Back to ModeratelyHuman's Profile ModeratelyHuman's Profile

[THIS ENTIRE REVIEW WILL CONTAIN HEAVY SPOILERS FOR WHAT LITTLE PLOT THIS ANIME HAS]

PLOT 1/10

The ending of season 1 was quite unexpected. It was a great cliffhanger that made everyone speculate how the story would continue after 4 of the most pivotal characters of the show seemingly get killed. Disappointingly, nothing happens. None of them died. Welcome to my review of AldNoOne Dies Season 2. Did I mention that none of the main characters die? Season 1 ends on an unexpected and ominous note, only for none of them die. Seriously. The only thing that dies is the plot, and this review will be my ... morbid attempt at describing the dead carcass that is "the plot" as I poke it with a stick.

Basically, season 2 starts off with the princess stuck in a comatose state for a long period of time after Slaine forces Count Sassy-bum to keep her alive. Slaine becomes an angsty asshole and obtains a position of power within the Vers empire after murdering Count Sauce-bomb by 360 no-scoping him with timey wimey powers and succeeding him as count. Then he has where-the-fuck-did-she-come-from Princess Asseylum v2.0 marry him into royalty so he can unify the Vers empire and start a full scale war against earth for no clearly understandable or reasonable goal. From what I understand he does it to "protect the princess". Which makes absolutely no fucking sense because now that he is the fucking king of the fucking Vers Empire he already fucking has the needed political fucking power and support to fucking stop anyone else from fucking stealing his fucking girl. The fucking princess is already fucking fine, not to fucking mention everyone doesn't even fucking know that the fucking princess is actually in a fucking coma and that she is being fucking impersonated by her fucking sister. Meaning that any attempted assassination wouldn't fucking work because they would be fucking killing the fucking body double. YOU KNOW, LIKE IN THE VERY FIRST EPISODE OF THE FUCKING SHOW ALL THE FUCKING WAY BACK IN SEASON FUCKING ONE, FOR EXAMPLE. JESUS TAP DANCING CHRIST. Not to mention war goes against EVERYTHING THE PRINCESS STANDS FOR. WHAT THE FUCK SLAINE, THIS IS NOT HOW YOU GET A GIRL TO LIKE YOU. YOU ABSOLUTE RETARD.

I guess his actions can be rationalized a bit from the perspective of Slaine as the king of the Vers Empire, and not from the perspective of Slaine as the desperate, sex-starved virgin he is, since what he is doing could be seen as a political ploy to obtain more support amongst the other orbital knights and other members of nobility, who are unanimously pro-war. (Which he doesn't need.) And on top of that it will cause the Vers empire to become a better place free from an oppressive class system and widespread poverty among the working class that is caused by a lack of natural resources. (Which could be solved diplomatically through trading.) (Or stealing it without the genocide.) (Which would make him unanimously supported by the working class even if some of the nobles still don't like him, lessening the threat of their influence and cementing his legitimacy as king.) (Which again, doesn't matter because he already has all the political support he needs.) But really now... He doesn't care too much about any of that. He just in this for the PU$$Y. (SPOILER: HE DOESN'T GET ANY)

The real princess eventually wakes up, then plot hole after plot hole she finds out what Slaine is doing and manages to escape with Inaho's help. Princess Ass-pump marries some random dude named Count Cocaine and takes over rule of the Empire. Then Slaine gets wrecked. They use him as a scapegoat to blame the entire war on. The entirety of earth apparently completely forgives Princess Ass-plumber after her impostor shit talks everyone and their mother with obscene levels of hate and Aryan supremacy. Apparently decades of indoctrination, hatred, prejudice, racism, poverty, systematic classism, and human greed disappeared just like that. The war ends. Earth and Mars hold hands and circle jerk over each other in a new golden age of peace and prosperity. Happy happy fine and dandy. Wouldn't it be nice if actual conflicts in the real world could be solved so easily? Just blame every little problem on one person. Then kill him. Poof. Problems solved just like that. (Does this remind you of a certain other mecha anime? *cough cough*)

"Let justice be done, though the heavens fall." The motto of the show clearly represents Princess Asseylum's goal of peace no matter the cost. It really shows just how spoiled and unrealistic her standards are. Princess Ass-plum seriously used her love of birds as a valid reason to possibly jeopardize the long term unity and betterment of her entire empire. Don't get me wrong, war is bad. But a leader should realize when war is the best and most realistic option for her people. Good thing the shit writing this show has kicks in and everything somehow turns out alright anyways, no one suffers from the consequences of their actions except for Slaine.

If you really simplify it. The entire plot of season 2 is basically a war caused by a mans quest to seduce a woman through the romantic gift of genocide; and predictably, hilariously, painfully, and stupidly enough- it completely backfires. He gets friend zoned and gets sent to prison for the rest of his life. She'd rather enter an arranged marriage with a man she has never met before than be with you. How does that feel, you fucking cuck? Holy shit, someone give this a man a medal for the worst rejection in history.

Seriously that's the entire plot. Yup. The end. Aren't you fucking glad you watched this show?


ARTWORK 7/10

The general art style is pretty good, and the characters are drawn very well with a distinctive style. One of the strongest points of this show is aesthetic originality, even though sometimes "originality" becomes synonymous with "bad writing", as in, it's original how bad the writing is. Martian kataphrakts are pretty cool looking, despite just how bad the CGI in this show is. Their designs are strange, exotic, and unique, but at the same time completely absurd. For some reason the orbital knights care more about making flashy and cool kataphrakts over actually effective weapons. You would think that a robot with access to seemingly unlimited energy would make use of all of the ridiculously overpowered technology they have, but every single kataphrakt has some gigantic weakness that is so obviously intentionally added. For some reason, a robot that has in indestructible force field has no weapons on it besides some over-sized fists, and despite the fact that it has an indestructible force field, it is covered in thick plates of armor that makes the thing look like the girl from Willy Wonka that turns into a giant blueberry. For some reason, a mech attacks by shooting hilariously ineffective, re-attachable, remote controlled ROCKET ARMS at the enemy when a while ago they showed this dude shooting rapid fire mega death lasers everywhere. It just simply makes no sense.

That's how it works kids. If you aren't good enough at writing to make a character look brilliantly smart, just make all the bad guys so incompetently stupid the hero look better in contrast.


SOUND 8/10

The music was composed by none other than Hiroyuki Sawano, so as expected, it is quite good. Too bad they keep on replaying the same fucking song over and over again for every single god damn fight scene that you begin to hate the song. Good music is important, but making sure the music is used in a timely and appropriate manner is also important. This show succeeds in the former part, but fails in the latter.


Here comes the juicy part. CHARACTER.

2/10 Inaho: Absolutely no character development. Though it wouldn't be fair to expect character development from him. Inaho is literally God. Perfection personified into a Japanese school boy. He cannot further develop because he is already perfect. Getting shot in the head doesn't change that. He is still perfect. He is still an emotionless machine. The fact that he is now partially a cyborg doesn't help with that analogy either. He saves the day every single god damn time like he always does except now he does literally everything to the point where basically 60% of the entire show just focuses on circlejerking over how awesome he is. The writers made this man an autistic savant because they simply aren't smart enough to write an intelligent character well, and clearly even with that the job was still difficult for them. Because in season 2 they had to up the ante and make him even more overpowered than he already was so they can shoehorn more shitty excuses as to how he completely defeats the Vers Empire yet again by blessing him with some unreasonably overpowered god eye that can see everything. That dumb little eye can do literally anything. Like check out Inko's BMI for example. Inaho uses his eye to calculate Inko's weight so he can make fun of her. What the fuck dude? Asshole. And he knows he can get away with it since Inko wants his D for some reason. Why ya got to play a girl like that man? And to top it all off, the writers also gave him Aldnoah powers all willy-nilly to act as a convenient plot device to reactivate the Deucalion. How? Through oral transfer of royal blood and saliva. HAHA WHAT THE FUCK. In other words. This all powerful source of unlimited energy is pretty much some alien STD Ass-plump gave to Inaho.

9/10 Inaho's robot eye: A new character. Yes. The eye has its own character. Yes. THE EYE GETS MORE CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT THAN INAHO HIMSELF. At first the eye is nothing but a tool, but then it starts taking over parts of Inaho's brain and becomes its own thinking entity. It even starts chatting up the princess while Inaho was unconscious. Look at that development. Oh yea. Such character. Inaho's eye x Asseylum is my OTP.

1/10 Slaine: Is basically the only character that gets any "development", which means jack shit because he just continually makes the most retarded nonsensical decisions a sane individual wouldn't ever consider. Honestly, calling it "character development" is a little too generous in the first place since his character is completely off the charts inconsistent. He doesn't really do anything that can be considered normal human responses. His level of intelligence and decision making is all over the place. His goals incomprehensible, and the reason behind this is because the writers just continuously use him as a cheap plot device to add drama and conflict to the story instead of treating him like how a reasonable or sane human being would act. Inaho and Slaine are both foils to each other in this regard. Slaine advances the story by adding unnecessary conflict to it through irrational decision making. And Inaho advances the story by solving the stupid problems Slaine causes with his own stupidly written god-like abilities. In the end, Slaine fails horribly due to his ridiculous levels of incompetency. Then the writers pretentiously rip off Monster by making Slaine pull off some bullshit Johan Liebert crap.

1/10 Princess Ass-lump: She doesn't change character either. Still this overly happy and naive dumb bimbo that can barely act like a responsible leader. She forces her childish idealistic views on everyone regardless of the effect it might have on her people. She tried to man up once and points a gun at Slaine and threatens him. Then he casually walks over and just takes the gun. AHAHA. Seriously. She is so worthless. Did I mention she likes birds? She likes birds. Apparently more than the possible long term prosperity of not only her Empire, but the entirety of humanity as well. Amazing judgment of importance there.

4/10 Princess Ass-lump v2.0: Yea the second princess with the weird hair. I forgot her name. Where the fuck did she even come from? She just appears suddenly as a new character. Basically she pretends to be Asseylum and slanders earth with her space Nazi propaganda. She does it because she has some extremely creepy as fuck obsession with Slaine. She is just weird.

10/10 Count Crouton or something. IDK it's hard to spell. Best character in the entire show. Absolute chad. Some new guy that shows up for like 10 minutes of screen time. Manages to NTR the princess away from Inaho and Slaine like immediately. What a badass.

5/10 Harklight. Gets seduced by Slaine's bishounen powers. I forgot whether or not he dies trying to get senpai to notice him. I don't really care.

5/10 Inko. Arguably the most likable girl in the show. Acts all cutesy and compassionate with Inaho and worries about him. Daww so cute amirite? Kind of I guess... Gets pushed away and assigned as Inaho's side bitch. She gets shot at 10 more times than any of the other characters but she always survives. Absolutely bullshit levels of plot armor. For some reason, every single kataphrakt instantly explodes into a million pieces of shitty pixelated CGI the moment it gets touched but nothing like that ever happens with Inko. But I guess they have to keep her alive as a romantic interest for Inaho, because it's not a true mech anime without poorly integrated love triangles am I right?

4/10 Female Inaho. Yuki Kaizuka, the bastard love child prototype that made way for the masterpiece of perfection that is her brother Inaho Kaizuka. Knowing just how hopelessly inferior she is to her perfect brother she tries to mimic her brothers robot like persona by getting a robotic arm to assist her broken one. But fails miserably at acting utterly emotionless like her brother does. As well as being perfect in every way possible like him. Seriously Yuki its not that hard to be a completely flawless human being. Way to break character, you fucking poser. She acts all lovey dovey over Inaho but comes off a bit more bitchy and possessive than Inko does when she tries to stop him from saving the damn world out of fear for his safety. At least wanting your brother to live is a slightly better excuse than liking birds.

All of the other characters basically get sidelined and don't do anything or have anything worthwhile to say about them. 0/10.


ENJOYMENT 5/10

The action was enjoyable enough. The only saving grace was the okay action. (And seeing Slaine's beautiful face marred with his salty tears at the end.) It follows a pretty cookie cutter formula of: Scary new Martian bad guy with fancy unique kataphrakt appears. It rains pain down, destroying a bunch of faceless Terran mooks, as well as miraculously damaging but never killing any of the minor characters that happen to be fighting. Then Inaho comes and saves the day with his tactical and scientific brilliance as his signature battle theme plays for the umpteenth time. Rinse and repeat. Some of the battles have some interesting strategies and events, but it's all methodically predictable. So if for some reason you are reading this review without even starting the show I wouldn't recommend this if you aren't a huge fan of action and mech anime.

If you have already watched season 1, I wouldn't really recommend you to either continue or discontinue the show, that's up to whether or not you are one of those masochists that don't drop any shows they started.


Well that concludes my review. Now if you excuse me I'm going to see what kind of horrific yaoi fanfiction fujoshis are making between Inaho and Slaine.

Philosophy is timeless, ideas and concepts are things that can be honed and perfected. Some classics are pioneers that introduce novel ideas that are then further improved upon by later works. Other classics are timeless masterpieces that define entire genres as the gold standard; Ghost in the Shell isn't something that is able to meet that standard. The overly simplistic philosophical narrative of GITS just doesn't hold up very well in modern times while other classical pieces have. Ghost in the Shell is a movie driven by concept, a concept that is shown, not told, in a slow, vague approach that requires attention, thought, and ... patience. Yet, despite the effort needed to fully understand the film, it offers a surprisingly simple and disappointing payoff.

This is a movie that did not provoke thinking or cause me to question my existence or my self worth as a human being, it just wasn't complex or deep enough to change my views on humanity, and instead the topics it brought up seemed obvious to me. This is a movie that tackles human existence on a purely scientific level, which essentially boils it down to a simple fact: that our consciousness, memories, and emotions are merely created from electrical pulses within our brains. Humanity is separated into two parts, our consciousness and our physical body. For us, technology hasn't reached a point where these things that make us distinctly unique can be controlled and artificially replicated. The fact that we can't lends upon contemporary humans a certain sacredness to our existence, to birth, to life, and to our intelligence. The moment technology crosses that barrier, what makes us human will no longer be special or unique. This technological barrier is something that has already been crossed in the GITS universe, and with it, they decide to squander the potential of the setting, and only ask one question: What is a difference between man and machine?

At some point, there really is no practical difference, and ultimately, this is the answer the movie provides, and disappointingly, this is the only answer it provides with very little elaboration.

What truly scares me, would be if humans will be responsible enough to guide us on the correct path of evolution once we become powerful enough to control it ourselves. Will society be destroyed by the folly of man when we obtain the power of "god"? Or will we evolve into a more advanced species? Will humanity be willing to throw away the primitive identity of what makes us human for the sake of transcending into a higher organism? How will society compete in a world where cybernetic parts are far superior to the organic ones we are born with? How can we trust anyone or anything, how would we know what is real and what is not once our memories and senses can be completely replaced?

This movie sort of touches a serious topic, when hackers steal the memories of others for personal gain. This is to show that a human's soul can be modified, just like a program, and it is a situation that is only presented in response to the movie's central, existential question. But besides this the movie doesn't touch any remotely serious topic at all, and most of the movie spends it's time focusing on needlessly building upon a rather pointless existential crisis sort of thing. Because the movie ignored addressing actually important and very real issues future technology will impose on humanity, the movie simply fell flat to me. The setting was immersive and well made, and the story had potential to go a different and much more interesting route. But instead, it took a very simplistic philosophical approach and made it needlessly convoluted.

However, while the movies narrative fails to stand the test of time, the design of the futuristic world it builds is breathtaking and thoughtfully well done. The cinematography of this movie is ahead of its time, and its a movie worth watching for its beautiful visuals alone.