Final Thoughts on "Adlnoah.Zero"

Jun 06, 2015 15:39

The second season of Aldnoah.Zero ran pretty much as I predicted, moving the show's focus to the invading Vers Empire and its internal politics, but it did still manage several delightful surprises and created more interesting material than I'd expected.  But the show let me down a bit with the conclusion, essentially just running out the clock on foregone conclusions.  All the important moves had been made in previous episodes.

In Season 2, former chew toy Slaine Troyard becomes our protagonist, even if he often tilts toward villain protagonist, and he gets an epic story arc.  Even though this arc's resolution feels too mechanistic, I think it's both conceptually intriguing and dramatically solid.



Quick series explanation:  In the future, expeditions to Mars discover remains of an advanced civilization.  The new Martians use this super-tech to become self-sufficient, and so declare their independence…and then declare war on Earth to take all those natural raw materials that Mars lacks.

Slaine is a young Earthnoid prisoner of the Vers Empire, used as a tutor for their Princess.  Internal politics produces an assassination attempt in the first episode that leaves the Princess stranded on Earth, presumed dead.  Slaine spends Season 1 struggling to find his beloved Princess despite his lack of authority or respect.  He suffers many humiliations and injuries, but through diverse circumstances, happens to be the last main character standing at the end of Season 1.

Slaine comes out of the Season-1 climax cutting a deal with the series' main villain -- Slaine saves his life, if the villain works to save the life of the now-comatose Princess.  Over the course of Season 2, Slaine uses every opportunity to grab power so he can protect his Princess, and ultimately becomes leader of a coup attempt.  At the apex of his story arc, he has rank, authority over Vers's biggest military base, the loyalty of many leaders, the adulation of most of the Vers soldiers, and the love of a second princess.  Incredible success!

But Slaine's success is tenuous, as are Vers's chances on the whole.  The Vers super-tech gives them an incredible blitzkrieg advantage, but they just don't have the manpower to conquer an entire planet.  Even if they wreck as much civilization as they can.  Plus, imagine the difficulties of running any kind of government over interplanetary distances.  Vers may be self-sufficient, but they don't have a strong home base.  This invasion was never going to work very well.

Nonetheless, Slaine places himself in such a position that a shrewd, experienced mind could negotiate a sustainable alternative, one that keeps him quite comfortable.  When that first Princess finally recovers from her injuries and confronts Slaine for twisting her hopes for peace, he *could* accept that she will never love him and that his goals need to be amended, he *could* help her end the war, and he *could* accept the unreserved love of the second Princess.  But it is not to be, for Slaine is a young man, who possesses limited experience and is blinded by his obsession for the first Princess.  At the moment of decision, Slaine doubles down on his original plan -- to carve out a third nation balanced between the first two.  Sadly, he never articulates his reasoning, but he seems to think this is the only way to keep his Princess safe…and he might figure that he's traveled too far down his current path.

And so Slaine loses everything.  Under the pressure of war, the original Princess escapes to join a loyalist faction and actually end the war (it was easy, once she got to a safe position within the Empire).  Slaine's personal troops fight until the end, dying to a man, while Slaine himself is captured to be imprisoned as a war criminal.  His potential was undermined by his own tragic flaw -- his obsessive love.

I don't usually like tragic stories, but I seem to have a soft-spot for tragedies that are well-illustrated as the result of tragic flaws.

However, my appreciation of Slaine's story is complicated by an ethical point -- when Slaine's troops fight to their deaths, it's presented as a kind of noble gesture.  I can almost see the idea, but it's misdirected.  The Vers Empire was (for some reason) an aristocracy with an oppressed underclass.  Most of Slaine's personal troops were lower-class soldiers that he elevated to higher rank.  They saw Slaine as emblematic of their own chances -- he was a prisoner-of-war who rose to the highest ranks, who offered hope of overturning Vers's institutional oppression.  If the dream cannot become real, why not die for it?  Except these idealists don't just *die* for their dream, they kill many Earth soldiers in the process.  And all of these Earth soldiers are fighting a *defensive* war!  Slaine's troops aren't defiantly striking back at their Vers overlords, they're killing their fellow victims!  The series doesn't offer official comment of the ethics of this last stand, but absent any other perspective than their own impression of doomed nobility, the conclusion seems to take the kamikaze troops at theri word.

The show's writers couldn't possibly rely on the viewers to see the depressing irony on their own, right?

If you don't like tragedy, you might be disappointed in the series finale.  There are no dramatic reveals or surprise twists.  We do get a final duel between opposing protagonists, but it is both quick and effectivley predetermined.  And we never get answers to some of the nagging questions raised earlier in the show (such as what actually happened when the first moon base blew up, ending Vers's first invasion attempt).  Nonetheless, I enjoyed both seasons of "Aldnoah.Zero" and recommend it to all mecha fans.  I might even buy the series, if anyone gets around to releasing a Stateside version.  :)

anime, science fiction

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