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REVIEW: Aldnoah.Zero [Re+] Anime Film Review

Always felt that Aldnoah.Zero was an under-appreciated series, and also that it could have benefited from a proper epilogue. Sounds like this one offers that, so hopefully CR (who still has the original series) will pick it up at some point.

I have no idea where this idea of Tomino hating Kamille comes from, given that he gets a happy ending, at least in every animated version of his story. I guess lots of people still haven’t watched ZZ Gundam.

Back to this though, Aldnoah.Zero was nowhere near as good, or as bad, as people were saying it was at the time. I felt that the second half was really messy but not necessarily bad. It had really cool fights and the story was still intriguing in that back half, even if the first half was better, and it would've been more interesting if they actually had the nerves to stick with the ending to the first cour. I’m glad this does have an epilogue though, because I hated ending to this show. It seems like what they added in the epilogue might be enough to salvage the ending.

I agree Kamille didn't get a lot of sympathy in the show (Emma apprently thought it would feed into his Mother Complex) , but he and the crew still grew close, and he lost almost everything by the end. Whatever Tominos intention was , I'm glad at least he and Fa got a happy ending.

Aldnoah Zero was kinfd of a mixed bag, that IMO fell apart in the second season, paticularly as the Universe seemed to have it out for Slaine. It also didn't exactly work in some of it's messages (The Vers Empire tried to have nuance, but there were very few likeable Vers, and many showed up only at the end, or too briefly. Plus they try to save Mars has Economic issues , but every Martian we see is a Space Noble in a literal floating Castle, while the main Earth characters are largely orphaned Teen soilders whos town gets destroyed).

Really an epilogue could help this series, as it would give more of a chance for character development and relfection. I don't know when/if this will go international, but I'm willing to give it a try.

Waid Rabby Nadaga wrote:

I agree Kamille didn't get a lot of sympathy in the show (Emma apprently thought it would feed into his Mother Complex) , but he and the crew still grew close, and he lost almost everything by the end. Whatever Tominos intention was , I'm glad at least he and Fa got a happy ending. Aldnoah Zero was kinfd of a mixed bag, that IMO fell apart in the second season, paticularly as the Universe seemed to have it out for Slaine. It also didn't exactly work in some of it's messages (The Vers Empire tried to have nuance, but there were very few likeable Vers, and many showed up only at the end, or too briefly. Plus they try to save Mars has Economic issues , but every Martian we see is a Space Noble in a literal floating Castle, while the main Earth characters are largely orphaned Teen soilders whos town gets destroyed). Really an epilogue could help this series, as it would give more of a chance for character development and relfection. I don't know when/if this will go international, but I'm willing to give it a try.

i wouldnt do that far. sure you say that bidan a fa got a happy ending, but its only fa! meanwhile he's got his mind forever stuck in a vegetative state unable to think for himself. it more or less got similarities to the ending of akane ga kill at best. sure there is also the alicization arc, but didn't mentioned it since it was tempoarily!

Also, the ending of Zeta Gundam saw Bidan catatonic, basically a vegetable, because Paptimus did a "if I am going down I am taking you with me" move, the only Tomino protagonist to suffer such a fate. (Yes, I know the movie ends differently.) ZZ Gundam has him eventually nursed to health by Fa Yuiry - whom he showed little romantic interest in during the show but the girls that he actually liked all died so she was the only one left and oh yeah he was in a catatonic state so he had no ability to consent or anything like that - but we have to remember that precisely because of how depressing Zeta Gundam was, the studio largely took over ZZ Gundam and imposed a lighter, more comedic tone. So based on how Tomino loathed the guy during the series itself, Bidan spending the rest of his life in the state that Zeta Gundam left him in was likely his original intent and the studio forced him to change and retcon it. It is notable that after the studio changes imposed with ZZ Gundam, Tomino didn't work on another Gundam series for years.

About Kamille Bidan, how did he end up the way that he did?

TOMINO: Personally, Zeta Gundam was a work where my intent was to create a story about perceiving reality. On that train of thought, Kamille had to end up the way he did. That was something I was thinking about even from the time when I had just started working on the series.

However, that doesn’t mean by any means that I dislike Kamille. If I didn’t like the character, there would be no way he’d be given so much screen time, and in the case of anime, it’s possible to flippantly change the personality of a character (Laughs). At the same time, by the end of the 2nd season, I felt he had to end up the way he did at the finale. Although it’s difficult tell whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing that he ended up the way he did, I felt that it accurately conveyed the kind of person that he was.

Now to explain why he has to break down in order for it to be a story about acknowledging reality. In other words, since Kamille was forcibly trying to exceed his limitations to obtain power, there was no way to let him obtain that which was beyond his capacity without there being some kind of consequence.

You must not have actually watched ZZ, or you've watched it so long ago you don't properly remember the series because Kamille recovers in that show. Over halfway through the show during the Dublin arc he’s physically walking on his own and telepathically communicating with the main character of ZZ, and in the final episode, we see him happily frolicking on a beach with Fa. He's got a smile on his face spinning Fa around in the air while romantic happy music is playing in the background. Sure no one explicitly states "he can talk now and he's fully recovered" but that scene heavily implies he's fully recovered.

Yeah, Kamille recovers in Double Zeta but he already spent lots of episodes as a vegetable and replaced. When New Translation came, the entire ending was retconned as Kamille isn't hurt by Scirocco's Newtype powers which was less subtle than George Lucas creating "Hon shot second".

Now to see if this anime does the same for Slaine who is already the victim of a torture in the first half of the series. Heard Urobuchi was involved in the making of the series but didn't stay as main writer similar to his work in the second season of PsychoPass. The Slaine treatment reminds me of Valvrave where the ending is trying really hard to make us care for Lelf and Shoko when most of their actions led spoiler[to several deaths especially Haruto's]