Aldnoah.Zero 2 Ep. 8 & 9: Round and round we go

Look at me, look at me… I’m the ship’s navigator now. Our boy Inaho’s growing up right before our very eyes! Before he knows it, he’ll be HAL soon enough.

That’s a good question. Y’know, I have a small feeling that invading Earth probably isn’t the trick.

Well gee, that’s exactly what will make her happy. What else are you going to do? Force her to rule a defeated and conquered Earth? Hahaha… hah…

Slaine has more to add.

Yeah, uh, that makes sense.

Elsewhere, Dumb tries to pull a little misdirection.

And Dumber goes yandere.

GOLDEN AGE, BOYS.

What happens when your girlfriend meets your side chick.

God, why can’t she just understand that I’m killing millions — perhaps billions — of lives just for her? War is the only way to attain peace. You just crush everyone, and recreate the world to suit your needs. If you succeed, the defeated will get over it eventually.

You know, for a gun to be a credible threat, you have to be willing to use it. Maybe this is the smart part, though. Maybe this is all just foreshadowing, and the princess will definitely shoot Slaine in the face at the end of the series.

Wait, what?

Welp.

HEY GUYS, DO YOU STILL REMEMBER CRUHTEO? I DO!

Anyway, I’m reduced to stupid memes because nothing ever really changes. When we last left off, it seemed like Slaine was going to go all-in on the good guys. But. Nothing. Ever. Changes. Big bad kataphract of the week? How ’bout three? One can go invisible! Another one wields lightning like Zeus or something. Last but not least, the third one can replicate himself seemingly endlessly! And y’know what? The battle against these three will take two whole weeks this time! Game-changing! Not since Trillram has the anime been so bold as to take more than one episode to figure out an enemy’s weakness! Unfortunately, the show’s execution is not there. Instead, the conflict merely takes two weeks to resolve, because we’re going to pad things out with some Slaine/Asseylum/Lemrina drama. If we had somehow managed to skip all of that pointless bullshit, Inaho and friends would have overcome the bad guys in a single episode. They are up against three Orbital Knights with three fancy gimmicks — hell, one of them can multiply! — and it still doesn’t amount to anything different or novel.

So Asseylum and Lemrina are now both under house arrest… whatever that means. The other Orbital Knights will wonder where “Asseylum” has disappeared off to, but then again, they seem pretty much like cannon fodder. Seriously, the knights are all cannon fodder. They just get sent to Earth and die. In most stories about counts and whatnot, there’d be multiple sides vying for power. There’d be political intrigue, treachery, backstabbings, secret alliances, etcetera, etcetera. Here, Slaine kills one dude, and everyone’s like, “Welp, we better fall in line!” It’s okay, though. With just a few episodes left, I guess Cruhteo’s kid and Mazuurek will stir shit up. As an aside, I like how Slaine is doing all of this shit on his own, and Mars is just sitting 140 million miles away, twiddling its thumbs. Oh, he and the princess are going to create a new country that uses all of Earth’s resources. Well… that’s nice… I guess we’ll just sit here on Mars with all of our superior Aldnoah technology and…

As for the good guys… welp, they’re even more boring. Other than Inaho getting eye pain every once in a while, there’s practically no character development whatsoever to be found on the blue planet. None. Zilch. Nada. Not even a single interesting interpersonal conflict. Forget interesting! Not even a single interpersonal conflict! Not even anything! When everyone still thought Inaho was dead, they were like, “Yeah, I hope Rayet can be the star of the show now!” Heh. And I guess Marito’s completely A-OK now. Spending two years offscreen can do wonders for a man’s PTSD. Yuki… well, her gripes were never really worth talking about to begin with. So that’s that. The bad guys are idiots, and the heroes are all personality-less losers. If only you could drop this entire show into the sun or something. That would be awesome.