Zenith Run

Zenith Run is a galactic web series about a bounty hunter and an embezzler that team up with a hard driver to defeat a mysterious boss and save the planet Zigon.

Bounty hunter, Bobbi Bear (Julia Morizawa), has captured the embezzler Emily Bezzler (Shaina Vorspan) – both her character name and real name are spot-on for sci-fi. Bobbi Bear and Emily begin to bond over bangs and pooka bears of all things. Yes, bangs are even a problem in a galactic bounty exchange. Bobbi agrees to Emily’s plan to save Zigon, and they attempt to make the Zenith run to see a hard driver that can help them transfer money to a corporation. The problem is they do not have much time to do it.

Zenith Run is only five episodes long, each running around 5-minutes, which I think works really well for this story. Even with all of the sci-fi lingo, it is still a tale that is easy to follow. If you find yourself not able to follow along, there are opening crawls at the beginning of every episode, think Star Wars, that keeps you up to date with what is going on in the Zenith world.

“…a bounty hunter and an embezzler…team up with a hard driver to defeat a mysterious boss…”

The series is shot in a 70s grindhouse style with grimy looking filters, down to the fake-looking space ships flying, which you can tell is all done purposely to capture that certain feel. There are never more than two people on screen at a time, presumably just to keep things simple. There is definitely some campiness in the dialogue, but a lot of it feels natural and not overdone. By far, my favorite piece of dialogue was when the boss (Liza Fernandez) would say in her accent, “Where the frock are you?”

The two leads, Morizawa and Vorspan, work well together. Their characters have the classic dynamic of the tough and rugged, being that of Bobbi Bear (Morizawa), rubbing against the eccentric brainiac, in this case, Emily (Vorspan). I believe Emily was supposed to give off the annoying type of persona off, but I did not get annoyed by her at all. I watched all the episodes back-to-back, so I don’t think Zenith Run being broken up into episodes had anything to do with it.

Zenith Run is a series that doesn’t take itself seriously and is for those that don’t either. I feel that it is meant to be an homage to sci-fi while also parodying it at the same time. If you are a fan of the TV series Lexx, you’ll enjoy this one.