It's a film: Zoku Owarimonogatari

Zoids is a model kit line from Takara Tomy. Each Zoid is like a cross between Transformers and some kind of beast, e.g. dinosaurs, insects, arachnids or mythological creatures.

Zoids Wild is an anime that's very, very obviously trying to sell Zoids to its target audience. It's got a child hero, a shounen art style and Zoid Battles. Fight the blue beetle Zoid! Fight more Zoids! These battles even looks like adverts. You expect the screen to flash up with "on sale today at your local toy shop!"

In between the battles, there's a calmer scene at an inn. Apparently the baddies are a Death Metal Empire, which is amusing. (I'm now imagining a shounen series where the villains are bands like Judas Priest, Dying Fetus and Cannibal Corpse.) However I'm not the target audience and it never occurred to me that this might be something to continue watching.

SOME BLOKE: "We Sword Warriors were manifested through the power of our master, the saniwa, artifact spirits who have been granted physical bodies."

They all know that. That's like me standing up and giving you a speech about how we're all bipeds who started life as babies.

SOME BLOKE: "We exist to protect time from the History Retrograde Army, led by the Historical Revisionists... but you lot have recently been too relaxed!"

"Some Bloke" has a name, by the way, but this is one of those anime that's based on a video game with lots and lots of characters. You'd need to take written notes if you wanted to be able to remember everyone. It's a World Of Pretty Boys. Theoretically these are heroes on the lookout for evil, but in practice they spend most of their time on slice-of-life stuff. They make snowmen, look at photos and get told to tidy their rooms. The episode has a "plot" about a boy who doesn't want to become a divine sword (?) because "I'm a sword who once killed a child, even if it was a ghost". However since these are all real, famous samurai swords that might easily have, say, a thousand years of history, I'd be more surprised if any of them hadn't killed children.

There's a brief plot burp with some baddie-fighting action. A few pretty boys go to the year 1221 to stop the Revisionists from trying to change the outcome of a historical battle. They fight undead with glowing red eyes and smoking black auras. You know, in case you were wondering which side was evil.

I wouldn't recommend this show even to people who are just looking for eye candy. There's no real content to it, beyond the pretty boys.

A girl in her second year of high school is going to have an idol audition! She runs out of the house... and gets hit by a truck and dies.

Roll blood-splattered opening credits, with a heavy metal theme tune.

We next meet our heroine (Sakura) in a room full of zombies. Only one of them is bitey, but that's one too many. They're shambling around in true zombie fashion. Sakura's horrified, of course, but there's something important she hasn't realised because she can't see a mirror.

Someone's responsible, of course. His name's Kotaro Tatsumi. He's a music producer, a necromancer and a maniac, c.f. his plan to start an idol group with the undead. He's already arranged the girls' first concert. Only one of the six is sentient and none of them have usable musical talent, but never mind! Kotaro believes that optimistic passion is more important than reality.

SAKURA: "Tae-chan might bite someone."

KOTARO: "A little biting never hurt anyone."

SAKURA: "Are you stupid?"

The concert is heavy metal, so mindless zombie screaming and Pavlovian physical thrashing goes down a storm. They're a hit. I MUST WATCH THIS.