Customer Reviews

Invader ZIM - Doom Doom Doom (Vol. 1)

5 star:		(158)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I never thought this show would ever come out on dvd! This just makes my day.

Here's a list of episodes you can expect on this DVD:
- Unaired Pilot Episode (a half-length short starring Billy West of Futurama as Zim) - Commentary with Jhonen Vasquez (Zim Creator, Head Writer, Art Direction)
- The Nightmare Begins - Commentary with Rikki Simons (Voice Actor - Gir and Color Artist), Wally Wingert (Voice Actor) and Jhonen Vasquez
- Bestest Friend - Commentary with Rikki Simmons, Ian Graham (Storyboard Artist) and Jhonen Vasquez
- NanoZIM - Commentary with Rikki Simmons and Jhonen Vasquez
- Parent Teacher Night - Commentary with Rikki Simmons and Jhonen Vasquez
- Walk of Doom - Commentary with Rikki Simmons and Jhonen Vasquez
- Germs
- Dark Harvest - Commentary with Eric Trueheart (Writer and Various Voices) and Jhonen Vasquez
- Attack of the Saucer Morons - Commentary with Eric Trueheart, Rikki Simmons and Jhonen Vasquez
- Career Day
- Battle-Dib
- Planet Jackers - Commentary with Rikki Simmons and Jhonen Vasquez
- Rise of the Zitboy - Commentary with Eric Trueheart, Rikki Simmons and Jhonen Vasquez
- Invasion of the Idiot Dog Brain - Commentary with Rikki Simmons and Jhonen Vasquez
- Bad Bad Rubber Piggy - Surprise Commentary!
- A Room with a Moose - Commentary with Rikki Simmons and Jhonen Vasquez
- Hamstergeddon - Commentary with Eric Trueheart, Ian Graham, Rikki Simmons and Jhonen Vasquez

Invader blood marches through my veins like giant, radioactive rubber pants! Met Zim, an arrogant and none-too-bright Irkin sent to Earth to destroy it. Well, sent by accident. The Tall Ones just wanted to get rid of Zim and shot him randomly into space.

While other Irkin Invaders are equipped with SIR's (Standard Information Retrieval Units), Zim is given an assistant put together from pieces pulled from the trash; a GIR. ("What does the `G' stand for?" GIR shrugs, "I don't know.") Ah, the stink of clean!

With GIR's help, Zim must conquer earth. He disguises himself as a human child and attends school. No one suspects him except Dib, an outcast at school with a fixation on alien invasions.

The humor is advanced for Nickelodeon, most likely the reason they finally pulled the show. Body functions and toilet humor abound, along with some great one-liners. Pure cartoon entertainment, especially for fans of Jhonen Vasquez's humor.

My one complaint would be that there are no English subtitles. For those of us who are a little hard of hearing, I like to have subtitles sometimes.
Here's a rundown of the episodes:

Disc One:
Episode One-The Nightmare Begins
On Irkin, Zim shows up late for Invader assignments and is sent away in a random direction with GIR, just to get rid of him. Zim lands on earth, and sets up his base for plotting to destroy the planet.

Episode Two-Bestest Friend
Zim discovers he won't fit in with earthlings unless he has a friend. So he tests several of the kids to find out who will be his bestest friend. The tests include absorbency, electrical conductivity, and one that involved a squirrel and a taxi, but wasn't shown. The winner is Keef!

Episode Three-NanoZim
Dib takes an incriminating picture of Zim to send to Mysterious Mysteries of Strange Mystery, to prove Zim is an alien. Zim shrinks down and goes inside Dib's body to destroy his memory of the photo. Dib uses his dad's nano-technology to chase after Zim, but Gaz has to take over the controls to defeat Zim.

Episode Four-Parent Teacher Night
Zim has to reprogram his mechanical parents to attend Parent/Teacher night at school, but instead of the training program, GIR changes the screen to his favorite programs (like the Scary Monkey Show). Zim winds out with really weird parents.

Episode Five-Walk of Doom
Zim gets lost on purpose to test his new geographic locator, but GIR removed it to make room for a cupcake.

Episode Six-Germs
Hilarious episode! Zim buys germ goggles, only to find out his house is riddled with nasty germs. Especially GIR. The only thing Zim can find that is germ free is some really nasty burger meat, so he wears the meat

Episode Seven-Dark Harvest
One of my favorites! Zim needs human organs in order to appear human to the school nurse. He steals organs and replaces them with items like hall passes, cartons of milk, and cans of soda. At the end, he is bloated with organs.

Episode Eight-Attack of the Saucer Morons
Zim declares war on bees. He crashes his ship in the park during a UFO convention. "Ride the pig, GIR, ride the pig!"

Episode Nine-The Wettening
When it rains, Zim discovers that water hurts him. Unfortunately, so does Dib. What follows is the world's ultimate water balloon fight.

Disc Two:
Episode Ten-Career Day
This is likely the most disgusting, and therefore one of the funnier, episodes. Zim wants to be Lord of All Humans on career day, but is instead assigned to food preparation. He gets a case of zits and...well...things go downhill from there.

Episode Eleven-Battle Dib
Dib has to go through a triathlon type contest just to get his father to sign a note. The contest includes Spido-Ractno-Rama.

Episode Twelve-Planet Jackers
Zim's telescope is broken, so he must find a more powerful one. GIR wants to make biscuits instead. Using the telescope, Zim finds out earth has been planet-jacked and needs to get it back from the jackers.

Episode Thirteen-Rise of the Zitboy
Zim gets a pimple, and discovers that it has the power to hypnotize humans. He draws a face on it and names it Pustulio. He refers to it as a 'hideous montage of humiliation and shame'.

Episode Fourteen-Invasion of the Idiot Dog Brain
When Zim is installing a new house brain, GIR gets in the way and GIR's brain winds out in the house. "Shut your noise tube, taco human!"

Episode Fifteen-Bad Bad Rubber Piggy
Zim attempts to send a Hunter/Destroyer machine into the past to get rid of Dib, but GIR's rubber pig goes instead. Zim then must use ALL of GIR's rubber pigs to change the past and stop Dib from hounding him.

Episode Sixteen-A Room With a Moose
Zim sends a bus with Dib and his classroom out into space, through a wormhole headed towards a Room With A Moose. It's up to Dib to get the bus back to earth.


Episode Seventeen-Hamstergeddon
One of my favorites! Meet Peepi the hamster. Peepi is the class's new pet. Zim alters Peepi to grow at a phenomenal rate in order to use Peepi's cuteness to conquer the world.

Invader Zim is an imaginative and enjoyable cartoon for those adults, like me, who never tire of being a kid once in awhile. I wouldn't recommend this cartoon for small kids, but its good silly fun for the mature cartoon connoisseur. Enjoy!

From the mind of Jhonen Vasquez, author of insane, twisted comics, the voice of Richard Horvitz (Billy, Dagget), and the conductor's wand of Kevin Manthei (Resident Evil), Zim, an evil green alien from the planet Irk, comes to earth in attempt to take it over and give its land to his masters so they can do something cool with it. Unfortunately for Zim, a kid named Dib is onto his plot and is willing to go to any lengths to stop him. Now Zim, his insane robot sidekick, GIR, Dib, and his sister, Gaz, are locked in mortal combat for the fate of the Earth.
This is a brilliantly set up cartoon and the bizarre humor is hiliarious. Zim has been cancelled and us fans have been dying for a DVD for years. Now it's here. ...Look up there! what a price. What on earth are you doing reading this? Support the Irken empire and buy this DVD!!!!

Well, Nick made good on their decision to cancel Zim forever from the airwaves. The only problems I can think of with the DVD are the mispelling of 'Irken' on the back, and the fact that the Irken subtitles automatically come on when you put the DVD in the player.

Aside from these, however, the DVDs are packed with solid entertainment. They even have commentaries for some of the episodes, as well as a feature where the sketchy storyboards are shown onscreen with the original audio playing. The hilarious pilot episode is included as well.

One of the best inclusions is the interview with the voice actors. It may surprise you to learn that GIR's voice actor is a tired-looking guy who mumbles a lot... and that Zim's voice actor's voice really does sound like that.

I would have been content with just the episodes, actually, so I was pleasantly surprised... the commentaries are well-done and very funny, what with Tallest Red's voice actor always complaining about how Tallest Purple stole his lines and the other little in-jokes here and there. Also, you get to hear the enigmatic Vasquez speak about his masterpiece, which is grood. And great. And good. Great and good.

This package has a solid five-star rating all the way through for a reason. There is really nothing else one could hope for... excepy maybe a GIR dog plushie.

Ok, I'll level with you... There are a lot of hilarious cartoons out there for adults these days, but none (and I mean NONE) can compare to the snappy one-liners and incredible attention to detail of Invader Zim. The first time I watched a Zim show I practically wet my pants from laughing so hard (yes, I was 22...)! The second one I saw, between the intermitant need to pee my pants, I also noticed how unbelievably amazing the animation quality was in this show. Unlike so many other cartoons, the animators actually show some incredible talent and appear to take a huge amount of pride in their work. The same can be said about the writers. Very few "intended" jokes fail to illicit a stomach-wrenching guffaw from myself and my other friends. This show is not full of fluff... it's pure animation GENIUS!!
I do agree that it is a little too intense for children and therefore, I understand how Nickelodeon took it off of the air. What I don't understand is why the Cartoon Network hasn't picked it up and heaped loads of money on Mr. Vasquez to produce more and more until the show is forced to "jump the shark" from lack of material (which I see happening about 70 or 80 years from now...)
Anyway, my suggestion would be very simple: Put down the mouse, step away from your keyboard, grab your wallet and car keys and race to purchase Zim. I love Amazon, but seriously folks... with this cartoon, any amount of waiting is WAY TOO LONG!
I hope you enjoy the show!

A little over two years ago, a little cartoon named Invader Zim premired on Nickelodeon. Then, just as the show had developed a large fanbase, Nick cancelled it. Think that's the end of the story?

Fear not, IZ Fantaics, your time as come! Zim is finally available on DVD! If you never have heard of Zim, here's a newbie's Cliff Notes: Invader Zim is about an alien named, you guessed it, Zim. With a megalomaniac personality that makes up for his short stature, Zim isn't exactly in the Top Ten of the Almight Tallest's (Zim's advisors) favorite invaders list. After nearly ruining Operation Impending Doom I, OID II is underway and Zim wants a slice of the pie. But the Tallests have other plans. In order to get rid of Zim (and having OID II go smoothly), they send him to an unknown planet called Earth (which they themselves have no idea who, or what, inhabits it) on a "special misson". Being complete blind to the Tallets' true nature of this "mission", Zim happily accepts and decends to Earth, in hopes of completing OID II and pleasing the Tallests.

Along with Zim, you get a colorful cast that includes GIR, an "advanced" robot that has garbage for brains (literally) and acts like a two year old on a sugar high. Dib, Zim's antagonist, is a kid who is an inpiring paranormal investigator and will stop at nothing to prove of Zim's exsistance and plans to take over Earth. Gaz, Dib's younger sister and sometimes partner, just wants to be left alone and go about her daily way of life and Miss Bitters, Dib's teacher at "SKOOL", who main priority is to crush children's dreams and be blunt of the "evils" of life in general.

Why take notice? For one, Zim's creator, Jhonen Vasquez, is the brillent, twisted genius behind the popular comics Johnny the Homacidel Manaic, SQUEE! and I Fell Sick (which have already a large fanbase). Plus, it still amazes me that this is a kid's show. While most children's shows are just carbon copies from yesterday and beyond, Zim brakes the mold by portraying childhood as a dark, disturbing period of a person's life that involves odd and random humor, jabs at how society has gone downhill since the 1980s (maybe even earlier than that given time period), and how one must deal with everything inbetween...all through the eyes of an alien, a robot, two kids and a bitter old woman.

This, I believe, is why many have grasped on to this show. Truly a cult classic, it's no surprize that the IZ DVD will included a nice, heeping helping of much anticipated bonus features, including commentaries from the show staff and actors, the orginal pilot that gave way to show, and many more. Plus, all the episodes are uncut and edited according to Jhonen's true vision, which promises to please all IZ fans alike.

If you are a fan (like myself), then this is a must-buy and a perfect addition to add to your DVD collection. If you are not, give the show a go and discover what all the excitment is about. You'll never look at cartoons the same why again once you have gotten a taste of Invader Zim.

The Irken are a mighty race of tall aliens slowly conquering the planets. Invader Zim hails from planet Irk, and though small, he's a veteran of Operation Impending Doom (and the reason OID was a failure). Sent to conquer planet Earth because it's really far away from Irk, Zim sets up a base and trys to do his part for Operation Impending Doom 2. Aiding his effort is Gir, his "advanced" robot sidekick. Although Gir was intended to aid Zim in his conquering efforts, his strengths lie in his ability to watch lots and lots of television and carry objects in his head.

As Zim and Gir do silly things to try and destroy the Earth, there's only one boy who notices Zim's an alien and constantly tries to defeat him. Dib is the son of a great scientist, obsessed with the paranormal, and if any of Zim's schemes come close to succeeding, Dib will find a way to stop it (Dib doesn't really have any friends or anything else to do).
Also fun to watch are Gaz, Dib's sister who doesn't like anything that interferes with her reading or video gaming, and Ms. Bitters, the evil teacher everyone has had to deal with in their journey through "skool".

NOTE: This review is being written months before the DVD release, the show is just that good. It's not being shown on tv anymore, so this is your only chance to witness the impending doom. Even if the extras turn out to be bad (and that's highly unlikely), this DVD is worth getting just for the stories of Invader Zim, Gir, and the humans who stumble across their paths (and the only way to discover your moosey fate!)

It's about time! I've been waiting for Zim on DVD since it first came out! I've been dying to see it ever since Nickelodeon cancelled it. It's such a crime that Nick won't play Zim but they'll play other pathetic shows *cough cough* Rocket Power *cough cough*. What is wrong with some people watching stuff like that? Just shows you the limited brain capacity of some of the people in this world.
Zim is by far the most amazing show ever created. Jhonen Vasquez has truly left his mark on the world with the creation of Invader Zim. You must buy this DVD. You won't regret it!

The only reason I can think of for why Invader ZIM made it to television in the first place is that, up to a certain point, no one at Nickelodeon actually bothered to watch the show. Thank goodness for that-- ZIM ranks as one of the most delightfully demented shows ever to pass itself off as "children's television."

In creator Jhonen Vasquez's twisted worldview, "SKUL" is a hateful place where children go to have their spirits crushed (by hissing, demonic, wraithlike teachers) and most people are fat, mindless consumers eager to stuff their faces. Both of the series' protagonists-- the titular alien kid, who megalomaniacally plots to conquer Earth, and Dib, his nerdy, self-appointed nemesis-- are obnoxious little know-it-alls whose epic battle to destroy or save the world merits shrugs at best (and bored contempt at worst) from everyone around them. Zim is aided in his efforts by GIR, a sweetly malfunctioning robot who serves as the id to Zim's ego; Dib's sometime ally is Gaz, his inexplicably angry little sister, who is as likely to beat Dib up as save his bacon.

All this subversive, queasily funny weirdness is bolstered by lavish production values, dazzling integration of traditional and computer animation, and the sort of thrilling action scenes you'd expect to find in summer blockbusters. It's a wonder this series lasted as long as it did before (undoubtedly awed and horrified) Nick execs pulled the plug. The show's sense of humor leans far toward the disturbing-- perhaps it was the fanged, acid-drooling monster babies who finally sealed the show's fate, or the monstrous, tentacled robo-Santa who tries to eat the world? At any rate, fans of offbeat comedy, weird science fiction, and high-quality animation will find tons to enjoy in this inspired series.

Reading the other reviews will give you the plot, but there's several other things about Invader ZIM that it's helpful to know. It's fairly dark and satirical, with at least one plot about stolen internal organs. It's also some of the most wildly imaginative stuff I've seen in a while, both in terms of plotlines (in one episode, Earth has been stolen, and ZIM must retrieve it so that he can conquer it himself!) and the technology. The visual style, especially of the Irken settings, is so cohesive and distinctive that creator Jhonen Vasquez won a place in the National Design Triennial for it. No skimping on the backgrounds or details here!

A couple of things that might put some people off: The series is very morally ambiguous. Neither ZIM nor his archnemesis Dib are really the good guy or the bad guy, which might bother some parents of smaller kids. Also, a personal peeve is that a lot of the humor relies on sheer randomness. One of Jhonen's overall concept of ZIM was to take the most inane stuff he could imagine (and if you know his comics work, you know that can stretch the limits of the current definitions of inanity--Happy Noodle Boy, anyone?) and treat it as dramatically as possible. Some of the scenes, especially the endings, will sometimes leave you thinking "huh? what the---why?!?"

Beyond the series itself, the DVDs will contain many extras, at least some from a list Jhonen himself gave MediaBlasters. They say that to get the most extras, you will have to get the box set that will be released after the DVDs. Also helpful to know.

Get the DVDs, and prepare yourself for some DOOM!