There are, on the whole, two major wings of the Mecha genre. The “Super Robot” subgenre consists of shows where the Mechas and their pilots have magical powers and capabilities that often seem to run more on rule of cool than on anything resembling reality. One example would be Gurren Lagann, which frequently tells sense and logic to sit down and shut up, because the robots are going to do something awesome. That’s not to say that Super Robot shows can’t be serious or even dark. Neon Genesis Evangelion is also very much in the “Super Robot” bracket.
Then you get the “Real Robot” shows where mechas, even if technically still made less impractical than in reality as we know it, are treated more like standard war machines. They’re made of metal and powered by engines and nothing’s going to sprout a new ability because the pilot believes in himself. The mechas probably don’t have unique names or anything like that, and the protagonist can at least in abstract theory get a new one if they total the one they’re driving, even if they’d have a lot of customizing work to do to get it back the way they like it. Full Metal Panic lives pretty comfortably in this space, as do several of the more classic Mecha entries.
So, what happens if you put these in the same setting, forcing a Real Robot protagonist to fight against a variety of Super Robot bosses with their named mechas and might-as-well-be-magic powers? As you might have surmised from the title of the review, you get Aldnoah.Zero.
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