ANIME REVIEW: Z/X Ignition (2014)
I love mash-ups. Take two things and mix ’em up to balance them out and you have an amazing product. The work of DJ Moule, Combos snack food, media crossovers (looking at you, The CW’s “Crisis on Infinite Earths”), Arnold Palmer iced tea, you name it — if it can be mixed, it’s probably for the better with more than a few exceptions (Goober Grape, Hawaiian pizza, armed White supremacists, etc.) One of my favorite games is Culdcept, a mixture of Monopoly and Magic: The Gathering TCG (trading card game). I still have my PS2 copy, though it has released on Sega Dreamcast and XBox as well. A mash-up with Pokemon and Magic: The Gathering has since made it to the anime realm with today’s entry — Z/X Ignition, based on the Japanese TCG of the same series. I watched all 12 episodes on Tubi during the COVID-19 pandemic and during the police brutality protests over the murder of George Floyd.
In the near future, the world we know is intruded upon through portals leading to different dimensions controlled by beings at war with each other. They correspond to the colors of the Magic TCG spectrum — black, blue, green, red, white — with monsters and heroes relative to the worlds dominated by each color. For this anime’s narrative the island nation of Japan is broken up into five zones, and each zone (along with the monsters and heroes within) is dominated by a color. There are so many of these color-coordinated creatures attacking Japan in their wars against other colors, it informs the title “Z/X”: “Zillions of enemy X”. Time would pass in this world before the Z/X (what the colored creatures are called) could integrate somewhat into human society — and humanity let it, lest the monsters and heroes rise up against them.
Enter Asuka Tennoji, an “every-man” that accepts the new world and believes strongly in justice. He comes into contact with a white Z/X shaped like a beautiful female angel, Fierte. She is controlled by a “Capture Card” (shaped like a large card, but similar to a Poke-ball) and Asuka can channel “resources” (read: mana) so Fierte can use her powers. Along the way they meet character representing each of the colors (cold-hearted Ayase and her beastly black Z/X, Sieger; the sickly Azumi and her cybernetic blue Z/X Rigel; calculating Mikado and his red Z/X, Alexander [based on Alexander the Great]; rough-edged Chitose and her green Z/X Rindo the samurai) and team up to fight a secret evil known as “Audium” — and they learn the power of love and friendship was all they needed to defeat the secret evil.
This anime had good character development, which is what kept me watching. The art is quality but the fight scenes are boring. I suppose that’s the trade-off for quality anime, in light of other fight-heavy anime where the quality stutters if not outright breaks down (Naruto, Dragonball Super, etc.) It was short (THANK GOD) and sweet at the end, and it did not leave me wanting more despite its dangling plot threads. The conciseness of the anime reminded me of the Saint Seiya anime Soul of Gold (2015). It was short enough to tell a story without going full Tolkien, and that is what anime needs five years on — good storytelling, not lore-heavy slogs leading into hundreds of episodes.
To be honest Z/X Ignition is not the best anime, it doesn’t make you think too hard and leans heavily on teamwork and friendship as a universal storytelling trope. But if you want something on to drown out the noise of police officers beating protesters who protest police officers that unlawfully killed a man during a pandemic that can kill in hours after a 2-week incubation period, then this is the distraction for you.
