Episode 4 of Aldnoah.Zero 2, titled “Soldiers’ Pay,” is currently available on Crunchyroll for paid members. If you are a free member, you can watch this episode six days from now on February 7th.
Things are tricky on Slaine’s end after the end of the last episode, which ended in the carefully planned death of Lord Saazbaum. Now I know why Slaine spared Saazbaum at the end of the first season when he had the chance to kill him. If you have watched the first series, you can see Slaine’s political savvy skills at play.
He is not stupid to openly defy the Vers nobility, but suspicions have already been raised. Slaine reminds me of Griffith from the manga and anime series Berserk. Griffith manipulated his way through the ranks of nobility.
It is obvious that the nobles want to handle Slaine, but in a way that their reputations are not tarnished.
That scene was nostalgic because I watched Berserk, watched the redone Berserk anime movies, and played Sword of the Berserk: Guts’ Rage. I feel that Harklight is the Gatsu to Slaine’s Griffith in this fashion and this is ironic because Gatsu lost one eye in the process and Inaho lost his eye at the end of the first season.
This makes me think Inaho’s suited for that role, but Gatsu was a front line fighter and Griffith was the strategist.
Everybody acknowledges that Inaho is Earth’s ace in the hole against the invading forces of Vers, but I feel that they depend too much on him. It takes away from the development of other characters that could learn to be intelligent like Inaho.
Without Inaho, Earth would completely be under Vers’ control.
I enjoyed the fight scene as the new enemy mecha fought by using gravity manipulation, which I did feel was overkill.
This shows that Vers has superior firepower over Earth, but not all of the Orbital Knights show ill-will toward the planet. That is not enough to spare them from Inaho’s wrath though. It does remind me of Mobile Suit Gundam, where the Zeon colonies are full of people living in poverty.
I was not surprised that Inaho came to save the day, but I was surprised that he didn’t deliver the finishing blow.
On the same note, Slaine did something amazing to throw off suspicions. It becomes harder for the nobles to deal with Slaine in the future, which really reminded me of Griffith. Slaine managed to kill Saazbaum and Griffith managed to kill General Adon.
This episode was very enjoyable to watch as it revealed that the stakes are incredibly high on both sides because Inaho is Earth’s chance of survival and Slaine is the only chance to purge Vers’ noble class of its selfishness and corruption.
