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Post-War Battle Story, Fanfiction, and (Generic) You

"War is the only way Zoids is interesting!"

Here lies one of my huge pet peeves in Zoids works: the endless flood of "bring back the war" plots. Do people ever really poke the idea of a changing world, one that's working to finally patch up brutal rivalries and get along? No. Never mind all the inherent conflict, character development, and interest you could get from that, it's always global war again. And if there wasn't war in the universe before (hello, /Zero), it's going to have some now.

I suspect some of this comes from fans who see war in the battle story, and think "hey, this is all hip and obscure compared to that anime thing... so add in Zenebas, change some names, and I can write endless doom and be even cooler!"

There are three main reasons this makes me unhappy:

  1. The battle story has some established...well, story already.
    Saying "Zenebas/Helic conflict" and "Mad Thunder" doesn't mean you can go plunking a Shadow Fox versus Liger Zero X battle in ZAC 2048. Yes, the battle story has severe continuity issues, but major events are fairly fixed.
  2. The battle story is not the anime.
    They share a lot of surface details and some setting, but they're fundamentally different. Things like history, faction dynamics, backstories, and Zoid origins are going to cry if you fling them together randomly. To be fair, some of the games do this, but it's usually with universe-warping involved or with these problems Just Not Addressed.
  3. The blind elitism factor.
    I'm talking about when people go around acting like using the battle story universe makes them automatically better than all those un-hardcore anime fans. I've only seen a few cases where someone actually bothered to work with the universe, showing why it was cool and worth using over CC's take rather than telling. (I'm guilty of ragging on CC, but really, if you like it, write it!)

The other problem I have with this convention runs deeper. It's the misconception that Serious War For the Fate of the Planet is the only way to get plot out of giant mecha animals that isn't silly /Zero-style fluff.

How about showing how hard getting to a point of relative peace is? It's easy to raze a city with a Gilvader, what happens to the people putting it back together? Or if you want battles, how about fighting on a smaller scale, based around a conflict as it applies to everyday people? The whole planet doesn't need to be involved directly with everything, the hero doesn't have to save the universe every time—a victory can be small yet very satisfying when you've come to truly care about a character.

I suppose that's not exciting enough...or would require more thought than "[faction] is evil for some reason and blows stuff up and then the war's back on like nothing happened".

Let's take the world right after the end of the battle story. Wolff's let go of hatred, yes. He has hope for the future, yes. Everybody in charge is willing to move on, work together. But the continent is a mess. Resources are stretched thin, cities torn up from guerrilla warfare. Everyone's hungry and tired, most people are ferociously sick of fighting but still angry. Peace isn't going to come easy just because Wolffykins decided he cared more about the lives around him than killing his rival. On the other hand, Zi's not going to jump back into fighting like nothing's happened.

We know from the Three Tigers story there will be peace, and Zoids will mostly end up in sports battles and other less brutal forms of combat and competition. But how did things get there? There's so much potential for showing how this happened, and all of it comes with with plenty of room for violence, character development, and anything else you might find in the old wars.

My thoughts: Sports battles likely started as an outlet for aggression and a source of income for the government (sell off stripped down military Zoids, tax them, and so on). In a world still being pieced together from a massive war, do you think things would be like the mostly-safe level of Fuzors, much less /Zero's sanitized fights? People would get hurt, even die, because battlers would fight hard, play dirty, and occasionally decide to take out their anger over old war grudges in nasty ways. You'd be lucky to get regulation beyond "don't turn your opponent into a bloody smear, because then we'll have to hunt you down", and bandits and other dubiously legal types would probably get mixed up in the industry. Black market, selling stuff that should have stayed military? Certainly. There's a lot of potential for things getting dark and brutal there, with the added bonus of being able to focus on groups of characters trying to make their way—something like Blitz Team meets doom, but in a way that makes more sense. (Come on, post-/Zero hellbreaksloose writers, you know you want this.)

There's also racing to consider for competition. Not the run-around-in-circles sort, but things like cross-country on nasty offroad courses with weapons allowed. If you pissed somebody off and just so happened to "fall" off that cliff on that tight turn, there wouldn't be any real questions asked. The weather, the terrain, everything would be a factor, so having the fastest Zoid would never be a guaranteed win (and might just get more people trying to shoot you down). Think Iditarod with giant aggressive dogs, heavy weaponry, and people who might have reason to be out for your blood.

You want someone to go riding through this healing Zi, stirring up war and dissent? Who is he, and what reason do people have to follow him? Early on I could see civilians and military grunts going vigilante justice on anyone pulling that: Get out of our city or we'll shoot you and rip your Zoid apart. We're tired, we want to get on rebuilding our homes, and the last guy that promised glory for the Empire blew himself up. Later on? Just look at what happened to Zi-Arms. The world of the Tigers era doesn't want the empires of old, and even the rather feral Brastle turned on Mega Death Saurer, perhaps following the will of the people over its creators.

So how about it, writers and customizers of the Zoids world? Let's start using some of this potential. I'll be happy to bounce ideas with anyone who wants to try, and happy to help slog through Japanese sites and fanbooks in the name of research. Bring it on.