Z/X: Ignition

When you are faced with new characters every episode almost no background for them and their assistants ( Z/X ) that for some reason half of them are hot babes and the rest are relatives with pokemons ,after that you find out there is almost no story to talk about and a lot of lose ends , a single question rises from the ashes , what could make someone watch this ? Well for me was a lot of free time and a open mind . Yes , these wore my reasons for watching Z/X IGNITION .
Yes , yes , i forgot to ... add the pros of this anime .
Good animation , the fights were really well done , the action scenes were fluid , only a nice budget could provide that .
The OST was there , but I am the type that rarely pays any attention to this , so I will skip this and let other people decide in this regard .
In regard of the voice acting one could only bring words of praise , the seiyuus made a wonderful job , every one of them matched the character especially the MC , nice to hear Kansai-Ben from time to time .
Now for the last part and the reason as to why I gave this a 6 . The most important reason is the potential that this anime has , I tend and want to believe that this season is just the launching pad , they only presented the characters and just a part of the story and left us with a big ass cliffhanger .
In the end I can say that I enjoyed watching this and with all due respect I belive that Z/X IGNITION deserves more than just a 1 ( appalling ) or 6 ( fine ) . If a second season will be aired , then this show will get a bigger score on MAL , if not , then that’s what it was worth .
One last thing , some of you are wondering if there will be another season , well there is just a single answer to that , Infinite Stratos 2 , and with this I will end my review .
Thanks for reading .

Z/X: Ignition is your typical collectible card game adaptation with all the holes and problems of it's genre, but there's an odd silver lining to all this.

Z/X: Ignition's plot follows Asuka Tennoji voiced by Hiro Shimono and his pseudo-harem of Azumi Kagamihara voiced by Yui Ogura the shy sick stereotype, Ayase Kamiyugi voiced by Miyuki Sawashiro the tsundere, Asuka's Z/X Fierte voiced by M.A.O and Asuka's childhood friend Aina Mikage voiced by Yurika Endou with them fighting Z/X's, Z/X's beings from other worlds needing owners of "Card devices" in order to live in Earth, with ALL of them having backstories pertaining to the Black Point ... incident or other Z/X's in the process of this anime.

Asuka is your typical dense main male protagonist who is actually genki when it comes to "being a hero" but dense in the romance department, however he really doesn't have a backstory due to nearly the entire cast gravitating towards him with their backstories being fleshed out instead of Asuka. Azumi is your shy sick type who has a crush on Asuka but other than her backstory/character focused episode that more focuses on her Z/X Rigel voiced by Aya Uchida, she's still one of the more likable characters in the cast due to her typing. Ayase Kamiyugi is one of the more active characters in the anime, with her out for revenge and nearly causing a genocide of a certain Z/X kind makes her kind of a anti-hero type, but with her having some significance towards the plot and her backstory being one of the more interesting things in the anime, Ayase was quite honestly LA's favourite character in the anime, though she had competition with Aina. Now LA might give Ayase LA's favourite character status but Aina had significance in the plot and had another interesting plotline in the entire anime mainly due to once she gets into proper focus she has a hand in the major plotline throughout the entire anime and to be honest LA can see Aina's early insignificance as "the childhood friend" a take on her stereotype but worked for better or worse once she took up focus through the latter half of the anime.

The thing is LA REALLY liked Aina in the early episodes due to her insignificance towards Asuka and was hoping for to be in the plot as she was locked out of the loop concerning Z/X's BUT LA was torn by her significance in the plot as she was lead into "the dark side" which brings in some of her hatred of Z/X's which brought a bad taste in LA's mouth as it progressed BUT it brought her into focus for once and thankfully she gets better.

Unfortunately in the minor character department, LA will say this, they too get character development in the form of their own character focused episodes like Mikado Kurosaki, Chitose Aoba and Sera Kurosaki. The problem?, the anime already setup major plotlines and sure the main cast see what these minor characters are here for, but developing these characters for LA had a double edged sword to it, as sure knowing these characters are fine, but at the cost of CONSTANTLY delaying the major plotline focusing on Aina and the main cast, THAT is became a HUGE annoyance to LA in the latter half and with that the only three characters that mattered by the end of it were Ayase, Aina and Asuka.

In terms of Z/X: Ignition in portraying the collectible card game.....this adaptation gave VERY little in terms of what the game is actually is about instead focusing on the sweeping battles and characters instead and LA knows other collectible card games have done something similar in terms of it's focus (see Selector infected series) however Z/X: Ignition does the bare minimum of what the card game is in real life and only gave some of the rules that ONLY suited the more "serious" plot whenever it could because they could.

In terms of animation by Telecom Animation Film, the animation for the most part was average at best giving typical character designs and though the Z/X's designs are "interesting" they didn't do much to strike at LA to like the animation and LA was indifferent for it's animation for the most part. Z/X: Ignition also has a weird tendency to give fanservicey moments in some of the weirdest to projected moments that kinda ruined some of the moments when it CLEARLY didn't need it.

For voice acting, well LA will say the voice acting is probably the most interesting thing with some stereotypical casting here and there like Hiro Shimono, M.A.O, Miyuki Sawashiro and Maaya Uchida. However the voice casting was great for the most part with some interesting roles ESPECIALLY with Satomi Satou voicing Gambriel who is a psychotic angel, however LA's MVP would actually go to Yurika Endou who voiced Aina as she did a rather great job in portraying her character (not to mention her vocal and dramatic range was surprising for a voice actor who currently has done less than 10 roles).

Z/X: Ignition is at for LA mediocre in terms of what it was trying to do, as it sacrificed what the collectible game is actually about for a more serious character-focused plot and when it especially concerned Aina, LA was torn but by the end of it, Aina's involvement was interesting and probably the most interesting thing in the plot and it was the MAJOR focus of the anime as a whole. The minor character development for LA was fillery and only to delay the major focus but it was "ok" to know the characters in question in the process and the anime wanted it to be "the finale". Every time LA has something bad to say about Z/X: Ignition, Z/X: Ignition has a silver lining almost every time and because of this Z/X: Ignition is just mediocre and that is fine, it tried to make a story with original characters in the worlds of Z/X's and develop it's characters sure it wasn't focusing on the game itself but it terms of advertising the game LA had an inkling of what the game was about but LA wasn't gonna play or buy any of it's cards any time soon after finishing watching the anime.

LA will interested in what the sequel Z/X: Code Reunion that was announced and will premiere in Fall of 2019 will do to expand and maybe give more development to the game instead of it's characters this time, not to mention Z/X: Ignition left a few plotlines dangling left over but LA isn't holding LA's breath to see it fulfilled let alone LA's desires for this anime to be patched up anytime soon by the looks of it.

Adaptation-wise LA knew what Z/X: Ignition was trying to do with all it's strengths and flaws both helping each other and by the end of it it left LA with a.....

Meh...