A series of natural disasters has reduced the world to rubble, with the survivors doing whatever they must to survive in a world gone mad. But one young boy, Kakugo, gifted with amazing martial arts and a superpowerful suit of armor by his late father, has been charged with making the world (or at least his school) a safer place. But his sister has a matching set of skills and equipment, and she's on a mission to bring peace to the world... by wiping out humanity!

Review :

Well, I'm really not sure what to make of this one. One thing is sure, though: children, family pets, and most normal people just should not watch Apocalypse Zero--it can't be healthy (why Media Blasters didn't put it under their adult label isn't clear to me, but it probably should have been--half the reason I'm reviewing it is to warn the unsuspecting viewer). For most people, that's about all you really need to know--I can't even discribe some of it in this review and still have it be readable by the general public. But, if you really want to know...

The best way I can describe the feel is basically like a cross between Fist of the North Star and the South Park movie, and if that sounds weird, you don't know the half of it. It was pretty obvious from the beginning that there was something odd about this series; the first scene features a really skinny kid with a large head, wearing a Speedo and battling a multi-breasted radioactive bear beast. After some set up and meeting the post apocalyptic high school crowd (yes, there are still high schools with school uniforms in the ruins of Tokyo), the mayhem starts. But where it could have just been another blood and gore fest (and there's plenty of that), this one takes a slightly different tack--gross humor. Mainly this is because the villians (at least in the first two episodes) are the requisite giant bloodthirsty mutants, but they're also really, really silly, and absolutely disgusting. For example, the first one is sort of like a cross between a stripper and Godzilla, drawn as an old American cartoon--seriously. To describe her (or what she does to the innocent inhabitants of the city) in more detail would put this site way out of the family-friendly range, but suffice it to say that she looks like a very, very ugly woman the size of an apartment building who doesn't have anywhere near enough clothes on, and it's not a pretty sight.

Once the action starts, so does the violence. This series is plenty bloody, and chunks abound (a veritable horn of plenty of unraveled innards, and a lot of face removal) but it set itself out by featuring some of the more creative and gleefully disturbing violence I can think of. Not disturbing in it's realism--it was all so preposterous and nonsensical that there was no danger of any of it being mistaken for "realistic" or "serious" violence, even on a Go Nagai/Fist of the North Star level. But this mayhem was so bizzare and perverse (that's where South Park comes to mind) that it was sort of like a childhood nightmare rendered in bright cartoon colors--the creators definitely were having fun with the mayhem. The themes ranged from old fashioned exploding heads and squished schoolkids to "that's just wrong!" (though I do have to give credit to a character saying to a skeleton that happened to still be slightly alive "Hang in there... you'll be ok!"). Anyway, it's totally and rather embarassingly ridiculous, but even so, it's not for those with weak stomachs.

The characters ranged from wildly psychotic (though creatively so--one of the villians was upset that the hero had damaged his individuality, whatever that's supposed to mean), to classic cold hero, to the usual range of high school supporting crowd: a bully who's not so bad deep down, a few yes-men, a lot of innocent bystanders, and Horia, the spunky girlfirend with a heart of gold. The only two standouts were the villianess, who executed her malicous distructive skills with an appealing amount of relish (even if she was about as two dimensional as the cel she was painted on), and Horia, mainly because of a lot of spunk and some almost touching kindness. The main hero might develop into a properly conflicted anti-hero if the series continues, but he pretty much just posed and looked grim and stoic in the first volume (a daunting task, considering his opponents).

Story wise, it's got essentially the same story as both every other post apocalyptic anime and every high school hero story, all wrapped into one. It wasn't paced badly and, although there wasn't much overt humor, it was played so far over the top that it had a sort of campy appeal (hopefully it was supposed to be as silly and funny as it seemed), but that's about it.

The visuals were rather interesting; the animation wasn't bad (especially for an older-style show), nor was the art (although the backgrounds were generic), but what mostly stood out were the character designs. On one end, there were the gross villians, who looked kind of like a deranged American comic strip artist's take on a clown (think sort of like Crumb). The rest of the (human) characters were very interesting looking, and certainly unique; their heads tended to be rather bulbous, and had an almost gooey look to them, for lack of a better word--a little like an anime character looking into a fisheye lens. Not unattractive, but odd (I did think Horia was cute, at least). Oh, and the two suits of super-armor were actually pretty cool looking.

Rounding out the picture is the acting, which in the dub (can't speak for the original dialogue) wasn't too bad; over the top (which was appropriate), and although some of the lines were positively stupid, they also didn't seem out of place (it's possible, though I wouldn't even say likely, that some of the campy humor was added in the dub). Once again, Horia was probably the standout cast member, and I did sort of like the vilianess again. The huge monsters were cast and acted like Saturday morning cartoon villians, but that actually seemed appropriate (good thing, too--they did more talking than anybody). The music wasn't memorable at all, one way or the other.

Now, that's an accurate description of the parts of Apocalypse Zero, but the hard part comes in figuring out what to make of the whole. It was definitely intended as some sort of parody of post apoacalyptic gore-fests and all those high school hero series--there's no way that you could end up with an idea that weird, and villians that silly, any other way. But whether you think it's some sort of deranged brilliance, gross and juvenile, or just flat out distrubing is going to depend a whole lot on your taste. Personally, I have a pretty bizzare sense of humor (I liked The Ultimate Teacher, for example), and while Apocalypse Zero put me off initially, I couldn't deny that after a while it did build up some of the most creatively perverse and just plain wrong things that I can think of. But, in all honesty, it was just so gross that I found it a bit hard to watch and so close to cartoony that it was a little embarassing, too. I really can't say that I enjoyed it enough to recommend it to other people with my sense of humor, and I certainly wouldn't recommend it to almost anybody else, but I'll admit that there are a few people who just might enjoy it... but they're probably scary people. You know who you are.

None

Rates :

-.5- Too gross for it's own good, but might be so bad it's good for some.

Genre :

Post Apocalyptic Marital Arts High School Action Parody (Action)

In It :

Fistfights
Mass Destruction
Beasties (of the grossest kind)
Schoolgirls
Parody (I hope)
Weird (and disgusting)
Just Plain Stupid.

Break Down :

None of it is serious, but the grossness factor and graphic violence easily make it equivalent to an R, possibly worse--do not let your children near this, period. The 16-up rating Anime Works gave it was generous, in my opinion.

Violence:
5--Skin removed, spraying innards--you name it.

Nudity:
4--A vast amount of very unplesant nudity; probably a 5, except the nude character wasn't even close to human.

Sex/Mature Themes:
3--Hard to call, but definitely some unplesant stuff.

Language:
1--Really not that bad.

Availability :

Translated and released by Anime Works.
Two 45 minute VHS volumes of two episodes each, subtitled or dubbed.

AnimeNation and RightStuf probably both have this video if you want to buy it.