In search of that Heavenly Blue: Aldnoah.Zero – bonutzuu’s manga archive

“Let justice be done, though the heavens fall.”

Heavenly Blue is probably one of my all time favorite anime opening, and because of that I wanted to see the story behind the song’s lyrics.

I’m not too invested, honestly.

Princess Asseylum of Vers (Mars) was assassinated on her first visit to earth. However, she survived the attempt but found that her death triggered another war between earth and Mars. Kaizuka Inaho is a high school pilot who happens to pick her up, and now must help end the conflict. And there’s Slaine, who figured out that Princess isn’t dead and must find out who on Mars plotted her assassination while stuck in a political tangle himself.

I like mecha manga in general, but AldZero is one that I actually don’t like too much. There are many times where I just want to scream: WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!

Inaho is one of the ‘meh’ protagonist in mecha I’ve read. True, Inaho is badass and strategic as hell, but he’s like a machine, and most of his dialogue were along the line of ‘well, bruh, this is war’, so he’s not very interesting. Asseylum is just kind of there, walking around and talking. She has a solid motive, with a story behind her motives of being a pacifist, and it’s sad that we don’t see much of her. Slaine is just sad. Out of everybody, he’s the one with the most development, which makes this whole thing all the more tragic.

Since it’s a manga, the battles may not have that sense of grandeur as the anime. Sawano Hiroyuki soundtrack does not come flying off the pages, sadly. (Gosh, what a shame) A lot of the mecha manga I’ve read makes up for that either by making the scenes so insanely grand (like Sidonia did with its Gauna) or just focus most of its attention on the characters (like Bokurano, E7, FranXX). I feel that AldZero’s strategy is to make the battles super intense to make up for the lack of grandeur (and the lack of character, IMO). It kind of works because it keeps the pages engaging, I finished the 4 volumes in two days. It kind of backfires as well, because half the time I had no idea what’s going on. I’m sorry but all the robots all look the same. Is that racist?

I thought I was going to like Slaine a lot… I loved his design, and he seemed like a complex badass character. He’s the reason why I wanted to watch the series back in 2014, but he’s… I don’t know, something’s off about him and I cannot quite pinpoint what. In volume 1, I liked him, but after that, something about him scares me.

I buy into Rayet’s story, she’s a much more interesting characters than many in the main cast. Also a catalyst for character development that kind of got pushed aside. Never mind.

AldZero has some pretty grand themes, but I feel that most of it would come in season 2, where the characters get some more development. For the duration of this manga, the themes that people claim this story has just sort of flew over my head. Just as the stories I like aren’t always good *cough Saint Seiya cough*, I guess this is a case of a good story that I don’t like too much.

Well, the overall conclusion of it is that 1. I’m generally confused by the battles and 2. I’m not invested in the main characters, and those that I’m invested in, I was no longer invested in by the end of the story.

Plus side: art style is exactly the same as the anime, the mechs are very well-drawn, and the plot itself is pretty interesting. Still, I did not enjoy it as much as I thought I would. Probably because I had high expectations.

Ending spoilers:

Apparently, Inaho and Asseylum dies, but since there’s a season 2 manga I think they didn’t in the manga universe either. Well, it doesn’t matter, because I have almost zero emotional investment in that ending.

Asseylum was shot by Saazbum, Inaho was shot by Slaine due to a misunderstanding, and Slaine screamed. As Inaho was on the ground bleeding, he tried to grasp Asseylum’s hand one last time. And I’m like, okay, but you were so distant towards her for the whole series? Really? I think their conversations were all along the line of Asseymlum going ‘I will have PEACE!’ and Inaho going ‘lady this is war’. Okay, I might have missed something, because I don’t feel that there’s a connection on a personal level between Asseylum and Inaho to vouch that scene. I buy more into Slaine desire to protect Asseylum, so much so that after what he’s been through in the story, turns into some kind of obsession and he ended up changing into a different person. (And probably will go off the deep end)

Oh, and I have to include this cover of the songs, it’s so beautiful:

That’s it. Thanks for reading my unorganized rant.