In the distant future, the discovery of the new mineral "Orichalt" has allowed humanity to expand beyond the Sol System. On the constant lookout for Orichalt, humanity has developed I-Machines, robots that operate in extreme environments. I-Machines function by transferring a human pilot's consciousness into the robot's operating system; in that sense, the human becomes the machine.
Maya Mikuri, student at the Academy planetary alliance, is handling investigation and excavation work on an asteroid in the Albireo star system, accompanied by her teachers. But following a malfunction with her robot, Maya finds herself being rescued by an I-Machine group calling themselves Excavators. The group is part of Excavators GP, a business dealing in Orichalt excavation, and every one of them has their own unique quirks. The Excavators agree to return her home if she helps with their work.
ID-0 is a CGI anime series produced by Sanzigen, premiering on April 9, 2017, for the spring 2017 anime season. Netflix has licenced it for worldwide streaming and released it on October 6, 2017.
Not to be confused with ID4.
ID-0 contains examples of:
- And the Adventure Continues: The protagonists rebuild Excavators and continue their journeys together.
- Blackmail: Adams extracts from Karla some specific information about Orichalt by offering her the chance to return to her human body.
- Big Friendly Dog: Fa-Loser, for all intents and purposes, even if it's technically an Evertrancer form of some alien creature.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: The professor from episode 1 seems like a nice, affable guy. Come episode 2, we find out he was performing an illegal operation. He also had Maya declared possibly dead, and shifted all the blame onto her.
- Blind Jump: To escape the United Planets Forces, the Stulti executes an unplotted jump while already in the middle of a jump executed by the ship which has captured them. This ends up dropping them outside the known jump network.
- But Now I Must Go: After seizing control of the Rajeev superstructure, the reunited Adams, Jennifer and Alice depart from the Sol system to explore the universe and ensure the Rajeevs never threaten humanity again, but not before Adams makes peace with Ido/Kane.
- Body Backup Drive:
- I-Machines operate by sing the Mind Trance (MT) system, which transfers a human pilot's mind into the robot to facilitate activities. The system works over long distances, and the I-Machines serves as a secondary body for the pilot if, for whatever reason, the human body is unreachable. This becomes a problem for Maya, as she worries she will be permanently stuck in her I-Machine after the ship containing her human body departs without her.
- Evertrancers are people who permanently transfer their minds into their I-Machines for whatever reason, such as Ido. If their I-Machines are destroyed, they die without any chance of coming back.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: In the finale, the Excavators gets cleared of all charges and can start anew. Maya returns to the academy, while Karla becomes the new CEO of MT Industries. Amanza chooses to remain with Excavators, and Ido and Adams get to bury the hatchet before the latter reunites with Jennifer and Alice and leaves for parts unknown.
- Exposition Dump: The military captain from episode 3 rattles off a huge one. Essentially spelling out all of the crews backstories for the viewer and Maya.
- The Faceless: Grayman, Ido, Rick and Karla's faces are not seen for the duration of the first episode. Justified, because they don't have any.
- Played for laughs when Grayman tries to calm an upset Alice by making a funny face - with the face he doesn't have. It works anyway.
- Fantastic Racism: Evertrancers are shunned and discriminated against, and it's actually illegal to be one.
- The Federation: The United Planets Forces is the local space government.
- Government Conspiracy: The Government knows most everything about the origin of Orichalt and the nature of the wandering planet, but suppresses this information due to its importance to the interstellar economy.
- Imported Alien Phlebotinum: Orichalt is said to be a creation of some alien civilisation created and released in an attempt to communicate with the others. They later deemed it an error and a danger, and created the wandering planets to collect it — without any regard to wellbeing of anyone around.
- Mad Scientist: Actually a whole Trio of them, developing the Mind Trance system — Kane Arisugawa, Adams Chevalier and Jennifer Records. Arisugawa is The Unfettered doing everything For Science!, Adams is his Unknown Rival, largely handling the business side of the company, and Jennifer's role hasn't been explored in depth so far.
- Named After Someone Famous: Miguel Jump seems to be named after Miguel Alcubierre, a Mexican theoretical physicist who proposed a first more-or-less scientifically sound theory of Faster-Than-Light Travel in The '90s. The way it's shown in the series also mimic the features of the space-time bubble proposed by Alcubierre.
- Neglectful Precursors: A civilisation that rumored to create the Orichalt and the wandering planets seems to be cheerfully negligent of all other (possible) races around. It also seems to be extinct.
- Portal Cut: The Stulti jumps while tethered by a United Forces capital ship. Their jump field ends up slicing off a significant portion of the forward prongs on the capital ship, taking Amanza Volchkova's trance pod with them.
- Public Domain Soundtrack: The final battle is set to "Soran Bushi", a traditional Japanese song.
- The Reveal: Ido is in fact Kane Arisugawa, the scientist that originally developed the Mind Trance system.
- Ridiculously Human Robots: The MT system allows pilots to use I-Machines as naturally as human bodies.
- Shout-Out: The opening titles carry mild overtones of Cowboy Bebop.
- Sleazy Politician: Uraku Hakubi, an apparently influential mover and shaker within the Federation government, who cooperated with Adams in various nefarious schemes.
- Space Is Noisy: The series averts this during its space sequences, which lack any sound effects. Even asteroids striking the shields of a ship do so in silence.
- The Stinger: Episode 2 ends with the Excavators verifying the Orichalt recovered by Ido and Maya, only to find a girl among the ore.
- Title Drop: In Episode 4, Ido reveals that the reason he has no memory of his life before becoming an Evertrancer is because, when he first gained consciousness, he had an ID score of ID-0. This is also the reason for his name.
- Two Guys and a Girl: Kane, Adams and Jennifer play this painfully straight, though the ensuing Love Triangle gets somewhat lopsided. While it's implied that Adams has feelings for Jennifer, and the later looks to having been has set her eyes on Kane, the latter's only passion is science, to the point of using everyone as pawns in a Batman Gambit to get more data.
- Unobtanium: Orichalt is a mineral used by humanity to develop a spatial network of communication and distribution goods. However, its properties are not fully understood, so theories warning against its use were published; but humanity had become so dependent on it, getting rid of Orichalt was out of the question.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: We never see what happens to Maya's professor after he frames her for information theft. We don't even know if he gets his comeuppance after Maya gets exonerated.
- Weaponized Teleportation:
- Orichalt is used like this, either by warping targets into the sun or warping in dangerous objects, like asteroids, explosives or even a solar flare.
- Apparently even Miguel Jumps can be used as a weapon, since it warps a sphere around the ship using it, allowing it to warp out chunks of other ships.
