Zoids

I was probably the only person in my entire high school/town/county that watched this show, courtesy of Cartoon Network's Toonami programming block. And, honestly, the only reason I even ended up watching the show originally was because I routinely stayed up all night grinding Warcraft 2 multiplayer on Bnet. (Of course, being like 14-15 years old makes it somewhat easy to stay up all night and recover like a damned mutant.) Once I got hooked on it, I had my alarm reset so I would wake up at the lovely hour of 5 AM just to catch each new episode, Monday thru Friday.

The first incarnation shown on American television was the "Chaotic Century" storyline, which followed Hero Protagonist -- Van Flyheight -- as he roams the semi-post-apocalyptic wasteland of Planet Zi with an amnesiac love interest named Fiona, as well as his zoid, Zeke. (A zoid is basically a sentient fighting robot thing that humans can pilot. They are serious business.)

BT Dubs: the Wikipedia page for the whole franchise incorrectly states that while CC was first, that the "New Century Zero" storyline was actually the first to premiere in America. This is false. CC was first, followed by NCZ, "Fuzors," and then "Genesis."

NCZ takes the original concept and turns the show into the adventures of yet another male protagonist but in a Zoidian world of sport. Fuzors intro'd the Voltron concept. And Genesis was simply another iteration of the post-apoc setting, pushed further, with flairs of geologic/environmental devastation characterized as the wrath of random deities. Genesis never actually got a real chance to be shown here in the States, but can easily be found on bootleg.

The show itself was/is just the sort of thing to get a young teenaged boy up at the ass-cracked of dawn. Pure fanboy dickriding goodness with a health doseage of decent dubbing by talented voice actors made this show one of my favorite morning rituals, sending me off to high school classes with a foggy head full of thoughts of sci-fi grandeur.

Funny enough however, I never actually ended up playing with any of the Zoids toys, reading the manga, or playing the video games, despite all of these coming either before or at the same time as the anime...

Anyhoo, I highly recommend Zoids as a great nostalgic indulgence cartoon for those of you gents and/or ladies that enjoy a Mad Max-inspired world filled with Voltron-like technology and a Luke Skywalker-type hero.