Mecha anime is in large part fun because we get to watch robots hit each other. But the robots are only as good as the pilots who control them, and a good pilot, or a bad one, can change how we feel about the robot itself.
In a franchise like Zoids, which has a million characters and a million Zoids, spread out over a variety of anime and manga series and video games, it can be hard to tell which pilots are going to be worth watching and which ones we can definitely do without. Here are the five best and five worse pilots from the Zoids franchise.
10 Best: Bit Cloud
Bits Cloud is the main character of Zoids: New Century, so we already have a pretty good idea that he’s a good Zoids pilot. Unlike characters like Amuro Ray in Mobile Suit Gundam, Bit was not immediately good at piloting and had to work really hard to become better, all while being incessantly teased by his fellow pilots and teammates.
He usually pilots Liger Zero, but he’s able to pilot just about any Zoid he tries to, just because he has made such a point to become familiar with them.
9 Worst: Alpha Richter
Alpha Richter might not be a bad Zoids pilot, but part of the problem is that we never get a chance to find out. Because Alpha’s Zoid, Seismosaurus, is so large, he doesn’t really even participate in battles.
He’s mostly there to give other members of his team orders. And when he does have to participate, Seismosaurus’s power means he barely has to do any of the actual work. The Zoid is almost impossible to defeat. It’s hard to say Alpha is a good pilot when he doesn’t do very much piloting.
8 Best: Van Flyheight
Unlike Bit Cloud, Van Flyheight does reasonably well the first time he pilots a Zoid, despite not having much training in one, and he only improves from there.
Van is a hot-headed pilot who tends to fight at a fast pace, spending a lot of time in close range combat with his opponents, making for some really exciting Zoids battles. He has the ability to use long-range weapons with his Zoids, but his preference for the more dangerous close combat really shows how confident and capable he is as a pilot.
7 Worst: Leena Toros
There aren’t a whole lot of women piloting Zoids in the Zoids franchise, so it really pains us to put Leena on the worse side of this list. Leena Toros is a perfectly capable pilot with regard to actually piloting a Zoid, but her abilities in combat leave a lot to be desired, and that’s literally half the battle when it comes to being a pilot.
Leena isn’t good at aiming or using her weapons in a calculated way. She often ends up laying down a spray of fire in the midst of battle, often hitting her opponents, but also putting in danger any civilians or teammates who might be in the way.
6 Best: Raven
Raven is one of the bad guys of Zoids: Chaotic Century, and that must be a real bummer for Van Flyheight and his teammates. Raven is an incredibly capable and even gifted Zoid pilot and is often deployed by the Empire, on his own, to dispatch with large numbers of Zoids.
He’s able to pilot several different kinds of Zoids and does so with relative ease. Van Flyheight is defeated by him more than once in battle, as are most of his friends and teammates. He’s clearly one of the most powerful opponents they could have.
5 Worst: Amy
Amy is a character from Zoids: Fuzors who doesn’t appear in battle a whole lot, but when she does, it’s clear why she’s made it on this list. Again, we don’t love having the women pilots only on the bad side of this list, but that probably says more about the creators of Zoids than our placements. Amy is a Zoid pilot on the Mach Storm team.
When we see her in battle, which isn’t a whole lot, she is almost always defeated by her opponents. Some of them are likely much stronger than her and the Zoid she pilots, but others seem like she should probably have some chance of defeating them.
4 Best: Vega Obscura
Vega Obscura is 10 years old, so we really balk at the fact that he’s a Zoid pilot at all, let alone such a good one. He’s a piloting prodigy, with skills that far exceed his years. While Vega doesn’t fight in actual war combat, he does participate in jousting-style combat games in which Zoids face off against one another.
Because of his quick reflexes and his ability to predict what actions his opponents will take next, along with his bond with his Zoid, Berserk Fury, he is almost unbeatable in combat.
3 Worst: Lieutenant Colonel Dias
Lieutenant Colonel Dias doesn’t appear much in Zoids: Wild ZERO, but when he does, he doesn’t seem particularly capable as a pilot. He’s considered fairly powerful, which is also partially the reason for his rank as Lieutenant Colonel, but his abilities in combat leave something to be desired.
We see him defeated twice in combat by one person, Aldridge, who otherwise doesn’t seem to actual pilot his Zoid too often, and Lieutenant Colonel Dias’s Zoid is destroyed by him in the process of the second battle. One would think he would maybe learn some lessons from the first battle, but he ends up getting beaten even worse.
2 Best: Max Rubin
Max Rubin is one of the few side characters who make this list on the best side. Max is a sergeant who fights regularly in Zoid combat. Throughout the series, we often see him battling successfully against enemy Zoids, with only a few instances of his Zoids being destroyed in the process.
Max is really good at close range combat, which as noted above regarding Van, makes him seem really capable and also means he’s in some pretty cool fights. He’s also able to pilot a lot of different kinds of Zoids, which is not something every pilot can say.
1 Worst: Arashi
In Zoids: Wild, we get to know Arashi when he’s fairly young and just learning to be a Zoids pilot. He’s not particularly good, and he gets frustrated easily with his own failings and has the extra handicap of piloting inferior Zoids. He does slowly become stronger, as he gains a mentor in a more powerful Zoid pilot named Bacon, and learns to bond with a stronger Zoid.
But even then, he ends up reaching a stronger level that he can’t then surpass, getting defeated several times by stronger opponents. He does have a Berserk mode that he can tap into when he’s facing defeat, but it’s an uncontrollable amount of power, which means he’s not much good at piloting through it.