Season 1 Episode 1: Princess of Vers

I’ve been looking for a new anime to watch for some time now, and I came across this show while browsing through some of the latest additions to netflix. Basically, the series revolves around two nations, one of humans on Earth, and another called the Vers Empire. The Vers Empire is made up of humans that immigrated from Earth some time ago and found super-advanced alien “Aldnoah” technology on the moon, which then allowed them to terra-form and colonize Mars. The colonists on Mars and the inhabitants of Earth eventually began a war against each other, until the portal from the moon to Mars, the “Hypergate” exploded and destroyed the moon. The show begins some fifteen years after this event, during a relatively tense ceasefire between the two nations. The Princess Asseylum of the Vers Empire is about to begin a peace and goodwill tour of Earth, and, of course, not all of the Vers are happy with this and put in place a plan to begin a new war on Earth.

It’s always hard to tell whether or not you’re going to like an anime from the first episode (its usually the third episode that makes or breaks an anime; often referred to as the “rule of three”), but so far I have to say I am interested. Lots of cool looking mechas, giant spaceships, and and Earth v Alien war scenario all was intriguing, especially as the the “aliens” in this case are humans as well. Its interesting that the humans, due to their extended stay on Mars, consider themselves and are considered by the Earthlings to be martians, even though technically both empires are the same race of people.  I think the scale of the conflict that is set up in the first episode definitely lends itself to some interesting storytelling, and we’ll probably be getting a lot of WWII allegory. I have to say though, loving the sci-fi overtones, the scale, and the steampunk/19th century British Royal Navy styles of the Vers Empire.

Overall, definitely an abundance of exposition and setting of the board, so hard of course to say for sure but its definitely piqued my interest and I’ll be watching and reviewing more of the series!

Other thoughts:

• The Princess’ death almost certainly red herring; we’ll definitely be seeing more of her
• Not necessarily sure what the Vers beef with humans on Earth is. Probably be getting more into that eventually
• Slain is an awesome name
• The monotone way that one kid says “Oh, we have to leave, there’s rockets” was cracking me up
• The ending scene of New Orleans getting destroyed was epic; definitely and Independence Day feel to it. In fact, this whole series feels like its going to be a more intelligent, thoughtful version of that movie.
• Ten bucks says that Colonel that hates Slain will end up being a good guy in the end

I’ll be watching a new episode of Aldnoah every Wednesday, and an episode of a different anime (yet to be decided) every Saturday! Stop by OhVentures for recap and discussion of each episode!