The Zoids franchise is heading back to the storyline that started it all. The official X (formerly Twitter) account for Takara Tomy’s Zoids brand revealed on Friday that a new manga, tentatively titled Zoids: Chaotic Century Kanketsu-hen — Zoids: Chaotic Century Final Chapter — is currently in the works.
The post carried no release window, magazine or artist. Takara Tomy simply said that more details about the manga will be announced at a later date. Even so, the tentative title tells fans plenty: this project returns to the original Chaotic Century era rather than the more recent Zoids Wild line that has carried the brand since 2018.
What Zoids: Chaotic Century is
The original Zoids: Chaotic Century manga was written and drawn by Michiro Ueyama and ran in Shogakukan’s Monthly Coro Coro Comics magazine from 1999 to 2001. The Zoids: Chaotic Century anime premiered in 1999, and for many viewers outside Japan it was the first Zoids story they ever saw.
Set on the planet Zi, the series follows Van Flyheight, a boy who finds an Organoid named Zeke and then a mysterious girl named Fiona, and who is drawn into a war between the Helic Republic and the Guylos Empire. It established the core Zoids idea that has survived for decades: giant animal-shaped machines — the Zoids themselves — that are piloted like mecha but behave almost like living creatures.
That concept predates the anime. Zoids began life as a line of motorised model kits, and the kits have stayed the commercial heart of the brand ever since, with each new anime, manga or game effectively serving as a showcase for the next generation of models.
The franchise’s recent history
Takara Tomy announced the Zoids Wild project in 2018 as the franchise’s latest main installment, covering anime, manga, model kits and two Nintendo Switch games. The brand has also been open to crossovers: in August 2025, Naoto Tsushima launched a manga team-up between Zoids and Patlabor, titled Zoids x Patlabor -Code Name B.U.D.D.Y.-, on IMAGICA Infos’ Hero Comics website.
The anime side of the franchise most recently marked its 25th anniversary in July 2024, with a slate of projects that included a pop-up shop tour, cast talk shows, collaborative menus and anime releases on streaming services.
Why a “final chapter” matters
Long-running toy and anime brands rarely return to an older continuity by accident. A “final chapter” for Chaotic Century gives Takara Tomy a way to serve two audiences at once: adult fans who grew up with the 1999 series, and a model-kit market that responds strongly to nostalgia-driven releases. Nostalgia projects have become one of the most reliable levers in the Japanese toy-and-anime business, and Zoids has one of the deeper back catalogues to draw from.
It also offers the franchise something it has not really had — a defined ending for a storyline that many viewers followed from beginning to end. Whether the manga adapts the events of the existing anime, continues Ueyama’s original manga, or tells an entirely new story inside that world is still unknown. Takara Tomy has not said, and at this point nothing beyond the tentative title has been confirmed.
What to watch for next
The obvious questions are the magazine, the creative team and the date. A Chaotic Century continuation would most naturally fit a Shogakukan magazine given the original’s Coro Coro Comics home, but that is speculation until Takara Tomy or a publisher confirms it. Fans should also watch for a tie-in model-kit line, since Zoids announcements rarely arrive without one.
For now, the takeaway is straightforward: Zoids is going back to Chaotic Century, and details are coming later. We will update this article when Takara Tomy announces the magazine, staff or release window.
Source: Anime News Network, citing the Zoids franchise’s X/Twitter account and Oricon News.
Featured image: Zoids franchise artwork, via Takara Tomy / Anime News Network.
