Anime: Akai Koudan Zillion

Zillion is a show which takes the simplistic alien invasion story… and makes it even more simplistic. In all the shows I know where aliens invade humanity, this is the only one that has the last line of defence being… three hand pistols. I mean, really, no giant robots or spaceships or super bio-suits. Just three lasers that look and shoot as normal pistols. The premise alone is quite lame as the aliens have a million huge spaceships, a billion tanks and a trillion foot soldiers, their armours are impregnable to all other weapons, yet they are unable to beat three teenagers with some lasers. Because their firepower is as powerful as a zillion warriors. Get it? Zillion? The name? And I must point out that these super weapons are not levelling mountains with a shot, don’t cause earthquakes or tsunamis or don’t even beat two simple foot soldiers with one shot. They are pea shooters and the aliens are dumb idiots that constantly attack in small groups.

Anyways, the story is more childish than the Power Rangers, as the plot is even more stupid (beating an intergalactic empire with a few pea shooters), and the villains hardly have personality. Hell man, they don’t even have a face! They all look identical with those stupid expressionless masks they wear. They don’t even sound alien with those typical voices they have. And the heroes who DO have a face and excused typical voices are the archetypical trio you can find everywhere, with zero development. Furthermore, there is not much plot going around; 95% is stand-alone missions and the rest are simplistic plot twists you can figure out from miles away.

The show barely tries to have anything exciting in it. The idea about the lasers being the ultimate weapon looks like a poor attempt at promoting some amusement park, where you got to shoot monsters with pistols (it was a trend in the 80’s) but it otherwise looks terrible in anime form. Not only they don’t look special or imposing, but also they fire in a typical way. As for the damage they cause? Anything they hit is fizzling away without even exploding. Can you imagine how lame it looks for the human army to have more standard weaponry that blows up entire mountains and it’s completely ineffective against the aliens, but then some snotty kid fires a simple shot and the huge spaceship disappears without even exploding? It is simply anti-climactic and you need to endure it for 31 episodes without plot or interesting characters to keep you awake.

The production values are not helping either, as there is very little actual animation during the battles and characters stand frozen most of the time. And no explosions either! Just stupid poofs and aliens disappearing. Even more conventional explosions are nothing but round spheres that don’t even leave debris behind. Voice acting is relaxed and music themes are silly pop-songs you will listen once and forget 3 minutes later.

Furthermore, the finale is terrible as well, as out of nowhere we get this stupid moral message about appreciating life and some deus ex machina thingy pops out from the lasers and is giving the aliens a way to live peacefully. What a crock; the heroes didn’t even do anything about that. And if it was so easy to do it, why didn’t the lasers do it sooner? What, the show would end too fast this way? Well thanks for the nonsense we had to endure because of that.

Zillion is less interesting than the Power Rangers. At least there you had huge robots and big explosions. May obscurity make it fizzle away the same way those lasers hit something.