ANI-MOVIES, *Invader Zim: Enter The Florpus

After 13 long years, Netflix managed to conclude two of Nickelodeon's discontinued series, first of which was the Rocko's Modern Life: Static Cling TV special. Enter The Florpus brings back Invader Zim in all its dystopian and disjointed glory. Series creator Jhonen Vasquez(who also made the infamous Johnny The Homicidal Maniac comic)returns with all the whole crew, including all the original vocal cast.

Keeping an eternal vigil on Zim's invading activities, Dib has spent the previous undetermined amount of time watching Zim's house while stuffing himself in his office chair. Zim finally emerges along with Gir stretching as Dib shows up wheeling his pudgy self where Zim explains he spent the past time lurking inside his toilet waiting for Dib to become unfit enough to stop him as he rolls out "Phase 2". However, because Zim was in seclusion for so long, he forgot what Phase 2 was actually supposed to be. Upon realizing this, Zim looks into when his species' Irken fleet is set to arrive on Earth, and it turns out the Tallest don't even have Earth on their singular galactic domination plan. Dib gets himself back in shape, and finds Zim in a manic depression who realizes his whole invasion mission was a set up by the Tallest. Zim surrenders himself to Dib who plans to unveil Zim's alien-self on live TV during the premiere of his father Professor Membrane's latest invention, the Membracelet which is similar to Leela's wrist gadget from Futurama. Zim instead hijacks the event by having Membrane sent off to a space prison, and reworking the Membracelets to transport the Earth in the line of the Irkin fleet. Doing so opens up a "Florpus" hole, where several different realities clash together like an dimensional black hole. Dib and his sister Gaz use the starship Tak left behind from the TV series to rescue their dad, while Gir makes Zim a giant mechanical throne ripped off right from the Akira manga. After an intense space chase, the Membrane family returns to fight off Zim's robot army, even though through the whole thing Dib's dad still thinks the whole thing is a dream, including the pudding-loving goldfish-looking clone Zim made of him. Professor Membrane manages to get a hold of Minimoose, Zim's main control for the teleporter to send Earth back, while the Irking flight arrives in time to get sucked into the Florpus themselves, supposedly ending the alien threat once and for all.

This was a complete return to for the entire crew. The animation is of course given a massive upgrade, with only slight adjustments made to the character designs. The meta-commentary on popular culture, massive consumerism, and blind faith in the media show out in full force here. The only glaring glitch in the movie is it seems to retread considerable territory already done in the TV series final episode where Zim also uses a disguise to convince the Earthlings into teleporting themselves to their doom. The made-for-TV movie does perform as a more than above average extended episode of the original series, while still leaving room for a possible continuation. The major bonus for otaku is the anime-styled opening sequence which looks like its right out of Gurren Lagann!