Video Game / Evil Zone

The Evil Zone awaits you.

A Fighting Game by Yuke's released in 1999 for the PlayStation, known as "Eretzvaju" in the original Japanese.

The goal of the game is to defeat the evil super being Ihadulca, who was a sealed away. She was put there by the same people who summoned all the characters of the game to I-Praseru, also called "Happy Island", the world where the game takes place.

The standard tournament for no reason takes place, as the characters bumble into one another and fight for various reasons. As cliched as that may sound, the Story Mode does have one relatively unique feature: each character's story is presented like a different anime TV series, complete with next episode promos, recaps, and title cards. To tie into this theming, every character represents a different kind of standard anime genre, plot, or protagonist — but make no mistake, that's the central appeal.

The game also features animation sequences done by AIC (Tenchi Muyo!, Bubblegum Crisis).

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This game provides examples of:

• Affably Evil/Wicked Cultured: Keiya is dashing, good-looking, polite, willing to help people with their problems, and will utterly maim, brutalize, and kill anyone that gets in his way.
• Affectionate Parody: Every character is a homage to an anime genre or character archetype.
• All There in the Manual: The game includes an encyclopedia in the main menu, and it explains everything. Want to know what kind of a throw a character uses, and what style it's from? It's in there. Want to know the name, range, and accuracy of Danzaiver!'s satellite beam cannon? It's in there. Want to know about a piece of a character's costume, that isn't visible on the model, but provides an in-game function? It's in there, with a backstory.
• Ass Kicking Pose: Delivered before every single one of his battles by, you guessed it, Danzaiver!
• Armor Is Useless: Both played straight and averted at the same time. It depends on whether the armor is Powered Armor (where it's the only reason the person wearing it can keep up with the others) or not (where it offers no more protection than the regular clothes everybody else wears).
• Badass Normal: Aside from their power armor, Danzaiver! and Gally really are just normal humans, unlike the rest of the cast, who sport supernatural powers.
• Battle Aura: When charging up for a super, everyone glows.
• Beam Spam: Gally, Al (his is more fire-based), and Ihadurca all have this when they grapple opponents from various distances. Danzaiver! also does this as one of his gem specials.
• Berserk Button: Don't call Ihadulca "Iha".
• BFS:
  • Gally uses one, and he's surprisingly fast with it.
  • Danzaiver! pulls this off with his ultra-attack, by adding an extra battery to the Danzaiblade, doubling the handle length and the sword's blade.
• Big Bad: Ihadurca.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation: From the poorly-synced speech lines to the literalist translation, much Narm abounds, ranging from Danzaiver! telling Ruri to "withdraw, quickly!" to Kakurine thinking Alty is her big brother.
• Boisterous Bruiser: Gally, Midori and Danzaiver!
  • See In the Name of the Moon for an example of Danzaiver!'s usual fare.
• Bounty Hunter: Gally "Vanish" Gregman. Nice guy. Devoted husband.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: If you start Story Mode with Kakurine, quit, and then start it again with her, she'll comment on the player coming back for another try.
• Calling Your Attacks: Everyone, all the time.
• Clothing Damage: Erel and Keiya wear ponytails that will come undone when they lose about 70% of their health. Danzaiver! loses a chunk of the armor on his face when he takes the same amount of damage.
• Comeback Mechanic: Ultra attacks require sacrificing crystals to perform, which are themselves gained by holding down the attack button to charge power. How much you need to charge to gain a crystal depends on how much of your health is remaining — full health requires the most charge time while having a sliver left lets you charge in nearly an instant.
• Combo Breaker: Hitting your opponent with anything will disrupt them from attacking and cancel whatever special attack they may have been using. Keep up the hits and you can juggle an opponent with temporary stuns long enough to hit them with a death attack.
• Cryptic Background Reference: Ihadulca apparently has bad blood with someone or some force known as "Orca." Even the Encyclopedia doesn't know what she's referring to.
• Cute Bruiser: Midori, Setsuna, Erel.
• Cutscene Power to the Max: Grapple attacks usually involve getting your opponent utterly at your mercy long enough to deliver a super powerful attack. Also, many characters have a cutscene attack for one of their three basic special moves.
• Defeating the Undefeatable: The whole point of the game is determining who can do this.
• Determinator: According to the plot, Danzaiver! is exhausted from fighting most of the cast roster about two-thirds of the way through the game.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Yes, yes they did. Ihadurca is apparently a fragment of a goddess - dangerous enough to threaten whole dimensions. Nevertheless, every character beats her either to submission or death in their story mode. Certain items and even one of the characters are also connected to the original goddess. It's All There in the Manual after all.
• Do Not Taunt Cthulhu: Poor, poor Gally...
• Doomed by Canon: Kakurine only truly dies in her own ending.
• Downer Ending: In Linedwell's ending, once he defeats Ihadurca, he is promptly vaporized by Shahal, the Satanic sword that possessed him. This leaves Shahal without a wielder—until an unidentified traveler finds it and grabs the sword, becoming its latest victim. As long as it can beckon people to take it, Shahal's carnage will never end.
• Dude Looks Like a Lady:
  • Al. His third unlockable outfit runs with this by putting him in what is essentially a schoolgirl uniform.
  • Ihadurca, who appears as a female in the I-Praseru universe, but is more androgynous in a general sense.
  • Kakurine also fits this — she looks like a little girl and usually talks like one, but she is clearly some different being, and at times speaks in a deep male voice.
• Empathic Weapon: Erel's armor, Nephilm, and Linedwell's sword, Shahal. Ihadurca's Bendis-Meltis are also somewhat sentient.
• Enfant Terrible: Kakurine, oh so very much.
• Evil Laugh:
  • Linedwell is fond of doing this.
  • In Danzaiver!'s storyline, Setsuna does this as part of her Alternate Character Interpretation. Creepy as hell too.
• Face Palm: In reaction to Erel's angry rejection of his offer to let him fight Ihadulca for her, Danzaiver! pulls one of these.
• Fanservice: Even those that dress modestly or fully cover up their bodies (Gally, Danzaiver!, Keiya, Kakurine) still manage to come across as fanservice in one form or another.
• Finishing Move:
  • Everyone has one. They come in two variants, a quick version that does a bunch of damage and a longer, flashier and more dramatic version of the same move that shows up when you're guaranteed to finish them off with it. If you see the second one, you know you've won.
  • If you have Midori in her alternate costume, she goes "Here is, the winning punch!". Setsuna, if you win with hers will go "Karin, your ultra death attack, you're too much."
• Finger Poke of Doom: One of Kakurine's moves is to bind the enemy up with a ring, float over slowly, and then flick them in the forehead, sending them away and doing small to moderate damage. Many of Kakurine's attacks function like this.
• Fragile Speedster: Linedwell, Erel, Al, and Danzaiver! are pretty easy to damage and fairly quick on their feet.
• Genki Girl: Midori and Erel.
• Giving Someone the Pointer Finger: Some of the characters tend to do this in pre- and post-fighting cutscenes.
• Good Old Fisticuffs: In a world where everyone has blades of several magical varieties or other forms of magic for directly attacking someone, Midori - while having several outright supernatural abilities of her own, focuses primarily on using her own two fists to fight.
• Healthy Green, Harmful Red: The characters' health meter is a vertical green bar that diminishes with the opponent's attack.
• Henshin Hero: Sho aka Danzaiver!
• Heroic Sacrifice: In Danzaiver!'s route, Midori knocks him away from Kakurine's sneak attack, nearly biting it in the process.
• Homage: Danzaiver! is a clear homage to the Metal Heroes' first three shows, Space Sheriff Gavan, Space Sheriff Sharivan and Space Sheriff Shaider.
• Hong Kong Dub:
  • Try playing as Keiya. Every other match, watch his mouth move for the several seconds between finishing his pre-battle speech and his Ass Kicking Pose as the camera dramatically sweeps and zooms. The game in general is pretty lax about Mouth Flaps; Keiya's just the most regular offender.
  • This happens to everybody but Danzaiver! (who, wearing a face-concealing helmet, is the only character without a moving mouth sprite), while Danzaiver! himself continues swinging his arms around emphatically long after he's stopped speaking.
• Hot-Blooded:
  • Danzaiver! So much. SO very, very much PLUS! Bonus points for he is voiced by none other than Tomokazu Seki, the guy who is notoriously known to be one of the most prolific seiyuus who can give these types of characters a too hot to handle presence.
  • Midori too. In Danzaiver!'s storyline, his fight with her is titled 'Attacking the challenger, Fiery fist! -Entry of a hot-blooded fighter, Midori-' Weirdly, when the two face off, the hot-bloodedness is toned down quite a bit.
• 100% Completion: Beating the game with a character and unlocking all eight of each character's intro animations unlocks the encyclopedias for that character. Getting this for each and every character, including Ihadurca herself, and you get an audio drama where all the characters fight over who's the real main character.
• I Call It "Vera": A number of characters have named weapons and armor, like Danzaiver's Danzaiblade, Setsuna's Klau Solas, Kakurine's Void, and Ihadurca's Vanalgando, to name a few.
• I Have You Now, My Pretty: Linedwell to Erel in his storyline. Heavily implied that he rapes her after their fight. Erel's boyfriend Al is rightfully pissed off due to the events that happened earlier. Sadly, it doesn't work out too well for Al in the end.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice:
  • One of Setsuna's grapple moves has her do this to her opponent.
  • Nobody impales people quite like Linedwell, whose ultra attack involves slashing a heptagram over his opponent and then impaling himself to damage the enemy.
• Instant Armor: One of Danzaiver!'s animations when selected is to summon his armor, after calling out the activation phrase 'Zerochaku' and going through a few totally unnecessary arm-motions and poses.
• In the Name of the Moon: Oh yeah. Danzaiver! does this a lot.
  "I cannot be defeated. Absolutely, positively, for the sake of the world! Here goes! The power of the Supreme Ruler destroys evil! The ultimate hero, DANZAIVER!"
  • Setsuna has a specific (and hammy) incantation to merge with Karin:
    "To the one who illuminates my passage and destroys evil. In the name of Setsuna, I vow my unfailing love. I want your power and soul. Take my body for the sake of your name. Karin, come here!"
• Kamehame Hadoken: Everyone has some variant of it. Midori's is just the most obvious.
  • Every single melee attack outside of a certain range also doubles as a projectile attack.
• Kill It with Fire: Alty Al Lazel uses fire a lot.
  • What probably happened to Linedwell in Kakurine's story mode.
• Kill Sat: Danzaiver! when he calls for some long range support fire from Seingreed. It's one of the coolest-looking moves in the game.
  • Gets pretty ridiculous when Danzaiver! fights the remote control Tactical Frame (i.e. himself), controlled by Ruri... who also controls Seingreed! Also causes some Fridge Logic when you realize that it can also shoot straight into the Evil Zone with no problem.
• Lady of War: Setsuna
• Large Ham: Most characters count. As Paul Eiding put it in a comment on an Evil Zone Retsupurae:
  Paul Eiding: I remember them wanting it to be 'over the top'...and they got it.
• Laser Blade: Danzaiver! Also, Erel Plowse has a mystical version, and Gally "Vanish" Gregman has a laser-edged BFS.
• Macross Missile Massacre: Gally "Vanish" Gregman loves this trope, as evidenced by his super move.
• Magical Girl: Setsuna and Kakurine are homages to this, the latter being more of a Dark Magical Girl.
• Magic Wand: Ihadurca has this is as her weapon.
  • More of a staff than a wand really.
• Meaningful Name: Erel's armor Nephilm sounds like the Hebrew "Nephilim", literally antediluvian half-human half-angel creatures from The Bible.
• Megaton Punch: Midori's finishing move is essentially this.
• Missile Lock-On: Gally's super uses this before he fires.
• Mighty Glacier: Gally, at least at first glance, seems to be this. He's pretty fast despite his size, but it takes him a moment longer to recover from attacking.
  • Nobody is really that much faster, slower, stronger, or weaker than any other character. The only differences between them are the traits and ranges of their attacks, where the opponent falls down after getting hit by each of their grapple attacks, and how quickly they recover (notably, Midori is vulnerable for more than a couple of seconds if she misses with some of her moves, while characters like Al recover almost instantly).
• Mirror Match: Everyone has one. Generally around the 2nd or 3rd to last match in their storyline, except for Ihadurca, who has hers right away. Also comes with some rather clever reasons for the match-up.
  • Danzaiver: fighting a remote-controlled spare tactical frame; extra points for that tactical frame being controlled by (wait for it) Ruri
  • Kakurine: fighting her own self-doubt, quite possibly in her head
  • Setsuna: fights an illusion created by Karin
  • Keiya: fights a clone of himself created by Kakurine
  • Gally: also fights a clone of himself created by Keiya
  • Erel: fights a copy of herself created by her malfunctioning magical armor; extra points for that armor being created by (wait for it) Kakurine
  • Al: fights his mentor, Brain Zar Deline
  • Lie: Fights a clone created by his sword to test him
  • Ihadurca: fights the last line of defense on the Evil Zone, namely a copy of herself
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Kakurine. She appears in the guise of a harmless little miko girl, only to annihilate the poor soul. Heck, show her to anybody who doesn't know anything about Evil Zone and you'll most likely get a "D'aww, kawaiiiiii!!!!" reaction. Then tell them that she's basically That One Boss and watch their jaw hit the floor.
• Oh, Crap!: Apparently, just having Ihadulca's attention on you is enough to stop a normal person in their tracks, if Badass Normal Danzaiver! is any indication.
  Danzaiver!: Ihadulca!
  Ihadulca: Who's that? Who's there?
  Danzaiver!: Ght! This sensation... Gillaclava, is it?
• Older Than They Look: The in-game encyclopedia states that Alty is 21, but he has a kid's voice and looks about half as old as his girlfriend Erel. In fact, a number of characters that were younger in the Japanese version are said to be 21 in the English version.
• Orgasmic Combat: Setsuna. Doesn't help that she's flashing her panties all the time.
• Playing with Fire: Keiya tosses around fireballs as normal attacks while Al's super is a giant fireball that surrounds you on all sides before converging.
• Powered Armor: Danzaiver!'s "Tactical Frame", Gally (more armor than powered), Erel's Nephilm (who has a mystical version).
• Power Perversion Potential: Erel can make an exact duplicate of herself, that is completely solid. Think about it.
• Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs: Midori.
• Really 700 Years Old: Ihadulca, and Kakurine.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Ruri and Yuri, the former being hot-blooded, and the latter being calm and collected.
• Rock Me, Asmodeus!: Lindwell has heavy metal as his area background music.
• Say My Name: About as much as to be expected, since this game styles itself as several anime series wrapped into one.
  "Al..." "Karen!" "Setsuna!" "Sh-Sho-" "Danzaiver!" "IHADULCA!"
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Ihadulca is very clearly this, though the seal isn't as tight as it should be.
• Shout-Out
  • Midori has a throw where she grabs an opponent across their front, and slams them back-first into the ground, while yelling "Rock Bottom!"
  • And Danzaiver! gives one to Space Sheriff Gavan out with his transformation call, "Zerochaku!"
• SNK Boss: Ihadurca, so very much. She has incredibly cheap attacks (see The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard below), she spams grabs and other special attacks like no other character in the game, and her reaction times are absolutely ridiculous. The only way to get any damage in on her is to catch her in the middle of a breakable attack, stun her, and grab-spam her.
• Slap-on-the-Wrist Nuke: Pretty much every special move ever. For instance, getting impaled can do anything from medium-grapple damage to a finishing move, to a finishing move on your opponent, depending on who does it and how. The worst offender by far is the Seingblaze attack from Danzaiver's personal satellite. Arguably one of the most epic cases of Boom, Headshot! in a video game... and they just stand back up again with a little bit of health missing.
• Some Dexterity Required: Unusually subverted for a fighting game. There is only one attack button, one guard button, and the directional pad. The direction you press on the directional pad while attacking determines what kind of attack you'll get, with the only variation needed being to press the attack button once if the enemy is directly in front of you or twice if they're attempting to dodge, thus eliminating the need to memorize an arcane series of button-presses and ensuring that every character will generally play like every other character. Granted, hitting some of the combos does take a bit of getting used to, but once you figure it out, you can basically play as any character you want without having to learn too much.
• Spell My Name With An S: A few characters are named inconsistently due to the limitations of Japanese transliteration.
  • Gally's nickname is "Vanish" but it's often pronounced "Banish" instead.
  • Danzaiver! is often pronounced 'Danzai-BAR'. This also obfuscates the name of his special attack, Danzai-Burst — in Japanese, the 'ver' and 'bur' sounds are both approximated as 'bah'.
  • Ihadurca is pronounced in-game as 'Ihadulca' or 'Ihadolca', depending on who's speaking.
• Stripperiffic: Midori, Ihadurca, Erel. The first two wear skimpy clothing (allowing for butt shots from Midori and Impossibly-Low Neckline from Ihadurca) and Erel wears a skin-tight suit that if using the right color scheme looks a bit like her skin, so it looks like she's fighting naked. Erel's Japanese design has no leggings on her bikini-style suit. Buttshots better than Midori, in fact.

• Teleport Spam: Kakurine has this as one of her grapples. Ihadurca also does this in real-time, and will usually reappear on your screen right in the middle of an attack, making it incredibly tough to read and counter her attacks.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Ihadurca's Bendis-Meltis. Prime candidate for That One Attack, it can break any attack you throw at her, including attacks that would normally break any other enemy attack, and hit you if you're on the other side of it. It actually carries over to the playable Ihadurca as well.
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: The reason everybody fights in the tournament is for the right to face Ihadurca themselves for whatever reason. Never mind that she's about to break out of her cage anyway...
• World of Badass: Yep! You got it!
• World of Ham: EVERYONE! Especially Danzaiver! Bonus points for being voiced by Tomokazu Seki.

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