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I have a couple of very closely related questions regarding composer Hiroyuki
Sawano's choices in naming Aldnoah Zero's OST/opening/ending song titles.

I will be referencing the tracklist for Aldnoah Zero's OST (link
[here](http://aldnoahzero.wikia.com/wiki/ALDNOAH.ZERO_Original_Soundtrack)),
in addition to some opening/closing songs that are co-composed by Hiroyuki
Sawano including "aLIEz", "A/Z", and "&Z".

First, most of the song titles include special/non-alphabetical/non-English
characters (even if the title is clearly meant an actual word like "robot" or
"breathless"). Here are some examples:

  * R零B零T
  * BRE@TH//LESS
  * Ch19ヲFIRE★

Why did Hiroyuki Sawano decide to include all the special characters? Is there
any significance in using them? To me, they are unnecessary, but I hesitate to
claim that they are indeed unnecessary because they might actually have some
meaning that I am not seeing.

My other question is why are some song titles seemingly extra-arbitrarily
named? I realize that these are songs, so the composer can name them whatever
he likes, but some song titles seem completely out of the blue to me.

I realize that there are explanations for the names of some OST tracks in the
wiki that I linked.

For example, the song "AD2014-7.5/7.9-零・A" is named because "2014 07-05 /
07-09 [are] ALDONAH.ZERO's air dates on Tokyo MX and ABC respectively".

The explanation tells me WHAT the song is named after, but it does not tell me
WHY is the song named after something as arbitrary as an air date for the
show. OST track titles usually relate to what the song actually attempts to
convey to the listener, or relates to the scene in the animation, but I cannot
see how an air date relates to either.

Finally, I do not understand where the openings/ending names come from. What
do the names "aLIEz", "A/Z" and "&Z" mean exactly, and why are they named that
way?


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music aldnoah-zero hiroyuki-sawano
Confusion about the naming of Aldnoah Zero's OST/opening/ending song titles


Please see [this answer](https://anime.stackexchange.com/a/22420/8134) to the
question "Why do some works [anime, manga, novels] have a trailing dot?" for
the information about **Japanese decorative use of typographical symbols**
such as 「@」,「&」,「/」, and 「★」.

「零」( _rei_ ) is decorative but also accomplishes **a clever play-on-words**.
_Rei_ means "zero" and the number 0 looks like the English capital letter O,
so the Os of the word "ROBOT" have been replaced with "zeros," befitting the
series title _Aldnoah Zero_.

[「ヲ」](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wo_\(kana\)) is the _katakana_ symbol for
the [syllabogram](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syllabary) " _wo_." Since
_katakana_ is the most-often used Japanese writing system used for
words/phrases of foreign origin and is the newest of Japan's writing systems,
it can be used to give **a sense of newness** , trendiness, or forward-ness as
opposed to a traditional feeling, which suits sci-fi. It is not _terribly_
strange to use _katakana_ here rather than _hiragana_ even though the word "
_wo_ " is a native Japanese participle which is usually written in _hiragana_
as 「を」 as it would be if the phrase 「Ch19ヲFIRE★」 had been written in standard
Japanese: 「地球を加勢」（ _chikyuu wo kasei_ = "reinforcements to the Earth"
featuring **another play-on-words** in which _kasei_ is pronounced the same
way as _Ka-sei_ , the Japanese word for "Mars"
=[「火星」](http://www.genvid.com/diesgaudii/articles/npf/index.html) in which 「星」
[pronounced _sei_ , _hoshi_ , or _shou_ ] is a Japanese _kanji_ character that
refers to [all celestial bodies — such as planets and
stars](http://www.genvid.com/diesgaudii/articles/osmanthus/index.html) — and
can be tacked onto the end of any planetary body’s name as a sort of suffix to
indicate that it is a celestial body... and thereby can legitimately be
indicated by 「★」, whereas in English the words and concepts for "planet" and
"star" contain no overlap. Nevertheless, it is not a perfectly-executed play-
on-words since "reinforcements to the Earth" is comprehensible but "Earth _wo_
Mars" makes no obvious grammatical sense in Japanese).

「A/Z」 is simply an **abbreviation** of _Aldnoah Zero_. I would interpret that
「aLIEz」 is meant to be read as "LIE (in between) Aldnoah and Zero" but I have
no citation for that.


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[seijitsu's answer](https://anime.stackexchange.com/a/24404/) does a good job
of identifying what's going on with most of your examples, though I'll add
that "Ch19ヲFIRE★" is meant to be read "Chikyuu wo Kasei" (1 = "i", 9 = "kyuu",
"Fire" = 火 = "ka", ★ = 星 = "sei", "kasei" = 火星 = "Mars", but "kasei" also = 加勢
= "reinforcements"), which is something like "Reinforcements to Earth".

However, this goes a little beyond the recent-ish fad of including arbitrary
typographic symbols for stylistic purposes. There's a broader context to this:
Hiroyuki Sawano is a madman when it comes to titling his compositions.

I invite you to consult the track listings for some of his other compositions.
For example, [Kill la Kill](http://vgmdb.net/album/42078), which has
incomprehensible monstrosities like "寝LLna聴9" (no, this doesn't make any real
sense even if you've seen Kill la Kill _and_ know Japanese). Or [Owari no
Seraph](http://vgmdb.net/album/52144), with "1hundredknight:Y" being a number
of steps removed from "Hyakuya Yuuichirou" (the protagonist's name). He's been
doing this since at least 2011 with [Ao no
Exorcist](http://vgmdb.net/album/25549), and has only gotten more ridiculous
over time. My favorite example of this insanity is "凸】♀】♂】←巨人" from [Shingeki
no Kyojin](http://vgmdb.net/album/38626), which Sawano indicates is supposed
to be read "Kyojin Shinkou", meaning "Advance of the Titans" - but this is
actually a pictogram of a series of walls, with a giant (巨人) approaching them.
My god!

It's leaked over into his non-anime work, too - the soundtrack for [Platina
Data](http://vgmdb.net/album/41469) had gems like "nf壱III". I haven't seen
Platina Data yet, and that probably has no bearing whatsoever on my inability
to figure out what this is supposed to mean. He wasn't always like this,
though - [the soundtrack for
Iryuu](http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E3%83%95%E3%82%B8%E3%83%86%E3%83%AC%E3%83%93%E7%B3%BB%E3%83%89%E3%83%A9%E3%83%9E%E3%80%8C%E5%8C%BB%E9%BE%8D-Team-
Medical-
Dragon%E3%80%8D%E3%82%AA%E3%83%AA%E3%82%B8%E3%83%8A%E3%83%AB%E3%82%B5%E3%82%A6%E3%83%B3%E3%83%89%E3%83%88%E3%83%A9%E3%83%83%E3%82%AF-
TV%E3%82%B5%E3%83%B3%E3%83%88%E3%83%A9/dp/B000FDF2IC) (the show that first
brought him real recognition) is quite tame, with track titles like
"unnecessary words" and "Blue Dragon".

According to [one tweet of
his](https://twitter.com/sawano_nZk/status/308097466358718465), it's generally
true of his soundtracks that the titles don't really have any deep meaning to
them. "Don't think too hard about it", he says.

So, yeah - Sawano is bonkers ([he appears to get a good bit of lulz out of
doing this](https://twitter.com/sawano_nZk/status/310615763360833537)), and
beyond maybe decrypting his hyper-elaborate punny titles into a comprehensible
human language, there is probably not much more to be said here.


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I believe that the title "Chikyuu wo Kasei", has a minor meaning to the shown
" _Aldnoah.Zero_ " because they mention " **19** of the 32 Mars Floating
Castles are landing." So if " _kasei_ " is to be read as "Mars" or
"Reinforcements" as previously mentioned, then the title could be read as
"Mars, to the Earth", or maybe "The 19 Reinforcements". These are just rough
translations from gathering what others have said. I claim no statements as
100% my own.

As for "aLIEz", that could be maybe how it is telling how the title of the
show is meant to be read. "Aldnoah.Zero" can be seen as "AlnoahLIEZero" or
"Aldnoah between Zero". Just a stupid opinion I thought I elaborate on more.


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