How did Zim manage to be an invader for Operation Impending Doom I if he was so shit?

How did Zim manage to be an invader for Operation Impending Doom I if he was so shit?

He wasn't. According to the unfinished episode The Trial, the "mission" the Tallest gave him was to stand inside a tiny circle drawn on the ground and do nothing. (He was directly responsible for the deaths of the two previous Tallest, and Red and Purple are rather keen on the whole "not dying" thing.) Alas, his thirst for conquering and destruction was too great, and he took command of the mech we saw.

zim is great when you give him weapons and you send him off to destroy shit
problem is he is on a mission to spy on humans while actually attempting to conquer them neither of wich bering things he can do
he wasnt an invader in operation impending doom, he was a general in charge of commanding a robot

I like to think Zim is truly capable of taking over earth but he's just lazy. We saw in episodes like the Wettening and A Room with a moose of what he's capable of if he applies himself.

That explains a lot but I wonder when they came up with the story. In the flashback you see him in the mech telling taller Irken what to do. How'd he get that authority?

I always wondered if the Almighty Tallest were actually the tallest, i mean, you never see them walking and the only "body part" you actually see is the arms. They could just be small irkens piloting robot bodies

That's funny considering their design made that harder to determine after the first episode.

Here it looks like they're tall and skinny.

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But their design changed so that their midsection could be mechanical. It's intentionally left ambiguous according to the DVD commentary.

oh shit, apparently Wally Wingert told in a interview that there was going to a reveal about this. so the designs are actually intentionally ambiguous

That would be a cool twist. Maybe reveal that they were chosen as figure-heads by the Control Brains because they were easy to manipulate and would go along with whatever they wanted

in an unaired script its stated that invaders are not chosen by the tallest but selected and possibly bred by the machines

Would you be willing to disobey a psychopath in a mech?

it's not that he is lazy he just goes about it the wrong way and usually gets stopped by dumb luck or a mistake on his part

I meant the Irken in the mech itself were following his commands.

You know that whole "Your father was an average warrior but a BRILLIANT scientist!" thing from DBZ's Ocean dub? That's Zim. He's a brilliant inventor, coming up with some crazy shit that would probably make the Irkens even more dangerous then they already are. There's just two problems: One is his arrogance, which fucks him over in every situation, because he keeps underestimating everyone else while overestimating himself. He doesn't double check his work, he doesn't think "maybe this is a bad idea" and he refuses to accept failure. This ended up leading to problem two, in that he created a monster that would have slaughtered the Meekrob (who were made of energy, which the monster fed on). Unfortunately, because he didn't check up on his work, it went wild, killed the Tallest, and fucked off into space. Since then, his PAK has been repeatedly reprogrammed. The fact is, his system does have errors, so he is flawed to start off with, but the problem is also that he got switched from the job he was actually good at. If he had someone to double check his work, someone that he had some measure of respect for, he'd probably be just fine. Because really, that monster would have wiped out the one threat to the Empire that we've seen so far.

This show had so much cool shit going for it. Fuck the execs at Nick.

because he wasn't a total manlet by irken standards
their whole society was based around height

I dunno, he was smaller then Skooge who already was short as hell so I think he could legit be the smallest Irken.

Zim is incredibly smart and dangerous with his only handicap being his incompetence. Said incompetence and also probably the only reason why Dib is lucky to have not be easily killed by Zim.

I thought Bob was shorter than Zim

Why didn't the tallest just execute Zim if they hated him so much? Would anyone in the Irken empire really care much, no one seemed to particularly like Zim.

>Zim is incredibly smart

Am I being memed?

We don't know that much about thier culture. Maybe execution is just not an option for them, and the closest thing is "go to this planet very very far away (that might not even be real) with a defective SIR unit", and that's exactly what they did to Zim.

they were probably just too lazy
i wouldn't be surprised if that was actually the canon answer

I like how Dib's existence inspires & motivates Zim to achieve so much more than he would otherwise. I wish the series played with that concept some more.

The most they did was an unmade episode where Zim turned fat & lazy because Dib stopped bothering him, but they didn't really do anything interesting with it.
Would've been cool to see Dib realize that he's inspiring Zim to do competent things, or Zim getting frustrated when he realizes he needs Dib around after all.

Smart as in being a brilliant scientist and manipulative bastard. He still has a complete lack of common sense and prone to not think things through.
As other anons has said, Zim would be max INT and low WIS if he was a D&D character.

The closest thing they did to killing Zim was sending him to the Sun or delete his PAK in trial for being guilty of being a defective.

That probably wouldn't be the case anymore. There are plenty of moments in the comics where Zim would not hesitate to kill Dib or leave him to die.

A person can be smart and know their shit in some fields, but be utterly and helplessly incompetent in others.

Hell, what do you think most nerds are? They're smart people, but inept in basic social etiquette.

That "Trial" episode mentioned before is all about the Tallest wanting to execute Zim. It never explains why they didn't just do it earlier though.

But hey, we know Zim is a freak, and the Irkens seem like they're engineered to be dedicated soldiers. Maybe they'd honestly never seen a weirdo like Zim in their own ranks before, so they had no idea how best to deal with him or punish him.

>no one seemed to particularly like Zim.

Now I'm wishing there was an episode about some group of Irkens who actually thought Zim was great for some weirdass reason.

High in INT but low in WIS.

>It never explains why they didn't just do it earlier though.
But it does? The trial is about how the tallest pushed Zim's evaluation date (which everyone gets) forward a few decades, which shows that they probably pushed it as far as they could.

The fact that they went through the legal system at all shows they probably can't just be like "kill that dude", they have to pretend they are civil.

Didn't Stooge or whatever his name was pretty much respect Zim?

Let's not forget, just about ALL of the Irken are fucking idiots. Tak was probably the only true intelligent member of her kind, and even she fell victim to some of the flaws of Irken pride.

>Now I'm wishing there was an episode about some group of Irkens who actually thought Zim was great for some weirdass reason.

In the Trial episode, Zim's science superior had him in charge of weapons development because in his words "Everything he makes, destroys". That almost sounds like a compliment.

I wonder how tight his asshole would feel.

They're regular Irkens in suits; they're supposed to be altered but I think the production staff preferred to think they were just faking.

Height clearly isn;t everything though since Sizzlor is far and away the largest Irken.

>Sizzlor
Are we sure he's a true Irken?

Maybe they specifically hate fat people, which is why the tallest are super thin on top of being tall.

According to the DVD commentary, Sizzlor isn't that tall, just big and wide.

What if there used to be a widest position as well? But the tallest eliminated such a position to gain more power?

Don't you mean the T H I C C E S T

If IZ had been created now, it'd be gigantic.
We already know that there's a dedicated tumblr fanbase, but imagine how much bigger it'd be if it came out now.
If IZ premiered in 2015, it easily would've defeated Undertale for the "Worst New Fandom" award.

Who knows, there two other Tallest before Red and Purple so "tallest has always been a thing beforehand.

Posting best ship.

Wouldn't that be one who was tall AND wide?

They probably at one point followed whoever had the fattest head, until those guys died from being unable to drag their fat meaty noggins.

That would be Gaz is a few years.

i was wondering when someone was gonna post best ship/best girl.

Skooge seemed to be wholly blind to Zim's incompetence, which is interesting since its Zim who typically fucks up Skooge's fairly competent efforts to do things.

>The fact that they went through the legal system at all shows they probably can't just be like "kill that dude", they have to pretend they are civil.
Or maybe that the empire is really run by machines and they can only bend the programming so much. Lends credence to them being figureheads. It's not that Zim isn't a pain in the ass or that he has any rights it's just that the huge machine of the empire overlooks him.

Zim is tenacious as fuck and hard to kill. I wouldn't be surprised if they've tried to have him assassinated just to have it blow up in their face. Or even try a public execution and tell him it's a party or some shit, just to have that somehow blow up in their face too.

The easiest way to get rid of Zim is to just send him as far away as possible.

And then he would of end up in Zim's basement.

Found some new fanart too!

This seems like the most likely scenario, honestly. If the Control Brains are just smatterings of code and Zim's never-before-seen level of incompetency are not something they can recognize, then they can't classify as an actual problem.

I read something that suggested the Brains are actually Irken who have been modified to the point of not needing their bodies. Though whether this means they're genetically altered brains in jars or some kind of brain mapping computer that has taken actual Irken intelligence (which we know does exist within the species, however rare).

Zim ended up corrupting the Control Brains when they attempted to delete his Pak and declared him the "Greatest Irken Ever" so you might be into something with the true rulers being machines are a disadvantage to the Irkens.

Huh, I've never seen this before. Source? It seems like something that they do, so I'm not really doubting you, I've just never heard it anywhere else.

I believed it was mentioned on the DVD commentary or Jhonen's old blog that the Control Brains are made up of previous Tallests.

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Zim actually could have conquered Earth multiple times throughout the show if it wasn't for:

Stupidly giving GIR an important responsibility.
Dib stopping/distracting Zim.

It's also a pretty impressive feat that he singlehandedly decimated the Irken home planet and Operation Impending Doom 1. Of course no Irken would see it that way except for Zim.

like being smart enough to build a doomsday device, but lacking the wisdom to install a remote shuftoff

Or building an inator that can instantly bind people to walls and floors, but putting a self-destruct button right next to the power switch.

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>Fuck the execs at Nick.

I thought the show had other problems like the work crew hating each other?

Or making a gene splicing poison that turns people into ham, but forgetting to ensure you were immune. Oh... wait.

There are why too many myths about why Zim was cancelled.

The major problem, from what I understand, had to do with the fact that the show cost a fucking fortune to produce since it used a combination of traditional and CGI animation. Apparently no matter how well it did, it never could manage to compensate for those production costs.

That's what surprise me when Jhonen did that TMNT short.

I could have sworn when IZ was canned, he slammed doors with Nick and was pissed at them forever.

Yeah, he learns absolutely nothing by going to school, he just refuses to give up the charade along with the cat-and-mouse game he has with Dib.

Jhonen has calmed down considerably since when he worked on Invader Zim. The show was great but face it, he acted like a whiny bitch about it almost all the time during and for a while after its run.

In the last few years he's become a little more accustom to the animation industry. What Nick asked of him for the show back then wasn't exactly out of the norm for cartoon standards and practices, and some of the shit he asked for is ridiculous. Considering he's matured a bit I assume he got the fuck over himself.

How is it bitchy to stay committed to your ideals of something you made?

Nick always knew Zim's cult popularity even after it ended and once and a while Jhonen would admit he missed working on the show on his blog and tumblr. Eventually I guess that's how the comic came to be.

Jhonen has calmed down and matured over the years, especially towards the Zim fandom. He even answers fan question from time to time as long as your not a crazy autist.

I remember hearing that he was chosen to be a military scientist because, as one of the tallest say, and I quote "He destroys everything he touches!".
Unfortunatedly for the whole Irken race, Zim included, most times he can't seem to destroy what he has been assigned to destroy.
If Zim was certifiably insane even by Irken standards (and didn't have to work with deliberately faulty equipment), he'd probably be the best soldier his race had to offer.

Somehow, things would probably still fail since everyone in the IZ universe is either crazy, stupid, or both.

Wow, I remember a time when he wouldn't address them at all. Damn.

Gazleen, though, that's cute.

Of course, Gaz is the cutest.

Is it just me or was anyone more interested in the more darker portrayal of Zim where it shows him being very capable of taking over the world? The humor in the show wasn't a big draw to me as so much as it was the action scenes and the aesthetic design and lore of the Irken empire seemed really fleshed out. The idea of Dib being the only person to know Zim is an alien and that he was going to conquer the world with everyone being completely oblivious to his plans seemed genuinely horrifying. I wish they did more episodes that explored this angle where it showed Zim being a very real threat.

Some of my favorite episodes are "The Wettening" and "Wonderful Life of Dib" that shows how much of a destructive force Zim can be when he's competent. Even scarier when you realize that the is really nothing Dib can do to stop him in some episodes.

Right, but given how they waste their own soldiers like copy paper, why didn't they just fire him out of a cannon or something like they did so many other scrubs.

I liked the episodes that had a balance of both. Like the one where Zim tries to drive Mars into the Earth but Dib gets help from a genuinely helpful janitor, or where Tak actually presents a legitimate threat and is the first one to tell Zim that his mission is a fraud.

Would've liked to see some more overarching plotlines if the series had gone on longer.

Thats true, but I'd argue that we also have moments in the comic where its shown dib and zim are two sides of the same coin

When dib pretends to be an alien to try and film zim's lab, we genuinely see them get along and dib become slightly sadistic at times (I mean, jesus he actually abducted someone for revenge and left them with zim to be tortured or killed, sure he didnt smash the life of a tiny planet but for "humanity's protector" Dib seems willing to crush anyone who annoys him.)

Of course that doesnt mean either of them wouldnt kill each other if given the chance, but it would be cool if it was ever brought up how close Dib is to becoming like Zim. Maybe even a scenario where Gaz mentions it and Dib becomes obsessed trying to prove how good he is only to come off as even more of an egomaniac.

The Tak episode felt like it got the balance of humor while still having a very real threat just right in my opinion. I too would have liked to see more overarching plot lines.

>Maybe even a scenario where Gaz mentions it and Dib becomes obsessed trying to prove how good he is only to come off as even more of an egomaniac.

Bonus points if Dib goes too far and puts the Earth in danger. Zim stops and defeats him as a threat to his mission but ends up being recognized as a hero to the public in the process.

>Dib was the true series villain all along
FUND IT

The Trial revealed that he crawled his way up the societal ladder, zigzagging across the caste hierarchy so by the time Red and Purple became Tallest (after Zim indirectly killed their predecessors) he was all ready due for that promotion.

Are the comics worth buying? I just got to the show and I've loved it so far. I know it was cancelled but I want to enjoy it for as long as possible.

To me the old comic where Dib looks away, and Zim conqours the world then they become BFF on space rabbits is how it ended.

I thought that was the canon ending?

>The old comic where Dib looks away, and Zim conqours the world then they become BFF on space rabbits
It truly was the best ending
Sorry for shitty quality

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this is from the actual comic thats being published right now right?

Yes

Oh god i feel so old now.

there is that table irken that loved zim during the bootcamp episode

They just gave him a planet they weren't sure existed and sent him off hoping he would die in deep space.

He's not. In the first episode they clearly wanted to semd him to drift aimlessly in space. It was a stroke of luck that earth was in the coordinants they gave him.

lol no, zim gained attention because it had edge and it was also random in some aspects. That was the thing back then. Were you not around to see the boom of nightmare before christmas merch everywhere. Emo teens ate gritty with a cute aspect up like waffles. Of course zim was liked for its plot but the real draw (for girls and fags atleast) was gir

SHIT this thread only remind me how CRAP SHIT is the fandom.

i mean look all this amazing lore and hidden stuff, but the only thing the fandom talk about is that cancer robot GIR, and ship zim with dib

Zim has no lore of any kind

He was just to smart to be an invader.

They threw some guy out of an air lock, it was the wrong guy but it's ok everybody got the point.

>Right, but given how they waste their own soldiers like copy paper, why didn't they just fire him out of a cannon or something like they did so many other scrubs.

I wouldn't be surprised if they tried that before, only for him to miraculously survive anyways like Skooge and Iggins.