YMMV / Apocalypse Zero

• Americans Hate Tingle: It might be hard to believe, but Apocalypse Zero's awful reception is almost exclusively a Western thing. In Japan, it did shockingly well on sales and was critically acclaimed, to the point it reached the finals of the freaking 1997 Osamu Tezuka Cultural Prize and it took a powerhouse like Doraemon to beat it. That being said, it still has a small following of western fans who like this series, either for being insanely badass and/or So Bad, It's Good.
• Awesome Music: As polarizing as this series might be, its ending theme, Kakugo Kanryou! sung by Hironobu Kageyama, it's positively daunting and absurdly catchy.
• Bile Fascination: The OVA has been panned so much, this is often a reason to see it, with fans of the OVA pointing out that their sheer ridiculousness is what makes them enjoyable. Of course, when you read interviews with the author, it's clear all of this was deliberate.
• Broken Base: The manga itself is this among westerners. Is it just plain nauseating and tasteless? Or is it insanely awesome and off-the-wall with an enrapturing story to boot?
• Complete Monster: Shiro Hagakure, grandfather of Kakugo and Lord Harara, is a fanatical scientist of Imperial Japan that performed horrible experiments on prisioners during the Second World War, creating the Tactical Fiends after mutating his victims and sacrificing thousands of Chinese soldiers after subjecting them to extreme agony, leaving their souls in constant pain to create the Zero Armor. Doing the same process with the newborn baby of a loyal Japanese soldier, this would turn the baby's mother Mei into a grieving spirit that would haunt the Kasumi Armor. Seemingly executed in the last days of the war, Shiro would reveal his survival decades later after Mei's spirit gets exorcised before killing Harara's servant to take control of the G Bodhisattva and test his machine by stomping over a Chinese city. Realizing the limits of his body, Shiro forces Kakugo's girlfriend to drink anesthesia to take over her body and continue his plan to crown himself Emperor of Japan and Take Over the World. When Kakugo is resurrected by a surviving Harara, Shiro would appeal to his family ties before trying to cause a potentially apocalyptic explosion to kill his grandchildren after Kakugo rejects his murderous ideals.
• Crosses the Line Twice: To the point it could be alternatively titled Crosses the Line Twice: The Manga. In a particular example, one of the manga's early chapters has Haoka bringing Kakugo a zoophilic porn magazine.
• Cult Classic: Mostly though not exclusively in Japan, where the manga left some impact despite being short-lived.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: And not even a character in show. One of the most agreed things about the dub is the EPIC deep voiced narrator.
• Growing the Beard: Once the Tactical Fiends and their disturbing bodies are out of the picture, the manga starts getting a lot better.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Four years after the anime came out, Marilyn Manson would wear an outfit in the video for "The Fight Song" that is more or less identical to Dogumakuro's.
• Narm Charm:
  • The manga is by Word of God an author's whim taken to its last consequences, but it makes a surprisingly solid story despite all of its superficial silliness and transgression. If the story doesn't grab you, the sheer ludicrousness of its fights and all the bizarre character designs, strange attacks and Ludicrous Gibs involved most likely will.
  • A particular example of this is Kakugo's friends from school, Horie, Ponta, and Haoka, who would all belong more in a slice-of-life manga due to their unbridled optimism and genuinely wholesome friendship with each other. Instead of being out of place, they manage to fit completely in with the surprisingly optimistic and sincere tone of the story in spite of all the extreme gore and hideous monsters.
• Nightmare Retardant: Some of the Tactical Fiends can come across as being so cartoonish and juvenile that they wind up being ridiculous, such as Megumi, who extends her entire breasts like spears to attack as an example. It doesn't help that this attack is translated as "Z Cup Titties Double Missiles".
• Older Than They Think: Many elements of the manga (the detailed art, the suggestive monsters, the predatory villains...) genuinely look inspired by Berserk, and it's altogether likely that the latter's first volumes might have influenced Apocalypse Zero, but in reality, the most characteristic of those elements in Zero predate their usage in Berserk, which was immersed in the Golden Age Arc for all of Zero's entire run. If anything, it is equally likely that the inspirations flowed the other way too.
• Squick: The entire series is laden with it, but a few moments stick out.
  • Hiroko being squeezed to death and her innards spewing out of her mouth.
  • Tactical Evils that use their genitals as weapons. Special mention goes to Eikichi wrapping up Kakugo in his prehensile penis and getting turned on when Kakugo struggles.
• So Bad, It's Good: The entire series plays cliche shonen tropes to a hilt, but then increasingly escalates it with absurd, cartoonishly impossible violence and bizarre and inexplicable sexual content that it becomes incredibly hilarious and entertaining to watch.
• Strangled by the Red String: Kakugo and Tsumiko's relationship in the manga can be a bit jarring having in consideration he ignores her most of the time and barely talks back to her at all.
• This Is Your Premise on Drugs: Your average Henshin Hero series in the vein of Kamen Rider on a mixture of acid, cocaine, meth, and presumably several other unknown drugs, combined with the hideous monsters in the venue of the older Super Sentai series, who are also themed after a particular idiosyncrasy of theirs. Ironically, the author stated in an interview that he and his assistants refrained from alcohol and other excesses for the sake of their performance while drawing the manga, although this admittedly says nothing about whether he was on something while conceiving the story and its elements.
• Values Dissonance: Needlessly to say, the kind of crude, often LGTBI-related sexual grotesquery this manga showcases would have likely not flown today, possibly not even in Japan (although it can be said, not without some cynicism, that the manga would have become even more of a cult wonder today for the same exact reasons).
• Values Resonance: Despite the prevous point, as this review points out, the manga is surprisingly matter-of-fact about Harara being a man with a female body and doesn't use this as fodder for ugly jokes or anything of the sort. The whole point gets a bit undermined by the manga doing just said jokes with Chidokuro, a man with grafted breasts, which the review doesn't mention, but the work is still remarkable for Harara alone.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Trying to figure out Harara's gender can be... difficult. He started off as a man that really looked like a woman. He's even voiced by female voice actors (Mona Marshall and Megumi Ogata, the latter of which is infamous for playing girly men). He then receives the female-shaped Powered Armor, Kasumi, and is transformed into a woman when he uses its power after merging with it.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: Ran in Weekly Shounen Champion, a Shōnen magazine. Granted, the series's plot is almost painfully shonen, but its gore and sexuality would be shocking even for a Seinen manga.