I take back everything good I said in my review of Aldnoah.Zero, minus the decent visual design. Season one was a mecha show with pretty good characters that happened to be overshadowed by the incessant appearances of the protagonist, with a strong OST and occasional uses of clever planning as a way for the inferior human race to band together in order to take out the overwhelmingly powerful Martian (Versian) units, even if it ultimately failed to convince me that a high school student could be such a strong force in the terrestrial army, nor that the human boy trapped in the Versian ranks had any real relevance to the show. Season two is a mecha show with three, possibly four characters in total, with the two impossibly unlikeable main characters dominating the screen, as well as maintaining a laughably idealistic view of clever planning as a way to quickly end every fight scene in the show—none of which had any relevance to begin with—and which ultimately failed to convince me that that same high school student has any actual emotion or a place as the sole protector of Earth, nor that the human boy trapped in the Versian ranks makes any sense as a character, no matter what his perceived relevance is.
Yes, the wunderkind Inaho is back. And his rival Slaine, and his love interest Princess Asseylum, and all the other myriad of characters that had no business surviving the first season’s grim finale. Inaho has a new shiny eye that finally lets the show explain the impossibly strong powers of prediction and precision that he used to dominate the show thus far, and in the process his abilities transcend humanity into the realm of God itself. It also hurts his eye socket a bit, which is supposed to be a way for us to feel like he has a cost to using his divine superpowers. As far as putting costs on superpowers goes, making the source of your power hurt slightly when you use it is the cheapest sidestepping method in the book, but I suppose that there is no other way to naturally put a tax on Inaho after the first season.
Slaine now can see briefly into the future, which allows him to effortlessly dominate everyone in aerial combat, as well as giving the show an excuse for him not to die from one perfect shot from Inaho’s mech. Aside from clairvoyance, he also becomes a count due to another noble’s goodwill (at gunpoint), becomes the sole emotional support of the overlooked and frustrated sister of Princess Asseylum, and suddenly develops an insatiable lust for power that was completely absent in the first season. The only good thing I can say about Slaine is that he seizes his tyrannical power in a selfish an narcissistic manner, which gives him twice the depth of Inaho, who in the meantime has finally learned how to smile and cry, thus being almost able to feel joy or sadness I surmise.
Princess Asseylum spends much of the show unmoving and comatose, like how she would have been for the entire series in an ideal world where she was actually assassinated in the very first episode of the franchise. A Princess Asseylum-esque AI would have made more sense and performed the same purpose, given how predictable her actions are and how little character development she receives. By contrast her sister actually does have strong motivations for her actions, from being attracted to Slaine’s endless ambitions to feeling a twinge of resentment towards her sister for being eternally shunted out of the limelight. She is both a woman of action and of consideration. The show does not overplay her resentment of Asseylum, nor does it turn her into a slave of Slaine; from her wheelchair she actually exerts the most real power over the show, as well as the most interest.
And then she falls from the screen as a plot device that has finished its purpose, as do all the members of the Deucalion, all the Orbital Knights, and anyone else I may have missed. Even though they all participate in every battle that occurs, ultimately there is zero room for characters that are not our two troubled protagonists. Having talked about them there is nothing left to say about this season, aside from my earlier observation that battle scenes are thrown in erratically and for no purpose whatsoever other than to strain Inaho’s eye and hypothetically maintain viewer interest. The overuse of a few select pieces from the OST is equally intolerable; after the fourth time we hear “Keep on Keeping on” or “No Differences” playing in the background as a herald to Inaho's stupid light show, it's time for me to close the window and open up Code Geass instead.
Speaking of Code Geass, there have been a lot of recent remarks about comparing the two shows, from the “dirty Eleven/human” status of Slaine to the overpowered left eye of Inaho, to the princess in a wheelchair and the need to overpower superior mecha units with strategy and numbers. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but in this case immolation is a better choice of wording. For all its flaws I happen to like Code Geass, and so this comparison makes me want to immolate myself, and then my hard disk for having ever held an episode of Aldnoah.Zero.