ZOIDS

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I am a big fan of Zoids.
However, the Zoids Anime series ranks to nothing but average.

While I have only seen Zoids: Chaotic Century and Zoids: Shin Seiki Zero, I have seen enough to be able to say that what plagues the Anime series is the fact that whatever was wrong with the previous installment isn't fixed in the next.

Zoids suffers from cheesy dialogue and an iffy plot (heroic yet immature kid finds a mysterious young girl holding great power and in turn experiences a lot of emotional growth: used to death). Situations can sometimes seem unrealistic, which is out of place because the show deals a lot with underground conspiracy. While the physics explanations are plausible, they're quite overdone. It's understandable, however. Zoids started with no story. To turn a bunch of high-class model kits into a groundbreaking Anime is not an easy step at all. However, my reaction to Zoids was still: They could have done better.

Now, visually, Zoids was one of the best animated shows out there. Instead of using conventional 3-D animation, the animators decided to take it another notch and use cel-shading instead. THE ZOIDS WERE NOT HAND-DRAWN.
Cel-shading is a method that makes 3-D models look as if they were still cartoons. This is normally used to the 3-D models would blend in better with two-dimensional surroundings. The same method is used in Jet Set Radio Future, Zelda: The Wind Waker, XIII, Kirby: Right Back At Ya, Megaman: NetWarriors, SD Gundam, and some others.
Cel-shading is perfectly in place here because as seen in the model kits, the armor panels show a lot of the intricate workings inside of a Zoid, and the only way to visually convey these complicated machines realistically while allowing them to merge with the hand-drawn portions of the show was to use the cel-shading method.
The drawn animations are, again, average.
The soundtrack can be summed up in one word: snazzy.

Overall, while it's an enjoyable show, Zoids barely falls above average but can't really rank with the best of them. It'll take a real Zoids fan to appreciate this show for what it is.

5/10

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Added by P-T Ichigo 2 months ago on 29 April 2008 10:24