Aldnoah.Zero: The Turning Wheel (Dawn of Intrigue)

February 8, 2015 2:46 PM - Season 1, Episode 17

Yuki and Marito are once again assigned to the Deucalion. Count Mazuurek has been taken prisoner. While questioning Mazuurek, Inaho manages to find some common ground regarding Princess Asseylum. Count Marylcian personally arrives at the Moon base and challenges Slaine to a duel.
posted by needled (7 comments total)

I'm betting on some kind of light-manipulating power for the Herschel. Partly because its ultimate namesake was famous for his telescopes, but most because we already did gravity, entropy, time, and heat. We're quickly running out of physical constants to insult.
posted by Iridic at 5:00 PM on February 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

Did someone decide that the show wasn't polling enough with teenagers, or specifically teenage girls? Or was the dieting discussion to make these young people who are involved with a space war retain some of their youthful concerns?

Back to the episode at large: I like Inaho's attempt to expose the false princess, but he feels a bit like batman lite, not quite a masked vigilante, but definitely working outside of the system that could assist his efforts, if he trusted others or took the time to build up a case. But because he's Magical Hero Inaho, everything will work out (unless there's some attempt to ground him and one of his efforts fails).
posted by filthy light thief at 8:13 AM on February 9, 2015

This episode had interesting echoes to episodes 7 & 8. Inaho and Mazuurek's interactions contrasted with Inaho and Slaine's interactions in episode 7, where despite their cooperation in dealing with Femianne in the end Inaho declared Slaine to be an enemy and shot him down. Inaho helps Mazuurek escape, while in episode 7 Inaho left Slaine to be retrieved and tortured by Cruhteo in episode 8. And in episode 8, Asseylum happily looks at birds with Inaho, smiling and twirling under blue skies. But in this episode, Slaine is showing holograms of birds to an unconscious Asseylum, in the dark confined chamber in the Vers moon base.
posted by needled at 8:41 AM on February 9, 2015

I wonder if the director is trying a little too hard to convey through Slaine's hair his slipping control on the situation he's in.

In hindsight the episode was a disappointment; for all that went down today we know that Slaine and Inaho are going to come through it intact or something nearly like; the show's invested too much in them and too little in all the other characters to do something that handicaps either Slaine or Inaho out of the main narrative.

So it's reasonable to expect that Inaho's going to face discipline for helping the enemy escape, but not nearly as severely as he probably deserves, since the story has set him up for at least one more big battle; Slaine's probably going to take some blows in his pending duel, but even in the worst case -- he loses -- he's going to retain enough power and access to resume his plot at whatever scale the story has escalated to.
posted by ardgedee at 3:10 PM on February 9, 2015

So it's reasonable to expect that Inaho's going to face discipline for helping the enemy escape, but not nearly as severely as he probably deserves, since the story has set him up for at least one more big battle;

...and he's the literally only guy that is actually effective in taking out the enemy mechas.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 8:08 PM on February 10, 2015

Upcoming episode titles:
ep. 18. The Rose and The Ring (Emerging from the Deep Forest / Out of the Woods)
ep. 19. Here to There (The Flaw in Paradise)
ep. 20. The Light of Day (The Price of Honor / Glory)
ep. 21. The Fortune's Fool (The Other Side of the Dream / Fantasy)

Rough translations of the Japanese titles are in parentheses.

Episode 18's English title is interesting, as it is also the title of a satirical work of fantasy fiction by William Makepeace Thackeray, where magical artifacts in the form of a rose and a ring, respectively, allow their bearers to appear beautiful to all who behold them. There are also two princesses, one whose identity remained hidden. So, Vers holographic technology and two princesses, hmm?
posted by needled at 6:44 AM on February 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

Vers really ought to have an explicit chain of command so that people don't fight duels over assignments, this lethal sort of infighting isn't a good thing if you want things to run smoothly. It seems like the counts operate more or less autonomously with no explicit overarching goal other than exploiting the Earth, but I suppose that's the same for a lot of imperialism.
posted by Small Dollar at 11:13 AM on February 22, 2015