His gender is never made a point of confusion or revulsion by any other character it's just casually accepted that this is a man who has breasts and a vagina. For no clearly explained reason, the rejection also "gave him a woman's body," in their own words, but he continues to identify as a man, and that's handled surprisingly well for such an otherwise lewd series. So, who are these clowns up against? That's why we're here! The big villain of Apocalypse Zero is Kakugo's brother, Harara, who had a bad reaction with his own, imperfect exo-suit and learned to despise humankind for its history of senseless violence, prejudice and environmental destruction. Zero kind of seems like it might have a sentience distinct from the screaming skulls, but it's difficult to determine where we're meant to draw this possibly arbitrary line. We frequently cut to the skulls advising Kakugo on battle tactics, warning him of danger and begging him not to overexert himself between their howls for vengeance, serving as both the classic warrior-mentor character and the cheerleading friend squad. Given to him by a father who forced him to endure brutal combat training from an early age and is for some reason never condemned for it at any point in the series, Zero is an experimental weapon of the pre-apocalypse world, lined with slimy flesh and haunted by a vortex of screaming skulls representing the ghosts of dead warriors. Set in a crumbling, post-apocalyptic city where only one filthy high school remains standing, half of Apocalypse Zero is the story of a young man, Kakugo, and his one true love, a destructive exo-suit named Zero. It adapts only around a fifth of the Manga over a handful of episodes, sadly cutting short before things get even a little more ludicrous, but at least covering most of its early "weekly monster" storylines panel-by-panel, with a fun soundtrack and lovingly animated gore. I discovered Apocalypse Zero through its dubbed, direct-to-DVD miniseries, which I found in a bargain bin for about a dollar. At least, I hope someone who fills a manga with what we're about to see was aiming mainly for some kind of comedy. Where do I even begin with this one? Earlier, we talked a bit about manga series that go over the top into excessive levels of grimdark, but while Berserk takes itself just seriously enough to be morally uncomfortable at several points, the shorter series we're going to look at here positively wallows in its own juvenile tastelessness, so absurdly grotesque that it's difficult to find it anything but silly, and I'm pretty sure creator Takayuki Yamaguchi is well aware of that.
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