Warning contains spoilers for Aldnoah.Zero 2, as well as the ending of season 1. Also, if you haven't seen either, you probably won't know what I'm talking about. Proceed with caution and all that.
I'm just sighing right now. A couple of months ago, the latest brainchild of Gen Urobuchi: Aldnoah.Zero, completed its somewhat disappointing run with possibly one of the most aggravating endings of all time, so now that we're have finally arrived at the premiere of the second season, I delighted to inform all of you that we all have been trolled by Urobuchi, and that surprise of the final episode of Aldnoah.Zero seems to mean basically nothing in the long. Brilliant.
So let's cut to the chase shall we? At the end of season 1, everyone died. Our main character Inaho was seemingly shot through the head(much to the delight of many) by Slaine Troyard, and Princess Asseylum, the last hope to stop the war between the Martian and Terran by coming to some sort of understanding was also killed by Count Saazbaum. It is now a mere 19 months, later, and Slaine has become a knight for Martians, becoming one of their front line men. Now, I'm not quite how that happened, but my best guess is that Count Saazbaum gave Slaine compensation for saving his life, though to be fair, Slaine only really did that to save Asseylum. Oh, yeah, the princess is still alive guys, suspended in the healing tube thing. My best guess right now is that she is in some sort of coma, but I don't quite understand how she survived being shot in the head, though it probably has something to do with "Aldnoah" and "we needed a surprise to end the first part of the show".
In the meantime, the Asseylum is being impersonated by a new princess we oddly haven't met before, who is using one of those face-changing armband thingies that the princess used when she was "assassinated" on Earth, the idea apparently to use the princess' face to rally troops against the Terrans. Even if I did see this coming, I do like it, it adds some interesting spice to the show, especially since Earth's troops don't know that this isn't the real princess that they considered a friend. My main problem is that for god's sake, Princess Asseylum has died three times now, you can't keep resurrecting her, because for one, it becomes less impactful every-time you do it, and for two, every-time she "dies" I'm just going to sarcastically think, "Oh, look the princess has died again. Yeah, she's definitively dead." They've pretty much thrown away the last chance for her death to be substantial now, this latest one only kind of worked because of just how surprising it was and the fact the it happened at the end of the first season, so we could actual kind of buy that she may have bit the dust this time around. But no, and now she's probably going to be a cyborg or something.
Speaking of cyborgs and completely undermining everything that happened at the end of season 1, yes people, Inaho is still alive as well, defeating Martian troops with the same impossibly quick and accurate logic that he always has. Now, I'm less upset about this one. Yes, it would've been pretty damn awesome to kill of your main character half-way through, but I don't think any of us really believed he was dead, partly because he is the main character, and partly that I simply couldn't believe that Urobuchi would create such a horrible character, and than just throw him away without doing anything. Development for Inaho may be coming down the road, especially because in this episode he seems a little more expressive with his emotions, clearly being glad to see Inko and Rayet when they reunite. Hell, he even smiles, which happened like, a grand total of twice during the first season. Also, Inaho, unlike the princess, at least has a sort of decent reason for not being dead. He was shot through the eye by Slaine, and was able to get medical attention because he was able to activate the Aldnoah drive and fly away to get help. The power of Aldnoah was transferred to him from the royal blood line of Mars when he preformed CPR on the princess during the bathroom scene in season 1. This indicates that Aldnoah can be transferred via mouth-to-mouth with the princess, which also explains how Slaine was able to activate the mech which needed an Aldnoah drive at the end of season one, because Slaine kissed the princess when the princess preformed CPR on him after Slaine first crash-landed on Mars. Now this is interesting, and actually gives me hope that maybe, just maybe, the writers might actually have this plot thought out all the way through.
And now for the thing, that I just simply find really, really intriguing. So, Inaho was shot through the eye by Slaine, but how? How the hell did Slaine miss the head from literally point-blank range? Unless he missed on purpose, which opens a whole new possibility for character development and relationships. Slaine literally uses the fact that "I killed the soldier whose been a thorn in our side", as a reason for Count Saazbaum to help him get the princess out of here. Shooting Inaho in the eye not only means that Slain may have given Inaho a fighting chance, but shooting him in the eye, incapacitating him and making him bleed from the head, also makes it look likes Slaine shot Inaho in the head, at least to Count Saazbaum, who is across the room, bleeding out, and probably not seeing things too clearly.
If this is all true, this speaks volumes for Slaine's character, and also makes me wonder what his true motivations on the Martian's front line may be. There's also the possibility he simply wants to keep the princess alive, and may have left Inaho a 50/50 chance because of that time the two worked together to defeat a Martian troop during season 1, and also because he saw Inaho was clearly concerned when the princess was shot in the last minutes of season 1.
I remember saying before this aired that this second season would probably ultimately decide whether Aldnoah.Zero was a truly good show or not. I still don't know, I'm still sort of pissed off that none those deaths in the last episode mean anything, but the plot could easily take a better turn here, especially with all that potential development and behind-the-scenes things I mentioned below. But I will say that this is easily the second best first episode of all the shows that just started airing in Winter 2015. Not saying much, but still. So, I'll wait, I guess.
I'll wait and see.
Goodbye for now guys.
EDIT: So, never freaking mind, Episode 2 pretty much debunks that theory I just put out there above. So apparently Slaine literally just did miss from point blank range, and the writers of this show really do spend their time slamming their heads against brick walls. *Sigh*
My review of the first season of Aldnoah.Zero is here.
My reaction to episode 22 of Sword Art Online II is here.
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