HomeBattle Story - Overview
The battle story is my favorite Zoids continuity, and one sorely neglected in the English-speaking fandom. I aim to fix this.Told in a combination of fanbooks, leaflets, and bits of text on boxes, it focuses on the conflict between several factions and the characters involved. It's cheese - cheese sci-fi crossed with tragedy and weird - but it's good cheese, with plenty of shades of grey in war and plenty of doom involving giant mecha animals.
While some portions of the universe may seem familiar if you've seen the Chaotic Century anime, put the similarities out of mind - it's a case of two very different continuities using a few similar elements. Concrete summaries prove difficult between multiple takes on events and retcon, but such is obscure 80s marketing.
The basic setup?
Zi is an Earthlike planet located a good way across the galaxy...typical sci-fi setup, really. It sports one key difference: it's a lot more metallic. This means metallic lifeforms, including lots of the wild beasts known as Zoids. Its natives made them into combat mecha, the ones living on the Central Continent squabbling amongst themselves until being united in a republic by one Helic Muroa. Peace didn't last, because it wouldn't be much for action otherwise. Helic's two sons didn't get along for a multitude of reasons, and after his death, Zenebas split off and formed his own empire. After some years of conflict with his brother Helic (the second), a human ship called the Globally 3 crash-landed, bringing technology to make Zoids nastier to both sides and spurring the conflict on further. This war formed most of the original Zoids line's story, dragging many characters into interesting and nasty fates.Near the end of the war, a losing Zenebas turned again to help from the Dark Continent and its ruler, Guylos - who betrayed him, absorbed the Empire army, and turned the last couple years (seven years in Zi's time) of the old release into a Dark Army versus Helic Republic conflict. This had a more clear cut "good and evil" flavor to it than previous...while Zenebas himself was a nasty bastard, characters from the Empire army were portrayed as human and sympathetic just as much as Republic ones. The toyline got canceled, and in-story things finished with no victor, a comet crashing into one of Zi's moons and raining destruction on the planet. 'Twas a bleak end for Zi, but perhaps fitting considering the old line's oft-tragic tone...
Cut ahead to the 90s, 33 years later in Zi's time, and the models' revival means Zi needs to return to war. The Republic, now headed by one Louise Elena Camford (Zenebas' daughter - in other words, Helic II's niece) faces conflict with the Guylos Empire again...though it's now run by Günther Prozen. Things seem to be normal doom until Prozen reveals himself as Zenebas' son, his own secret forces turning on Guylos and Helic armies alike: the initial Helic/Guylos war was a ploy to get the Zenebas Empire back in power by weakening both other sides. Prozen destroys his own Zoid, taking out the Guylos capitol city with it, and his son Wolff overruns the Republic capitol, killing the President in the process. For a while, Wolff has shaky control of the Central Continent, and attempts to rule in a somewhat less crazy fashion than the rest of his family line. The Republic forces (led by Camford's son, Hermann) aren't content to leave him in power, and launch a counterattack. This comes to a head in a confrontation between Wolff and one Ray Gregg - who blames himself for letting Wolff escape in an earlier battle, while Wolff blames Ray for the death of a friend.
Unlike his father and grandfather alike, Wolff is willing to let go of his rivalry when the battle and his overclocked Energy Liger threaten the city and people around them, and the story ends with him joining forces with Ray, presumably the first step to a peace that actually lasts. The Three Tigers sideline seems to be set in the battle story's future - it hints at a world where Zoids are used in sports combat and other explosive but constructive pursuits, and a people who don't want anyone bringing back the doom of old. A happy ending at last, I'd say!