Customer Reviews

The Familiar of Zero: Box Set

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is such a refreshing, fun series! I loved everything about it. Louise reminds me of Lina Inverse from Slayers but where Lina would blow everything up on purpose, poor Louise just blows things up on accident. Everything seems to go wrong that she touches. Every magic student has to summon a familiar in their second year. It's a huge thing, and the students are so proud when they finally get their familiar, only Louise screws this up too and in all the history of the school, she is the only one who has ever summoned... a human.

The Japanese boy is quite bewildered to be in a new world with two moons and having a girl claim to be his master (of sorts). She starts out treating him like a pet/slave (as other familiars are) but it quickly branches out into more than just that.

Great music, a fun plot, solid animation and nice character designs make for a very cute and entertaining anime. There's plenty of comedy and action and its just a great series overall. HIGHLY recommended!

This box includes the entire season in three full size cases housed inside a collector's box.

The Familiar of Zero is an anime about a girl's experiences, and her classmates, at a magic academy. The plot revolves around her and her helper's day to day lives in the academy sprinkled in with various missions where students (apparently the most qualified despite being novices) go on tasks to root out problems facing them and their friends/school/country.

While the plot itself is dry and not treated very serious, hence it is hard to get drawn into, the bright spot of this anime is the humor. The aim is to throw as many jokes as they can at you in an episode. Be warned that there is a lot of crude humor, whether it be a woman's bust size, misunderstandings of awkward situations, or clothing malfunctions. If this is up your alley, jackpot as this is fanservice 101. But even aside from that, characters, even if 1 or 2 dimensional, are still enjoyable.

In addition to humor, there is some romance sprinkled in, but this is one of my biggest problems with these kinds of anime. Its the kind of romance where the intended couple briefly hooks up, breaks up, loves each other, than hates, there is very little progression in their relationship, and usually its romance followed by humor, not giving the romance a real chance to grow.

Recap, after you watch it you may forget the plot and some of the characters, but you'll have a lotta laughs in the process.

Well, some people has given this a low score and for the life of me I can't understand why. For starters the show is fun, lighthearted, and good. It starts off well and it ends well. If you like Anime, than you need to pick this one up.
The rights to this show were first given to Geneon, but they dropped it and Funimation picked it up, and delivered this 3 disked box set. This is not a slim pack, what you get are three full case DVD's with a box that holds all three DVD cases. The box has good art work, and the DVDs them self's have reversible covers. The special features are not really worthy to be mentioned. As with all Anime almost, you get the standard special features. Clean Opening, Clean ending, previews, and some art work, also some promo stuff, but not much.
The video and art of the show is really good, not too flashy, but not dull. The audio is top notch, and the dubbing is superb. As with all Anime there is going to be people that hate the English voice acting, but in this Anime the English dub is really good.
After this season of Zero there is two more seasons, which each has 12 new episodes. Buy this box set, it is a great deal for 13 episodes of a great, and fun Anime.

Update:

Just got a letter from Fanimation (I wrote them), they have said that they do not plan to release the other two seasons. :-( I guess not enough people bought this. They probably downloaded this season, stupid so called fans (Pirates) ruin for everyone else.

Chances are, if you know anime and are looking at this, The Familiar of Zero, you probably already going to get it. And for good reason too, as you are going to find a welcome amount of what I call "good stuff" and a pretty good plot behind it all. My opinion is really,"You're not gonna go wrong with Zero", but I have to give you an idea of what the Familiar of Zero is about.

Our heroine, the cute and proud Louise, Louise de la Valliere, is absolutely incapable of performing even the most basic spells of magic elements. To her classmates, she is "Louise the Zero" for an unprecedented perfect failure rate with regards to successful magic. She messes everything up, and by "mess" up, I usually mean "blows" it up! You can't help but laugh at her failures and feel sorry for the proud Louise. That is how she presented.

When her class begins to summon all their respective familiars, she summons something completely different--a boy. And, of course, things really go downhill for her after that. She has him do everything for her--And I mean EVERYTHING. I hope you know what I mean. Her temper is fiery, but she is so bossy-cute, you wouldn't mind being her slave. Unfortunate for the boy, as he wants to get away from her. But then again, he has secret powers...

If you don't get this, you ruin the chances that the other seasons of 'ZERO' will get published here in the States. A sad thing, since it is a really good series. There are two more 13-episode seasons after this, just as funny. You really are not going to go wrong when you watch this, trust me. :D

The Familiar of Zero offers a hilarious and unique story line about a Japanese boy that enters a world of magic. The graphics are pretty good and the voice cast is one of the best. I would recommend this to anyone who watches anime and comedies. It by far my most favorite anime in existence.

What a good show this turned out to be. It has good voice acting, likeable characters, and a good story. It is not the best anime I have seen but I have watched it twice since buying it 2 months ago(that is not normal for me) and would probably watch it again. It was really enjoyable and I can only pray that they release season 2 and 3 in english soon!!!

One of the best animes ever, only surpassed by two or three. I highly recommend it.

This is a great show and and great buy. The boxset comes with some unique artwork and 3 mini posters that all look great! This show is still waiting for it's fourth season Please support by purchasing this set and future releases!

I wasn't sure what to expect from this anime which I watched with my 10 year old daughter. Both of us ended up enjoying it a lot. It's in a girlie (Shojo), crazy style with lots of screeching, squealing and wild antics. The relationship between the two main characters is sweet (although a little aggressive!) and the story line is nice. Our major disappointment with the series was how short it was ... only 3 discs. The story was a bit 'compressed' and had a lot of potential. It would have been better if it had been told over four or five discs.

I think the sexual references in this anime are pretty strong, too. If you're concerned about this sort of thing then this isn't an anime to watch with your child.

We are big fans of anime and I wouldn't this as highly as others in the same style, e.g., Fruits Basket, but it's good if your expectations aren't too high.

The packaging is good. The box is high quality, sturdy cardboard with good artwork. Inside are three standard DVDs with a small picture booklet inside each one. The covers are reversible.

The series is to be taken with the knowledge that it's neither an all round action anime or drama anime but more of a mix of light drama, magical abilities, and a dash of romance. The characters are very entertaining to watch and seeing the situations they get into most of the times will leave you with a chuckle. The main characters Louise a young female aristocrat with almost zero magical talent thus earning her nickname Louise The Zero inadvertently summons a young man from our world to hers in a botched summoning spell to call for personal familiar to appear to her( A familiar being a mystical animal or normal animal but with unique qualities that helps her or his wizard master). Of course the young man Hiraga Saito neither knowing what's going on or where he is finds himself out of his league and under the overbearing dominion of his so called master, but later as he adjusts to his new world he finds he has a unique ability to fight with unusual power and ability(Nothing truly superhuman). The hijinx that happens between Louise and Saito as they slowly begin to at first befriend than fall in love will leave you laughing and feeling a little heartfelt tug throughout the series. The series is widescreen and the cast for the English voice overs were very good for their roles as was of course the Japanese cast, the extras aren't much just the standard trailers and textless intro/ending songs. There is a lot of fan service in the series itself but nothing to r-rated to worry about and nothing to steamy beyond kissing for the most part so no need to unduly worry about anything to badly. The one thing I appreciate with Funimation doing is having the complete series set be a decent design, meaning the set is three standard dvd cases put into a thin cardboard box sleeve with the main female character on both sides instead of just doing the set like their recent complete box sets(Air Gear, Guyver, Mushi Ishi to just name a few). So if you're looking a mystical magical series or just looking for a chuckle or two for the price of this set here's a choice to take a look at for yourself...