eleazar.yost - 2016-05-15 15:24:01

SPOILER ALERT

Zero no Tsukaima is obviously an anime version of Harry Potter kind of. I really hate the fact, that Louise is such a tsundere, because I always expected her to tell Saito that she loves him but she didn't. I've watched the first season now, but I'm very dissapointed, that there where so many scenes where Saito was busy flirting with Siesta most of the time and I didn't like that. I know that this is a harem anime, but I don't like, that Louise and him weren't together in the way he was with Siesta. I hope the second season will be a little bit more romantic, because I enjoyed the story itself pretty much.

kristy.stroman - 2015-12-18 20:57:33

*bangs head agianst wall repeatedly* she's so annoying !!!

oconnell.westley - 2015-06-09 17:54:34

Although it is a bit confusing at the beginning, this is one of the not so well known animes that is very good. Plus, it gets even better in the rest of the seasons as the show progresses. I highly recommend as an anime to watch. 

dschmeler - 2014-10-14 06:11:57

[Note: This review encompasses all four seasons of Familiar of Zero. It is also old.]

Familiar of Zero was J.C. Staff’s fantasy action show produced and released in little seasons throughout the years between 2006 and 2012. Combined, the entire show is 49 episodes long, which would be fine if they had entertaining content to fill up these twenty hours.

We open in a magic school in a generic fantasy setting, where a student named Louise is not very good at magic. Since she can only produce small explosions from spells, she earns the nickname Zero from her peers. One day when the students summon magical pets called familiars, Louise accidentally brings a boy from the real world into the fantasy world. The boy named Saito is now Louise’s personal servant since he is technically her familiar. They go on adventures, meet new people, explore the magic, participate in warfare, save the day, yaddah yaddah yah, fanservice.

The unfortunate part about the show’s premise is that all of the subjects they focus on have been done better elsewhere. Both Fate/Zero and Garden Of Sinners blow away any competition with their renditions of supernatural powers. Fantasy warfare has much more interesting executions in Berserk, Vision Of Escaflowne, or even Maoyuusha. And if you’re looking for fascinating regions and their inhabitants, look no further than Fullmetal Alchemist. The only unique aspects left are the random objects of Saito’s normal world that somehow wound up in the fantasy setting, but unfortunately they didn’t really dive deeper into it at all.

So the world-building and setting are shot, there’s got to be more to the story than just that? It irritates me to say that the meat of the series is devoted to an insultingly shallow harem ecchi consisting of one of the most unlikable casts I’ve seen. Of all the sets of characters in shows and films, there’s no contest which cast digs under my skin more than any other.

Let’s begin with Saito, the crowning achievement of the otaku vessel. At least with other bland observer protagonists in anime, there are little things about the character to at least distinguish them from the completely normal everyman. But the writers go above and beyond to make sure that the possibility of a tangible personality is nonexistent, that he has minimal drive outside of his loins so he can be pulled around the world by a bunch of cute girls.

Speaking of girls, Saito has about a dozen sexy anime ladies in the cast to choose from to satisfy hormones. Of course he never does, but they like to remind him constantly that he can do anything to them whenever he wants. Put simply, everything that has a vagina is written with a mad desire for the Saito D. When all is said and done, this is their only character trait: varying amounts of how desperately they want to get into the guy’s pants with a full range of breast sizes. I’m not going to steer around this with some bullshit womanly sex drive excuse. This is a writer generating a bunch of sex objects and giving them the blind desire to throw their bodies at the boy that the viewer imagines himself as. It’s an awful way to fill up twenty hours, and it’s just the worst case scenario of anime female degradation. They aren’t tangible characters with personalities or challenges, they’re lazy tropes in cup ranges A to F for those who want to choose their favorite to get off to.

The depressing part is fact that some of the girls actually did feel like characters with issues before being reduced to even more mindless wanking material. A Rei Ayanami trope shrouded in mystery at the beginning had a backstory similar to that of Asuka Soryu’s (we’re below the bottom of the barrel at this point, ripoffs of good shit are welcome by now). At least it was something that gave her conflict instead of the others. But by the latter half she winds up throwing herself infront of Saito completely naked, reduced to another sex object whose conflict disappeared into the void. Any regard for her character was stripped away along with her outfit. A princess who had little interest in Saito proved to be a good friend and companion to a lot of people in the cast. She got stuff done by making decisions regarding the military and economy, resulting in a likable, respectable character. But not only does she eventually become uninvolved with leadership, she goes behind all of her friends’ backs to try to get freaky with Saito. We witness this boring man’s harem build to its fullest potential, and unless you’re putting yourself in his place enjoying the escapism bliss, you can’t do anything but cringe.

The background cast gets very little focus since the harem aspect is what carries the show for the intended audience. Male characters get minimal screentime, females get the fanservice treatment, and overall enjoyment is nil.

The animation is unfathomably boring, sporting minimal movement and expression, displaying the most infantile designs, backgrounds, and effects possible in anime. Nothing caught my interest, nothing stood out, it just happened to be the most generic visual work possible, which certainly doesn’t help when we have to stare at it for twenty hours. The music wasn’t much better, consisting of an assortment of instantly forgettable tunes, alongside many openings and endings that were painfully mediocre and annoying. So what was already a carelessly recycled ecchi formula is made even more unbearable to sit through.

To recap, a wholly unimaginative setting with an undeveloped war plotline to provide shallow framework to the boy’s growing harem, a stereotypical collection of walking boobs to carry out the obvious intentions from the writers, and no tangible shred of effort in execution whatsoever. This is my one of my easiest picks for the worst, if only because it goes on and on with the cheap sex fantasy to fill up way too many episodes. Can’t say much else about it aside from the obvious time I’d love to have back from watching a prolonged psuedo-hentai made to cater to thoroughly noxious mindsets.

Familiar Of Zero (2006-2012):
2.2/10

gregorio.daugherty - 2014-08-25 01:26:37

Zero no Tsukaima displayed elements of comedy, romance, and magic to tell a unique tale. While a few of the dubbed voices at times were annoying (cough - the princess - cough), most of the dubbed voices were okay. The animation was mostly good, however sometimes the scenery lacked high quality artwork. Overall very good. 7/10

julien80 - 2013-06-23 20:05:19

Zero no Tsukaima should be an enjoyable action anime based in a majestically magical world, sadly it executes the premise horrendously, clinging to repetitive comedy and a subpar plot. The characters were written poorly; this is evidenced by their shallow nature and monotonous interaction, of which Saito and Louise are the worst offenders.So, Zero no Tsukaima (after this abbreviated as ZnT) has a premise of a modern Japanese boy who ends up in a fantasy world after being summoned by her master, who happens to be a young, petite girl, with a fiery attitude. And with these two not getting along too well, this should set things up for a nice rom-com, right..?In practise it gives a different result, the slapstick humour is overused and literally milked down to the very last drip. As a show which relies on its comedy, it should be a lot more variable. But because it lacked in this department, it often came over as annoying, this form of comedy has been used well, just not in this show. If you repeat the same guy getting hit by the same girl for doing the same troublemaking, you are not get any more fans from it. The other part ZnT tries to attract its fans with is action and fighting against the forces of evil, now it did this a bit better. Though the plot itself was far too simple to be properly praised, the way it executed its action and the fact that it could get serious for once, meaning some actual romance ensuing, which came along with some cheesy lines by the protagonist was one of the few things I have enjoyed about the series.The plot itself, which was put on a side track, is mainly about the two protagonists overcoming the tests they are given at their academy, and how they deal with their "growing" feelings with each other.The art-style is simple and quite easy to grasp, it suits the rom-com style it has. The animation is good, but nothing special. Not a lot to comment about this particular department. The sound, which can be split into 3 different categories, Opening and ending themes, voice actors and general SFX. The first category, I think the opening fit the anime quite well, of course, it is all up to you whether you liked it or not, but if you enjoyed the anime a lot, the chance is a higher that you liked the themes and soundtrack it had as well. On the subject of voice actors I would like to stop a bit, since this anime contains what many have dubbed to be "The Tsundere Queen" in it. Now personally, I am not the biggest fan or her voice or roles, it is a little bit too high-pitched and comes over as annoying. Saito's image as a Louise's dog and maybe a slightly foolish teenager is well played by his respective voice actor. Other than that there is not too much to to be said. The SFX is something which is done, there is noting extraordinarily odd. So it is hardly something people can discuss about. Now I will move on to the characters, which is my biggest disappointment of this whole series, there is not much in this pile of badly written characters I can give praise. So we have our main male protagonist Saito, who like I said earlier, came from the modern world, we know and live in. The first flaw I would like to give is, there is no desire to go back to his home. Does this person have the worst life in the world or something, normally, at that age. One would like to go back to his home. This is, in my opinion, a piece of bad writing on the aspect of backstory and character depth. By not making them have a past, they are very shallow, and this depth-ness is what distinguishes the generic character from the fleshed out one. The second character who is ripe for some founded criticism is the main female protagonist, who is awfully loud & obnoxious. I would go as far to say that her character has been written in a way, that it effectively negates any progression this character could go through. When some kind of advance happens in the terms of romance between Saito and Louise (the main female protagonist), it is immediately undone by some kind of slapstick moment. The rest of the cast is not worth a lot either, they have a low amount of motivation and hardly any depth as to why they should fight the protagonists, aside from the whole evil organization stuff. The conclusion, is it worth watching? No. There is a lot of stuff which did this setup and plot better than this series, the positive point is that the second season is done a bit better, I might say that is worth watching.

stokes.amos - 2013-03-17 06:22:30

Zero no Tsukaima takes place in an alternate world where magic and dragons exist. The majority of the story takes place at a magical academy where students train to become successful mages. Everybody has their own specialty whether it be earth magic or water. Enter Louise de long name not worth typing out. Louise is a high strung and cocky mage wannabe who can't do much of anything right. Every spell she attempts to cast seems to fail miserably and just blow things up. During the ceremony to summon what is to be your familiar forever more, she ends up summoning a boy by the name of Saito who comes from our world; more particularly Japan. So while everybody else has salamanders, moles, frogs and other creatures, Louise has a boy. 

The story progression is all about the relationship that builds between Louise and Saito. She treats him like a familiar, or to be more precise like a slave pet. He has to wash her clothes, do her menial chores and even sleeps on the floor. Throughout the show their relationship begins to develop more and small plot twists are slowly introduced. Why the boy is special. Why Louise just seems to mess everything up. 

The overall story in ZnT is nothing that hasn't been done before. I don't like to grade based on precedence though as it is not fair to the subject matter. Louise and Saito slowly come together to make a good team and other characters are introduced that turn the show into "Friends" just with spell casting. It does get quite serious towards the latter part of the series, and I would say that it was actually pulled off quite nicely. 

Art
As I said in my opening paragraph, the initial thing that even got me to watch this show was Louise. I do hate to admit but I thought she was hot. I completely understand if you hit that back button right now. Even after the show is done, I still do. Remember, the back button is at the top left of your browser window, or you can just hit backspace. Anyway, the characters are all quite attractive in their actual originality. It does have the whole JC Staff production feel to it in the character design, but they are all nicely done. Although if you have a problem with the male in anime always looking like an average guy, you'll likely not like Saito's overall design. But if you enjoy big eyed cute girls, lolis, big breasted fiery red heads; then this show is gonna make you have a nerdgasm. 

Thankfully the background animations are all paid attention to. Usually in shows like this, all the detail goes into character development and the background is left to die in a dark corner. Thankfully this wasn't the case with ZnT. Another thing that caught me by surprise is that they managed to throw in some obvious CG scenes without them standing out too much or just ruining the whole animation feel. When many shows throw CG into the mix, they make it stick out and just look awful, almost to say "check out what we can do." ZnT does a wonderful job of balancing it out and pulls off a solid animation effort in the end.

Sound
The first things that should always been addressed in the sound department is the opening and closing songs. Dead on! The opening is "First Kiss" by Ichiko and couldn't be more fitting for the tone of the show. The lyrics make much more sense than many Japanese songs tend to, and quite frankly it's catchy. Definitely recommended for the playlists out there. The background was fitting, which is really all you can ask from anime. The music played always fit the situation and there were a few that stuck out and were able to do a masterful job of getting the viewer into the emotional situation. Playful music was the main course for the show as it tends to be much more humorous and whimsical than anything. But when it got serious, the music did a great job of presenting that to the viewer. 

The voice acting was actually quite phenomenal. Every character fit their personalities well. Even though I can't stand the overly effeminate characters in anime, at least he was voiced well. Louise had the very defiant, cocky and sometimes very vulnerable feel to here. I thought of her kind of as I did Naru from Love Hina. Except not so much of a b*tch (God I hate Naru). Saito was considerably better than many main male characters usually are. For once in anime, the guy wasn't represented by a complete and total nerd. He was actually a strong, intelligent and thoughtful guy. He had his moments, but overall when he talked, he kinda made me proud for us; for once. But the voice acting award has to go Nanako Inoue as Kirche. Kirche was the virtual arch-rival of Louise. She was one of the good ones at magic and made a point to rub it in the face of Louise as much as she could. Her character was given the voice of condescending know-it-all. She was also the school flirt, a serious mage and a seductress. Japanese women can be sexy, but their voices rarely scream sexual seduction. She manages to seduces the viewer, male viewer, quite nicely. That's an accomplishment.

Presentation
At the end of the day, ZnT is a short anime that is just entertaining. It doesn't provide a terribly deep plot. Many of the tools used in this show have been used many times before. The characters can be considered somewhat cliche. But that may be one of its charms. It doesn't make you think outside of your anime paradigm. It just allows you to sit down and enjoy the hijinks and life of some crazy characters. I can say that I just couldn't stop watching it once I started; it is one of those shows that just makes time fly so much faster. 

If you have had your fill of "guy can't admit to girl, girl can't admit to guy", girl hit guy for no reason or anything like that, you may want to steer clear from watching Zero no Tsukaima. Everybody else will pull something out of it in end that they will enjoy. I guarantee it.