Aldnoah Zero

Gen Urobochi is back with a mecha anime called Aldnoah.Zero as the brains behind the show. Ei Aoki is the main director and Hiroyuki Sawano will compose the music with Kalafina singing the OP.

Here's the official website

Word out there is that it should be airing in Japanese TV stations by July of this year.

You'd have thought he'd have gotten the Kamen Rider stuff out of the way before starting a new project.

Gaim seems to be ending soon,though

Grim political situation... character who operates off of pure logic... idealistic female character... Yup, it's an Urobuchi show. Not to mention the tag line:

UROBUCHI AS FUCK

Weird, I thought he was working on a movie with a Rie Kugimiya character in a bodysuit. /searches...

Yeah, it's called Expelled From Paradise. Wonder when that's coming out...

And yeah, epic tagline.

edited 30th May '14 11:57:18 AM by Nadir

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=16028

Looks like we got five TV stations, internet streams through NicoNico and at least three seiyu names announced.

Mecha design is by Kenji Teraoka.

Aniplex is involved as a producer with A-1 doing the majority of the animation work.

Normally I'd say that I'm cautiously optimistic for a project like this: Despite a few recent whiffs, Urobuchi has a fairly good track record. The cast looks to be decent, it appears to have a bit of a budget, and it's certainly got grand ambitions.

After the past few high-profile mecha screw-ups, however, I've got to say that what I've seen so far leaves me cold. This could be very good, don't get me wrong - I worry, however, that the story the production team wants to tell won't be the story that I care about watching.

Valvrave didn't have anything like this kind of staff - it instead had the increasingly toxic brand of the two guys responsible for Code Geass. Gargantia is a more worrying precedent, but it's been noted before that Urobuchi actually played a relatively small part in the writing and development of that one. If he's got his hands closer to the controls in this one, that's a positive sign.

Urobuchi is only listed as the 'original creator' here. Takayama Katsuhiko is doing the writing

Hrm. Dude's chief credits are for harem anime... and Boku no Pico. Doesn't inspire a huge amount of confidence.

He apparently also wrote scripts for Fullmetal Alchemist and did series composition for Future Diary. So hopefully it won't turn out... too badly?

But yeah, that's kind of worrying. Seems like Urobuchi is big enough now that they just stick his name on whatever they can.

Some more new casting calls announced.

@Iaculus

Valvrave was another highly-promoted original mecha show funded by Aniplex, which is why I made the comparison. Hopefully this isn't also going to be split-cour.

edited 1st Jun '14 12:51:52 PM by HighVelocityPointyThings

@Iaculus:

That's not exactly accurate. I could go into all the details, but the simple fact is Valvrave only had *one* guy from Code Geass and, for the record, even he has had better days, both in the past and more recently. It's rather shortsighted to speak of a "toxic" brand without a better grasp of the creator's record as well as the issues with that particular project and Aniplex's handling of it.

I can more or less agree with you about Gargantia. But Urobuchi is even less involved in this new show. As previously mentioned, the actual main writer of Aldnoah Zero is credited as Takayama Katsuhiko. Who also has his fair share of very good and very bad projects, so things remain up in the air.

I'm a bit more worried about the fact one of the creators, perhaps it was the director himself, referenced the movie "Man of Steel" in an interview as an example of what they were aiming for in terms of having a heavy tone with profound elements. It might just be a poor choice of words, though.

edited 1st Jun '14 1:04:37 PM by Souther

Sorry to say, but I'm kinda convinced that this might be a Deconstruction of a Mecha show or something.

But then again, I'm making this assumption based on his more…memorable work.

How exactly does Urobuchi handle mecha shows? Does he handle them like his aforementioned more memorable work?

I think it's a dangerous idea to come into this with any expectations of finding Madoka similarities, starting with the already discussed issue that Urobuchi's apparently not going to write every episode (although I do expect him to write the first, like with Gargantia). I don't think he's worked on mecha before, but that's not necessarily a positive or negative.

I'm thinking that it'll be a darker and more ruthless representation of mecha in line with how Tomino sometimes tried to depict war back in the day, with many senseless and cruel deaths, some of which might even be a little excessive (see Zeta, Victory Gundam or Ideon).

edited 1st Jun '14 1:08:31 PM by Souther

which would be funny. since even if Urobuchi isn't deeply involved in this, the fact remains that he has some involvement in this project (however small it may be) and Gudam was what inspired him to become the Butcher. so he's now involved in something which could turn out similar to the works that inspired him

And then getting Urobuchi to do an actual Gundam show would make this scenario go full circle.

Am I wrong?

edited 1st Jun '14 2:58:01 PM by TargetmasterJoe

OK, false alarm - Katsuhiko is doing series composition. The actual writing is all Urobuchi, all the way, baby. You might just get slightly more footage of little boy butt than you're strictly comfortable with.

>Urobutcher on writing

ALL ABOARD THE HYPE TRAAAAIIINNN!

>Urobutcher on writing

>we know almost nothing about the plot (like it initially happened with Madoka)

MY HYPE LEVELS ARE BEYOND MEASURE

edited 5th Jun '14 11:20:57 AM by bassgs435

hnnggg

July cannot come soon enough.

Where'd you find the news the Urobuchi is indeed the main writer?

Seconding the source request

Yeah Iaculus, what are you even talking about?

It's rather presumptuous to jump in and make such a bold claim. Until proven otherwise, Urobuchi is surely going to write some episodes but announcing "UROBUCHI ALL THE WAY" sounds like an empty, baseless statement at this point. Who said so?

edited 6th Jun '14 2:58:00 PM by Madonis