ID:2119438
 
I watched an AMV a few days ago, and looked in the description to find out the name of the anime. It was called "ALDNOAH.ZERO". I headed straight for Crunchyroll.

I've watched the first half of the series. Meet Inaho Kaizuka, the main protagonist of ALDNOAH.ZERO.


His facial expression 99% of the time.

Early on in the first episode, we get a taste of Inaho's character. He's apparently more responsible than his sister who is 6 years older than he is as seen when makes attempts to wake her up from oversleeping, cooks her breakfast, reminds her she's late for her drill instructor shift, and tells her to put the dirty dishes in the sink. Toward the end of the first episode, another major character, the Princess of Mars, visits Earth in order to establish peace and it's a big deal to everyone except Inaho. In fact, as the Princess is driven around nearby him and his friends, they show him staring down into his cell phone at an egg sale going on at a grocery store.

It gets better. As you can probably already guess, there was an assassination attempt, and the first to notice the impending danger is Inaho when he warns his friends a missile is coming.

This was his facial expression when he told his friends a missile was coming.


His "OH SHIT, OH SHIT, OH SHIT" face.

At this point I'm like "Ok, maybe he's a mentally disabled protagonist and that's why he had an unusual reaction to the missile. Maybe he didn't fully understand he could've died."

Moving on. In another episode, Inaho and friends are under attack by angry Martian men in giant robot suits. One of Inaho's closest friends was sucked away and murdered right in front of his eyes. This is Inaho's "my best friend is gone forever" expression.


Well, there goes my best friend. Such a shame. Anyway, back to this egg sale!

Contrast that to Goku's "my best friend is gone forever" expression.


That's better.

I can go all day about his face, but the larger point here to take note of is that Inaho is composed in nearly every situation. I can only recall 3 or 4 instances where he elevated his voice to portray a sense of urgency or scowled in frustration dealing with a difficult opponent. Just jot that down. "Inaho is immune to emotion."

Despite being a 15 year old student, Inaho is far more talented in every aspect of combat than his 21 year old sister who holds the rank of "Warrant Officer". He's actually so good when it comes to formulating strategies that everyone else stands by quietly as he tells them what to do, where to do it, and how. This includes the captain of the United Forces of Earth.


After like 3 episodes of joining the military, he's already being treated like a general.

Not only that, most of his proposed plans are things like "hit the brake even though a 20-foot tall death machine is chasing us", or "let's infiltrate the enemy base by launching an attack from the exact same position the enemy expects us to". And almost every time, the plan works. He's able to defeat high ranking Martians who have drastically superior weaponry with ease, finding and exploiting the weaknesses in their suits within minutes or calculating trajectories of bullets in seconds to shoot down enemies with pinpoint precision. No matter how reckless of a situation he gets himself into, he's able to duck and weave almost every bullet sent his way, come up with a tactic the enemy never saw coming, and execute it without fail.

Jot that down. "Inaho is a strategic and tactical mastermind and is nearly untouchable in battle."

Then finally towards the end of the first half of the series, Inaho FINALLY gets in over his head when dealing with one of the main antagonists. Inaho's rival, Slaine, then tells Inaho not to move another inch.


Don't you know who I am? I'M INAHO, BITCH!

Inaho grabs his gun and turns around in one last ditch effort to kill Slaine but is shot point blank in the head before he's able to fire. This was my reaction to that scene.


The first time I've ever watched an anime and rooted AGAINST the protagonist.

All is well in the world of ALDNOAH.ZERO at this point. Slaine, who is way more likable, triumphs over Inaho's god mode activated ass, gets promoted to a high ranking, negotiates with the main antagonist to have the Princess be rejuvenated in some healing tank, and I can finally watch this series and not be agitated.


Wait, what?

Oh yeah, sorry, I almost left the part out where despite being shot in the head, he was somehow rescued and carried back to the ship where his lifeless body was able to reactivate the ship which then made it possible for him to receive medical treatment, the most significant change being this new robotic eye that makes him even more effective during fights than he was before, and can also pretty much read people's minds with it since it allows him to detect stress signals in voice tones to determine if someone is lying or not.

So let's recap.

Inaho Kaizuka is a 15 year old boy who
- Is immune to primitive human emotion and is always composed
- Is immensely brilliant and mature
- Is extremely courageous
- Is virtually impossible to defeat in combat
- Is virtually impossible to outsmart when it comes to strategy and tactics and can lead a military
- Is immune to a bullet through the head
- Is able to use the Aldnoah factor ( even when dead or unconscious ) despite that power only being reserved for those of a certain Martian bloodline
- Is now a cyborg with a robotic eye that serves to boost him to even higher levels of OPness

At this point, I'm convinced that even if the antagonists were to blow Inaho to a million pieces, he'd somehow miraculously regenerate all the particles of his body and return the next episode as an even stronger version of himself.

TL;DR I'm aware that protagonists need to be, to some extent, better than other characters. I'm also aware that you can't kill off the main characters because then where does the story go from there. But come on, man. Even Goku got overpowered SOMETIMES. Even Ichigo had to sit SOME fights out. The issue is that you apparently can't stop Inaho any way you spin it. He'll pull some miracle out his ass at EVERY SINGLE TURN. Watching this anime feels like playing GTA with cheat codes. It's boring because you always know Inaho is going to show up and basically become God and bend reality to his will. This is retarded as hell.

I'm #TeamSlaine all the way.


The real hero of ALDNOAH.ZERO
Only good thing about Aldnoah Zero was the music. Once the second series came on it went from I guess I can watch it to "when will something happen". Which I find happens a lot in anime to be honest with you.
In response to The Magic Man
The Magic Man wrote:
Only good thing about Aldnoah Zero was the music. Once the second series came on it went from I guess I can watch it to "when will something happen". Which I find happens a lot in anime to be honest with you.

I forgot to mention that.

I do enjoy the music.

Inaho is just overpowered to the point where it makes every other character on the "good side" meaningless. Like, remember when Goku had to hold Raditz in order for Piccolo to kill them? That type of thing will never happen to Inaho apparently because he can just carry the entire world on his back and even if he fails and gets fatally injured, he'll "lol nope" and reappear next episode like it's nothing. You may as well just take off all the supporting characters because they barely support anything. Inaho is single-handedly running the show.

Compare this to another mech anime like Guilty Crown. He wasn't able to do shit unless Inori was around to let him use her void and for the first half of the series, Gai was calling the shots, so there were other characters playing vital roles and it felt like everyone had a purpose. Even in this anime, there's a scene where Slaine can't activate the Tharsis and he needs that phony Princess to do it for him. If that had been Inaho, he would've just out of nowhere turned it on by himself using his infinite wisdom and god mode-ness.

I hope Slaine shoots him in the head several more times before this anime ends.
Cloud Magic wrote:
Did you forget that Ichigo came back to life like seven times in the Anime?

Did you forget Ichigo had the benefit of a powerful supernatural spirit living inside him? At least there's some logic behind his OPness. Same with Narto. Yeah, he can summon a thousand clones of himself... because he had a giant demon fox sealed inside him when he was a babby. There's something you can point to and say "oh... THAT's why he's able to do that!"

There exists no such justification for what Inaho does. He's not apart of some highly powerful alien race. He doesn't have a monster stored inside his soul. I mean hell, even the mech he uses looks rusted and outdated yet he's able to run circles around his opponents in every confrontation despite the fact Mars technology is vastly superior. They have matter-absorbing barriers, laser katanas, god damn anti-gravity fields, flying robo fists, all types of shit and somehow this random high school kid just hops in a rust bucket of a mech and casually one-shots every adversary in sight. Really?
This posts pisses me off for you neglect on a very important plot point regarding this anime. The hero's father was a chicken farmer. Because chickens can reproduce extremely often, when the hero was born, the father bathed him in egg yolk to give him the DNA of the chicken. At the time, the baby was dying because of being pre-mature. The egg yolk actually healed him and let him see another day. His father called this "Cock Magic". Because of the power of Cock Magic, the hero is now basically Deadpool, the side effect being he expresses no emotion. His biggest flaw in his powers is passionate love making, which makes him very weak and feel like the pre-mature baby he once was. As his energy drains, he will eventually die. That being said, most women don't like him because of his lack of emotion, which benefits him in the long run.
Just finished watching the end.

This was the most underwhelming anime I've ever seen. It's rated 4 out of 5 on Crunchyroll and I'm just trying to find out why. One of the negative reviews pretty much hit the nail on the head and summed up my OP in one paragraph.

Let me start with Inaho, he's your quiet smart teenage boy who has hidden potential much like Lelouch except he chooses to do nothing with it. Instead as the story progresses you see him become the single most OP character in anime history because apparently no one else in the entire military of the Earth can reach his level when he happens to be a Private. You see this early on when he singlehandedly defeats almost 2-3 other incredibly advanced mechs and powerful Counts of the Vers Empire while his schoolmates who you would think might help just stand there and watch or die. In fact I have yet to see a single supporting character actually move out of the way of an enemy mech, instead everyone sits there fiddling their thumbs until they get hit. The strong silent archetype is one of the best but the show fails to bring this out in him and instead what you get is a very untalkative boring character who just sort of wins every battle because why the hell not?

The animation was decent and the soundtrack was good but everything else is just whatever. It's going to be burned into my memory for all the wrong reasons. It's essentially Code Geass, except Lelouch gives you an orgasm while Inaho gives you blue balls. That's the best way to describe it.

Each episode is what, 20 minutes? 20*24 = 480 minutes = 8 hours of my life wasted. God damnit.
EmpirezTeam wrote:
TL;DR I'm aware that protagonists need to be, to some extent, better than other characters.

Not true at all. A protagonist with many faults and weaknesses is both more compelling and more relatable -- if also well-written.
In response to Fugsnarf
Fugsnarf wrote:
Not true at all. A protagonist with many faults and weaknesses is both more compelling and more relatable -- if also well-written.

I viewed the entire series as it aired. Watching Inaho beat "super" robots with his team's "real" robots was actually the main draw. (Inaho wins because Batman.) If that doesn't do it for you, you should indeed stop. The ending is perhaps realistic, but sort of comes out of nowhere and is not emotionally satisfying.

The behind-the-scenes preview stated the protagonist was intended to be emotionally passive. This was later translated into a variant of autism which is used to explain both his flat expressions and his tactical genius.

But, yeah, Slaine's story had more feels.
The feels bro.



It's all about the feels.
Watch the irregular magic high school or something.
In response to Ghost of ET
Ghost of ET wrote:
Watch the irregular magic high school or something.

Does it got feels? I ain't watching nothing that ain't got no feels.
It makes you feel the creepy incest like sibling relationship between the main character and his sister.
watch re zero http://myanimelist.net/anime/31240/ Re_Zero_kara_Hajimeru_Isekai_Seikatsu. irregular at magic high school is almost everything youre complaining about