Aldnoah.Zero

The characterization for this episode if I'm honest felt slightly lacklustre and there's no one in particular here that grabbed my attention. Some of them seemed like stock stereotypes that I see in every other mecha show with the MC apparently being a genius of sorts and those types don't rub off too well on me. As an entire package there wasn't much room to settle between moments and from my perspective was too disjointed to a degree. Some parts I wasn't a huge fan of too, that I'm predicting an incoming missile thing was really silly in particular near the end and also the events following afterwards were pretty predictable with the whole princess being the instigator of a war deal. In all likelihood I imagine she's not dead and it seemed way too obvious that it was staged, I'm hoping I'm wrong and there's some spin to it than what I'm originally thinking because it'd be very disappointing if my assumption is right.

The dialogue itself I couldn't find it in me to be that engaged either and the setup was sluggish throughout. The end leaves it on a glimmer though that it might develop into an interesting political conflict but the execution's lacking some flair personally.

This was pretty bad. Firstly we've had 8 infodumps. 8. That is as lazy as you get. We've gotten the same information twice in more different infodumps. Also the characterisation was very generic. Obvious bad guys are obvious and obvious good guys are obvious. Let us not have any grey characters! Let us make everything obvious and make Hitler into Hitler. Bravo. The militay on Earth makes no sense. How do you have so little security? When you have the single most important person alive visiting your country you have security. You don't leave it so unsecure. Four cars? Really? Yes, obvious plot twist is obvious, the Martians killed her themselves, but still. This was no effort at all.
Overall this was boring and stupid. I want to like a mecha sci-fi, but this has given me no reason to suspect that anything good will come from this. Infodumps, generic presentation and pacing, boring characters.

I like the setup here. I've always liked alternate histories, especially those focusing on the present day after whatever change is made. The setting is well thought-out; I predict we're going to be learning a lot about what really happened on Heaven's Fall later on. I do want to know what them Martians are up to, and I hope we get to clearly see the internal conflicts between the various Martian Knights besides their battles with the Earth characters.

Princess Asseylum and Slaine were an interesting pair, I kinda wish we had gotten to see more of them. (I'm willing to bet Asseylum isn't actually dead.) The apparent racism against Slaine for (I assume) having Earth heritage will be a cool topic to explore alongside the outright war between Earth and Mars. Maybe, if Asseylum is actually gone for good (or he just thinks she is), that combined with others' prejudice could lead to him changing sides.

All in all, I'm getting a sort of Gargantia vibe here. Which, to me, is a very good thing.

It's pretty obvious Princess Blondie is alive. We didn't see her face once during that parade. Which means that was probably a body double. That aside, I like.

I, too, think that the Princess is still alive. They made a pretty obvious attempt to not show her face. But then that would suggest the Princess is complicit in the knowledge that if her double dies, it will still start a conflict.

what with all-out war and mass destruction. If anything, I don't think there'll be too much idle time.

The dialogue and characters, I have to agree with Gen that it was all pretty generic, but I think there's room for improvement there. Although what I liked least about the episode was the protagonist on Earth - he is way too deadpan to take seriously and they'll have to change him radically for me to care. The rest, though, should be alright with development and some more subtlety (i.e. not much more like Mr. Totally-Planned-The-Terrorist-Attempt-On-Princess evil commander in space).

The animation was nice, the only downside being that I don't like the char designs much after all, but that's something I can deal with if the rest of the show proves competent. The OST was probably the big remarkable point, especially in the last scene where it was practically screaming "Hiroyuki Sawano!".