In April 2024, the JSA announced Aono had met the conditions for mandatory retirement for "Free Class" players and his retirement would become official upon completion of his final scheduled game of the 2024–2025 shogi season.

[2][3][4] Aono's retirement became official on June 13, 2024, after his loss to Masaki Izumi in a 37th Ryūō Group 6 game.

[16] He served in that capacity until February 2017 when he and two other members of the board were dismissed as part of the JSA's response to the 29th Ryūō challenger controversy.

[17] Aono is active in promoting shogi outside Japan including visiting England in 1979 to teach the game to local players,[18] and helping to arrange a visit of twenty Chinese elementary school students from Shanghai to visit an elementary school in Sendagaya, Tokyo in 2015 as part of an international exchange program involving shogi.

The game can be thought as a set of tsumeshogi (詰将棋 tsumeshōgi "checkmate") and brinkmate (必死 hisshi) problems.