@Sander:
This is one criticism I can't get behind, because AZ has been very light on technobabble so far. There's two made up terms I can think of and that's "Kataphract", which is a local made up term for mecha and "Aldnoah" which is as of yet unexplained magic martian supertech powering the Martian mechs. That's it. Any Gundam show throws way more technobabble in it's first 4 episodes, to speak nothing of the technobabbling horror that is Captain Earth.
I was thinking about this last night and it's probably because I'm not paying much attention to the show. I'm probably sabotaging myself there, but I can't bring myself to be that invested in any of the characters like I said in my last post, and characters are usually the most important part of a show for me; I'm also a nitpicker in general, so it's just tough for me to remember what's going on when I'm too busy criticizing something that happened five minutes before, lol. So yeah, it's probably mostly my fault.
Also, I gave Captain Earth a try a couple of months ago and I'd definitely agree with the "horror" part. I still don't understand what the show was trying to do, and from what I've read about it since then, it hasn't figured that out itself? I gathered almost no information from it through the 3-4 episodes I watched, though. That's one thing Aldnoah does pretty well - at least I know who's behind the conflict, what happened to cause it, and what's going on now.
@Black:
The emotionless one just seems like a strange choice for an MC of this show, a lot of his actions and mannerisms are plain weird and come off as a half-hearted attempt at comedy, but they at least make it obvious when something is troubling him so he's not that bad. I'm still waiting for the blonde guy to do something interesting. I also have issues with how melodramatically evil the bad guys are, that worked in something campy like Majestic Prince but here it just feels a bit lazy, like they're just doing it to drum up sympathy for the good guys who have to suffer because these selfish Martians.
As of right now, I see Inaho as Urobuchi and company's answer to the Kira Yamato type of mecha MC. He's apparently really intelligent and talented, but instead of being a good fighter yet angsty about fighting, he's a good fighter because he's pretty emotionally detached and views things from a different angle than most of the other Earth soldiers. It's an interesting idea, but Inaho just doesn't stand out to me at all, especially not when he has his more outspoken and emotional friends clustered around him all the time. Plus we haven't seen what makes him a non-Gary Stu, since he's just doing his thing right now.
Slaine, on the other hand, is confusing me. Plus, maybe it's because I recently finished Gundam Seed, but I'm reminded of Athrun Zala whenever he shows up on screen, especially because of his apparent angst. Not only that, but the way he reacts to getting hit by Count Crouton (not sure how to spell his actual name lol) makes it seem like this beating trend is a recent thing, but Slaine's not doing anything to avoid it. I'm curious as to why he's even still alive if the Martians are so disgusted by him, too. Hopefully I didn't miss the explanation to that….
The Martians are a little disappointing to me as well. Again, I can't help but compare it to Seed; I really liked the duality between the Earth forces and ZAFT, especially when we see that both sides are equally deluded and desperate despite some differences in technology. It made me feel sympathy for both sides because of just how bad the conflict becomes, whereas in Aldnoah I'm not sure how to feel about the Martians at all. We haven't met too many Earth people yet, too, aside from Inaho and friends plus Marito and a few other soldiers and civilians. So far I feel like Aldnoah's conflict is pretty small, almost contained, without much of an epic feeling despite Inaho's two battles and all those vocal soundtracks - we haven't gotten an idea of the scope of the conflict yet. Not really a bad thing, but I'm not sure how to react to anything because of it.