learned to hate him during time spent off-screen on the same space castle.

[Thess]

Originally Posted by Irenesharda

That's what would make it hilarious. However, I'm not really concerned about shipping. There were some that shipped Kira and Cagali back before they were revealed as twins, but it became obvious what the pairings would be really early on, so it didn't go much of anywhere.

As for these two, the fact that the pairing of Slaine and Asseylum was so obviously shown in the very start of episode one, is why I have a feeling it won't work out so well in the end. Some way or another, I think there might be a switch up. Right now, the three parings they have hinted are Slaine and Asseylum, Inaho and Inko, and Marito and Yuki. I however, think there is definitely going to be some shuffling around as the series goes on and characters die off.

This isn't a lazy romance show and it has no romance in genres.

I'm sure that as much people can tell already, this isn't focused on wacky "romantic twists". If there are pairings, whether or not the parties die (which is highly likely, the opening is pretty much a "the princess die and someone carries out her mission" song), it's not going to focus on cheesy hormonal drama. It's far too serious now for that. It already hit certain point when the invasion began and a character died that is too late for that. Kira and Cagalli weren't a twist when, you know, all promotional art featured the fixed pairings before it happened (never mind Lacus wasn't even Kira's love interest in Seed, that was Fllay) and never Cagalli and Kira.

[Anh_Minh]

Originally Posted by Triple_R

This is blatantly ignoring highly important contextual facts for this firing action. The full context includes, as major points, that the person firing off the weapon is striving for peace, and that the person firing off the weapon is doing so as part of a military operation against one of the soldiers of her people's military, where the end game could easily involve the killing of that soldier.

It looked like the usual princessy "Yay, I'm actually doing something instead of that boring princess stuff" to me. Though I suppose you have a point about the context, it's not like she was mowing down civilians either. I'd chalk it up to just being caught up in the moment.

This is pure speculation on your part, especially the idea that she learned to hate him during time spent off-screen on the same space castle.

Well, yes. We don't really have a good explanation for her actions, so we're forced to speculate.

(But really. It'd take a very determined mother indeed to love Trillram's face. I don't know how anyone could stand him.)

[Iron Maw]

Originally Posted by Thess

This isn't a lazy romance show.

Since when has that stopped shipping wars? Especially on this forum?

[Thess]

Originally Posted by Elder

It's really not. Their form of primary education basically centered grammar and rhetoric usually through a number of classical preselected texts. There was very little in the ways of political education. It's why they employed foreign (usually Greek) slaves to teach their children so they could learn Greek, which was considered more prestigious in those days. I guess in a ways it's similar to how the Royals in A/Z employed Slaine.

Yes, I made a comparison about it earlier. Because people think slavery was the same in the past which wasn't the case at all.

Originally Posted by Iron Maw

Since when has that stopped shipping wars? Especially on this forum?

I'm just pointing out that Gundam Seed is an exceptionally bad example to use because they pair Cagalli/Athrun and Lacus/Kira since, you know, the first opening and promotional images.

[MCAL]

Trillham aside, I really liked this episode. Everything proceeded at a logical pace and while it was true Inaho figured it all out, it was still mostly a team effort.

[Dr. Dahm]

Originally Posted by Irenesharda

Well, we're one down, 37 other knights to go. (Trillram was considered a knight, but since he doesn't have his own castle, I can't consider him one of the 37.)


However, I did notice in the first and second episode, they specifically showed us certain knights over others. Who do you think will be next on the list for our heroes to face?

Yeah reflecting back on these characters introductions I'm not exactly expecting all that much better than we got from Trillham here. I honestly do like the idea of using some tactics and stuff (though it's not as an original idea for mecha anime as a lot of people seem to think and I keep getting the feeling that this series is banking too much on the idea that it is and that people will compare it to the strawman idea of the mecha show that is all about the hot blooded MC in the hax robot blowing past everyone Dynasty Warriors style), but it's not really satisfying if the people they're facing are all just arrogant idiots in robots with seemingly OP gimmicks that turn out to be huge drawbacks themselves. This show really needs a break out character right now and so far the only one that stands out to me as having even the slightest potential for being that kind of character right now is Slaine Troyard, though he's not going to do it just by shooting idiot subordinates at close range for cool factor so much as he's going to do it by having more scenes like we saw in the first episode where gives the show a more human face to root for.

How do I put this....I hope that the series isn't just banking on this whole flipping the script with the portrayal of mecha combat thing (not so much the choregraphy but the idea behind how the fights play out) and we can get some better character writing, better dialogue (this show has more one liners than some hot blooded super robot shows I've seen ), and more intriguing plotting in that regard into the mix in coming episodes because if this was supposed to be the big decisive episode that convinces people one way or another as to the shows overall appeal I can't really say it's succeeded entirely with me yet though the chances of me dropping it remain very slim. The show gets a lot of methodical and technical's decently right (though so do a lot of the better mecha shows and in more detail and with more interesting fight choreagraphy and setups), but the character aspect really drags it down hard at the moment as I'm just not getting that invested in any of them at this point and it's not really succeeding as a compelling war drama where I can't wait to see what happens to the characters next, how the war situation develops, and how they're going to be defined by the conflict like a good Gundam show.

[Triple_R]

Originally Posted by Irenesharda

However, I did notice in the first and second episode, they specifically showed us certain knights over others. Who do you think will be next on the list for our heroes to face?

I like the character design of the woman Knight. I'm hoping she can be similar to Cornelia li Britannia. If so, that should provide us with an excellent mecha battle later on.

But in any event, that is an impressive amount of pure concentrated smugness in a few character shots.

[Thess]

I think the ones wearing red are considered "Counts" rather than Knights. Each Count should have their castle.