How disappointing. One of the best series turned into a cheesy tweenage harem romance. It started out strong, with a good dose of sexual humor to lighten the mood and reacquaint viewers with the main characters, along with their uncanny ability to fall into questionable perverted moments. If real life could have even half the awkward boob grab moments in this series, boys would hit puberty around the age of 8.
Story:
So this series picks off where the last one left. The imposter king of Gallia plots to destroy Romalia or whatever the name was of that city. Saito, Liouse, and the rest must stop his evil plans. A pretty basic fairytale story. However, the previous seasons were able to expertly manipulate the situation to make it unpredictable and often hilarious. With perverted humor properly placed throughout the previous seasons, amazing twists, a decent plot, introduction of modern technology, and good fight scenes, they really left the viewer begging for more. Unfortunately ZnT F has none of those. The storyline is downright childish, twists not only predictable but expected, the characters have suddenly lost 40-50 points off their IQ and fight scenes are equivalent to two chimps going at each other with clubs.
Actually, with everything taken into consideration, it seems like the story was simply thrown out the window for this season. Instead it was decided by the higher ups to make this into one of the most cliche, awkward and cheesy harem romances ever to hit the interne...i mean DVDs (down with pirating!! *cough* *cough*). I mean, there are like 7 girls, 2 of them freaking royalty, and yet they just can get enough of our over-passionate, brainless Saito. That guy actually acted like a real guy would in the previous seasons, but now he turned into those dumbass harem protagonists like the ones seen in "Shuffle" and "This ugly yet beautiful world." All the girls are simply dying for his affection, which kind of is justified by the previous seasons but becomes unrealistic very fast.
My main problem with this season is that it over-uses the "i've been kidnapped" cliche. Nearly every episode revolves around either one of the girls being kidnapped and Saito prancing around like a fool trying to rescue them.
Animation:
The animation was one of the redeeming qualities of this season. They did improve the level of detail and focused on character design and environmental/magic effects. The background still remained pretty bland and undeserving of attention. Nor did the creativity of the magic attacks.
One point to note, the animation while being improved from previous versions, still sucks. And it completely fell apart by the last episode. There was a certain scene in the last episode which was just so horrible that comparatively, stick figures have more depth and colors. They rushed it, and it is fairly obvious...
Sound:
The sound is mainly orchestral and it fits the theme of this series pretty well. It compliments the medieval fantasy tone of the area. However it is pretty generic and quickly fades into the background almost to the point where you won't notice when it begins to play and when it stops. Sound effects were done better though and had a positive effect, mainly during the awkward "accidental" groping scenes but positive nonetheless.
Characters:
The characters were effectively murdered. The girls lost all aspects of a multidimensional personality and instead were forced to mold into the love struck tsundere airhead cast. Saito turned into a generic male harem lead and everyone else could have simply been leaves in the wind. I mean the producers didn't even bother giving many of the background characters faces. The horses the main characters rode were given more focus than most humans. When you have a queen and a princess of two different nations stalking...yes STALKING a pervert of a guy, you know one of the producers is 60 and still single. Did i mention cat fights erupt over who gets to sleep beside Saito? Even the maid joins in on the fun... b*tch slapping her mistress, royal princesses and everyone in between just so she can feel her breasts press against Saito's tweenage body.
There is nothing left to say about just how much the characters deteriorated. it hurts for me to go on...
Conclusion:
Seeing that it will only be die hard fans who will reach this fourth season, i recommend going along with it. This season will provide conclusions for the series, and all of us have been waiting for a year and a half for this season to come out so why not? It still does have humor and some decent moments but do not expect the level of quality the previous seasons had. Furthermore the series concludes in a insanely ridiculous manner, somewhere along the lines of a "wtf how?" Watch it for the conclusions that are made and nothing else.
Replying to FadeToBlack91: I seriously wish i could analyse it deeper, however, there was no "deeper" to go. The anime was shallow, bland and badly put together. What it wanted to give its viewers was a season of awkward boob grabs and other fanservice with absolutly no story driving the characters. Pokemon episodes tend to have better stories than this whole season put together. As a Romance title it deteriorated greatly, probably due to the fact that the love between the main characters became unrealistic.
I would like someone, ANYONE to give me a logical explanation of the ending. There is no way in hell what happened could have happened at all, and I DARE you to say it was because of "the power of love"...I bloody DOUBLE DARE you. It pisses me off to no end.