Aldnoah has good visuals and good sound direction but the overall story and characters are just horrid. most of the characters actions are done for shock value instead of any sort of intelligent value and the plot overall is just horrid.
Generic war setting, with what could be interesting villain of the week who despite having a tech difference of basically current day tech vs an army from 1850 still constantly loses because they use pilots with IQs around 20.
Then you also have the main character who I just called Mr. Emotionless the whole time who goes from a trainee piloting a training robot to the only damn person who can do anything in battle at all. I don't hate the gary-stu type but when you start off by pretending you will use a squad based combat don't just turn around and make anyone who isn't Mr. Emotionless completely useless, especially since half the time he just says something that should have been obvious to everyone (and the other half of the time he makes giant ass pulls that only make sense if he designed the enemy robot
)
Most of the rest of the cast lack any real depth to them, they have one thing going for them and that is really it.
You have miss I hate anyone that isn't born on earth so even though I liked you and though you were great once I learned where you were born I need to kill you.
You have Mr. I was skilled but when ever I have a chance to take away a moment from Mr. Emotionless I am gonna just have a mental breakdown because I can't get over the past. (Yes I know PTSD is a real thing but man I got tired of seeing it over and over and over agian)
You have the princess that does little more than be a princess.
you have the most useless assistant to a princess ever.
and the only enemy that really had any depth was slane or whatever his name was who quickly has any sort of depth removed by the second half of the first season and just becomes an absolute tool.
Like I said the initial set up wasn't bad the first few episodes where Gen was writing stuff actually tried to not have Mr. Emtionless do everything and actually had the whole cast trying to do stuff, but right after that they just lose any sort of depth. It's kind of like he wrote a few notes and they just ran with them without thinking about anything, like it was written like a bad fanfic. The funniest part is Gen had outlined the rest of the story, and they decided that over the top twists were much better than a well laid out plot as the end point of season one is nothing like what Gen had laid out.
It would be even more awesom-er if it would get a Blu-ray release, but that will never happen...
sword play and blasters, I just