Zaion (or I: Wish You Were Here. Easy to see why it was localized with a proper noun added in there.) is a 2001 mini-series put out by then-relative-newcomer Gonzo, a studio with something of a checkered record, particularly when it comes to things I’ve reviewed. Their arguably most famous outing, Hellsing, debuted a week after this had its first outing.
Of course, they have pretty much nothing in common, so what’s the pitch for Zaion? The series takes place in a world where humanity is getting owned by an alien virus, we have a sci-fi mystery centered around a nanotech cyborg soldier who fights the problem, and a mysterious esper girl who might be the key to actually solving it.
Promising stuff. Let’s dig in before we think about that too deeply.
We find out pretty quickly that our lead, Yuuji Tamiya, has pretty low job satisfaction for a cyborg supersoldier. It might have something to do with the fact that his job description involves eradicating monsters that used to be human, and that it has a pretty high turnover rate via death in battle, seeing as two comrades go down in what’s basically the intro with essentially no fanfare. He hears about a new weapon and goes to whine at brass to deploy it already, only to be cryptically told he can’t.
Said weapon is a girl, referred to as Ai or “Unit-i” but initially unnamed. They seem to be drawn to each other after she spots him from an upper floor window, until the quiet girl with undisclosed alien-virus-defeating powers and the bargain bin super sentai with unconvincing dreads finally encounter each other… to pretty much no fanfare, just sharing a little talk about the moon.
The entire show is weirdly letterboxed.
The quiet encounter is disrupted by the call to arms. Yuuji and team deploy to go punch monsters, but things get too spicy for them, especially when they find a wall of corrupted flesh that pours out of the structure they were purging like a wave and then forms into a goopy kaiju. The brass decide that it’s time for Ai’s first deployment. She manages to conjure a giant fairy of light to hug and therefore disintegrate the virus kaiju, just before it stomps Yuuji into oblivion, saving his life and letting the show continue.
Yuuji is hospitalized for his wounds while the rest of the squad get to be active duty. They’re called out for another Kaiju, and so is Ai, but without Yuuji there to protect she loses her grip and the brass has to firebomb the city.
Later, after Yuuji is discharged, he meets Ai in the courtyard again. Briefly, before some soldiers tell him he’s a wanted insurrectionist and to hand over Ai for… no reason. Instead of asking why they’re so twitchy, he takes Ai and runs for no reason. After escaping the base via motorcycle they spend the night at a bus stop (fill in the blank).
Back home, the lab discovers that Yuuji is host to a mutant strain of virus that beats nanomachine, and at the bus stop he starts to come down with symptoms, but Ai does psyker magic to cure him.
The next day, Yuuji’s squad catches up to him. It’s a happy reunion and they’re headed home when another branch of service, the relative normals with their little walker mechs, shows up and decides they’re taking Ai for no reason. Squad decides to fight back again for no real reason like they’re not on the same side, and since the normal folks mechs suck they suicide bomb the super soldiers with pathetic little .gif explosions. I guess it was at least established that the mechs are remote drones. The fact that this threatens Yuuji causes Ai to turn herself over even as Yuuji begs her not to go, again for no reason that has been announced to us.
At least that new virus strain provides a reason that the whole nano-squad has to be at least somewhat on the run. Supposedly all the virus nonsense, up to and including incinerating a kilometer radius of urban territory around a kaiju, is being covered up, but all the same the orthodox brass, opposed by the nanosquad’s direct boss, is inclined to burn them since they’re no longer super-immune while their boss wants to continue nanotech research.
However, only Yuuji got a magic disinfection, so the other members of the squad are, to a lesser or greater degree, marked. The squad captain, who was injured, is rather bad off, but the squad’s token chick, Tao (who of course has a crush on Yuji) is also giving the cough of doom
Eventually, captain transforms into a hybrid nanosoldier-virus monster. Tao is the second to go, and soon it’s only Yuuji who hasn’t shifted. Ai catches wind of the ongoing outbreak, and because of the inexplicable bond she has with Yuuji, she wants to run off to save him and maybe (if the last words of their boss can be accounted for) the others.
Ai manages quite triumphantly, not only purging the virus while saving the hosts, but also guarding the site against a missile launch (because the right hand and left were not in agreement). However, peace is short lived, as a massive outbreak starts up elsewhere.
This outbreak features a next-gen virus that has learned to duplicate the nanomachine powers, so it’s an uphill battle. In the end, it forms into the ultimate Kaiju, and Yuuji escapes the hospital to go help Ai fight it. It even tries to no sell her giant fairy of light at first, but some tactical advice from Yuuji lets her punch through and then hug it to melting
After this, the light flies off into the sky, and Ai seems to faint. She’s seemingly confirmed alive despite a fakeout when the last remnants of the boss monster form into more goopy evil to attack, and Yuuji suits up to stare it down.
And then the show just… cuts, and we’re given a sequence that most people find ambiguous. We see Ai’s science team, but no Ai and no Yuuji, implying that perhaps they died, especially with a very melancholy silent outro centered around the scientist lady who served as Ai’s mother figure. She writes something about “loss of ability” but seems broken up about it.
Cut to Ai and Yuuji on a bright green field beneath starry skies, happy to be free and together, the end as Ai sends a butterfly of light up towards the moon.
I know some folks interpret this as Ai and Yuuji having died and gone to heaven, but I don’t think the text supports that unless you really want things to be grim. Rather, I think that the scientist lady aided and abetted faking their deaths in order to let Ai live a life free from being a guinea pig. Clearly, this organization does not have its act together and presumably the very active threat of virus monster attacks has been contained for the moment so she’s not quite as acutely needed. Perhaps she’s done her thing and isn’t needed at all. Or perhaps the scientist lady decided to let local humanity rot so the kids could get away to somewhere that wasn’t screwed. We are sort of told this was a regional thing. But they get long shots of the same old base in her segment, so I’m more inclined to think things cooled off and are broadly okay.
Similarly, folks assume that the rest of the squad died, but why would we see them back in their human bodies if they were supposed to be dead and doomed?
I feel like there’s a set of folks who think things are better if they’re more miserable, and they’re entitled to their interpretations, but I don’t really agree that it’s always got to be bad outcomes.
So that was Zaion. It was rushed.
Even aside from being four episodes, the number of turns that are painfully abrupt is really noticeable. The show has slow scenes, it’s not like it doesn’t ever have the time to breathe, but that breathing time is compartmentalized into the scenes between Yuuji and Ai. I guess that does help you feel the chemistry between them, since it’s basically the only time the audience gets to rest, but there are scenes with the squad as well. And frankly those work better.
There’s a degree to which Zaion seems to be an ode to having no reason. I went on a bit of a rant, but you can add in the chemistry between Yuuji and Ai. They are drawn to each other for no reason, experiencing some phenomenon before they even meet that does it. Magnetism without sharing any words isn’t compelling, and while they do get a couple good scenes the intensity blooms fast and hard because it has to, treating this as something special, even mystical.
I guess it’s about as much growth as old Disney relationships got, but this isn’t a fairy tale where you sort of accept the mystification of romance, it’s a sci-fi story with robots and nanomachines and alien viruses. Even Ai’s powers, while mysterious, are never couched in magical terms.
And of course, there are the decisions of the far too many branches of the brass. At four longish episodes, this is approximately feature length, but the story is structured more for episodes, and in this case that’s to its detriment. Stories like Macross Plus can get away with an episodic nature and shorter running time, but Zaion doesn’t know how to.
On the whole, Zaion gets a C- from me. It’s not bad, but there’s not much if any reason to really dredge it up, because there’s nothing it does that I can’t think of something else that does better. Overall, I think Blassreiter is probably the main upgrade, but that does have its own circus of madness.