I very rarely say this, but in the case of Aldnoah.Zero , I firmly believe it: the show should have ended after episode twelve. While it would have been a depressing ending, it also would have made a point and kept its characters fairly interesting and relevant, while the actual ending, presented here in episodes 19 – 24, tries a little too hard to wrap things up neatly while also not truly evolving the three main players at all. It was a nice thought, but ultimate unfulfilling.

The previous set of episode ended with Princess Asseylum opening her eyes after two years in a coma, something Slaine and Edelrittuo were aware of but kept from Lemrina, who had been impersonating her sister. As Asseylum slowly recovers, Slaine continues on with his anti-Earth plans, even though he knows that the woman he purports to love will never approve. Meanwhile Inaho has orchestrated a Martian resistance through his interactions with the captured knight Mazuurek, and as Slaine continues his offensive, the Earth Forces prepare to both take him down and rescue the princess. As plots go, apart from the fact that most of the Versian characters look very similar (at least the blond ones), it's fairly basic and not particularly inspired, although watching people quietly rebel against Slaine is decently interesting. On the Earth front, Inaho is overusing his Analytical Engine eye to the point where it is starting to affect him physically, and only Inko appears to notice; in the show's defense, Inaho was pretty robotic in terms of personality previous to becoming bionic, so it isn't likely to be something people are paying attention to in terms of his behavior.

While Slaine is the character who ultimately is the most interesting in terms of his motivations and tortured sense of identity and loyalty, it is worth noting that Inaho's abuse of his eye is directly tied to his plan to stop Slaine and rescue the princess, which does indicate a degree of self-sacrifice for someone he has grown to love. His final decision about the eye at the very end of the series backs this up, even as his reliance on it gets to the point of creepy, where he converses with it as an entirely separate entity that happens to live in his brain. Slaine, on the other hand, shows an almost direct descent into madness driven by despair. He begins episode nineteen clearly on edge and by the time he and Inaho finally have their rematch at the end of episode twenty-four, he's reached a point he himself doesn't believe he can come back from. That both contributes to and takes away from his final scenes with Inaho: Inaho's decision is both a mercy and a punishment for Slaine, who will have to finally come to terms with himself in one way or another.

Asseylum is probably the most disappointing character in terms of her development over this second half of the series. While she arguably does manage to save herself (not necessary for character development or a good character in general, but worth noting) and does succeed in her goals, she also reads much more like an idealized angel of mercy figure, an otherworldly “good girl” from a Victorian novel, something her color scheme is in line with. It is impressive that she puts her own needs and wants below those of her people and the world, and I do appreciate the lack of romantic subplot in this second half (at least in terms of series resolution), it also feels like she was never really a character in this season, but instead a pretty doll for Slaine and Inaho to build their respective plots around.

While the series continues to look good and have some good music (the opening theme is particularly good), it does falter in a few places. In episode twenty-four there is an abrupt tonal shift in the background music , going from martial before the commercial break to weirdly 80s directly after it, perhaps more of a problem for BD viewers since there's no actual commercial to break things up. Likewise calling Slaine a “douchebag” in an early episode on the set feels very off in terms of the language generally used in the show; it feels far too tied to the slang of real world 2016 and is jarring. Both the dub and sub tracks are decent, though the sub works a little better, in part because of the lack of contemporary slang, but also because as Slaine's selfish descent continues, Kensho Ono simply pulls it off a little better than Zach Aguilar , sounding more convincingly anguished. As has been the norm for Aniplex 's release of this series, the six episodes are on two BDs, with a lengthy booklet of mecha designs and schematics and two postcard-sized cast pinups. If you aren't into mecha in its scientific form, this may not feel like enough bang for the amount of bucks they want, but if you do like to know the mechanics behind the machines, the booklet's value increases dramatically, because it really does get very detailed.