SPOILER WARNING OF DOOM:This section or article may contain spoilers!
It is Valentine's Day, and everyone is celebrating by giving out the traditional Valentine meat slabs,
but when a new girl named Tak arrives and starts giving out sausages, Zim believes she has a crush on him, and so attempts to exploit the opportunity to examine "human love rituals." However, when said attempts do not turn out so well, he decides to head home, only to discover later that Tak followed him home and that she is actually a member of the Irken race. Tak plans to take over Zim’s mission so she can show the Tallest that she is worthy of being an Invader, but that is not something Zim is going to permit so easily; he vows to stop her, as the Earth is his planet to destroy.
With his base crippled, Zim and GIR are forced to team up with Dib and Gaz in order to stop Tak's plan of hollowing out the Earth's molten core. Even as Tak's magma pump begins to siphon out the magma beneath Earth's crust, Dib searches for a way to shut it off, while Zim draws Tak away by engaging her in a harrowing chase in his Voot Cruiser. Meanwhile, Gaz and GIR wreak remote havoc with the memory disk of Tak's SIR unit. Thanks to their collected efforts, Tak is eventually forced to flee in an escape pod. After dealing with Tak, Zim tells the Tallest of his achievements; they are, of course, quite displeased, as they like snacks.
Meanwhile, Dib is in his usual spot on the roof of his house, gazing at the stars, when suddenly something falls from the sky and crashes into his lawn. Shocked, a slightly singed Dib looks into the burning crater, and finds Tak's ship. He smiles.
End of Spoilers:There are no further spoilers for this section or article. You can breathe now.
Soundtrack
These tracks are found in Kevin Manthei's Amazing Invader Zim-Phony, and are in order, as follows:
Tak's Lair
Tak's Theme
It's Love
Happy Day?
Facts of Doom
Cultural References
Tak's human clothes are based on the clothes Nny (Jhonen's first character and main character of his first comic Johnny The Homicidal Maniac, or JTHM) wears at the beginning of the comic.
When Tak makes her exit from Zim's house, she turns herself invisible from the neck down by merely waving her hand in front of her face. This is in reference to the anime film Ghost in the Shell, where Major Motoko Kusanagi did such in the scenes right before the opening title.
Trivia
If one uses the animatics feature on Complete Invasion, he or she can see the original uncut montage. Jhonen took it out as it contained Zim kissing Tak's hand as well as her smiling at him and embracing him in a warm hug, which he didn't approve of at the time.
It was originally supposed to be called Zim and the Hideous New Girl.
In the animatics, when Ms. Bitters mentions having a Valentine once, the camera pans to a thought bubble over her head which features a mass of tentacles.
Tak's shirt has the bottom half of the Irken insignia on it.
At the very beginning of the episode, just as squirrels are dancing around on the windowsill and Ms. Bitters starts yelling 'no' into the phone, Zim can be seen messing around with what looks to be the spying tool he used to look for Dib in The Wettening and in the Pilot. However, it vanishes the next time he is shown.
The squirrels dancing around at the beginning of the episode are cyborg squirrels.
Tak's disguise only has three fingers, while most people in the series have four (with the exception of Keef). This is the only flaw in her otherwise perfect disguise.
There was going to be a scene where Zim meets the Ham Demon he defeats in the second half of the episode. This part was cut, due to time constraints.
Even though this episode is a Valentine's Day episode, it first aired in the month May instead of February.
In the commentary for this episode, a joke is made about Gaz being Zim's love interest. Apparently, some fans took this idea seriously. Jhonen Vasquez confirmed the the 2012 InvaderCON that had he wanted to put romance into the show, he would have actually paired Zim and Gaz together.
When Zim busts through Tak's base, he says that the Earth is his to conquer, and that he already promised the moon to GIR. This would've been more evident in the cancelled episode The Trial, where throughout the whole time Zim is away during this episode, GIR takes over Earth by using a laser Zim built on the Moon.
When Tak and Dib are talking on the fence, a puddle of Gretchen's tears shows the reflection of Tak refusing meat from Dib, meaning that she is already aware of the reaction it causes. She also uses meat to harm Zim more than once. This would also imply that Tak has been on Earth for some time before making her appearance, seeing as she had a perfect disguise, plan, and already knew enough about Earth to blend in well.
No one in the episode seems to notice anything strange about Dib appearing to befriend Tak, even though he doesn't have any friends.
Being Irken, Tak should have been in pain when she touched meat or barbecue sauce, but she wasn't when she touched a wiener, ribs, and the sauce. However, her skin steams beneath her disguise when Gaz splashes her with Poop Cola.
When Zim is talking with Professor Membrane, he drinks some liquid, but it doesn't bother him. Though, it burns him when he is splashed with Poop Cola.
This is the second time Zim uses the on-board weapons on the Voot Cruiser during the space battle with Tak. The other time is in Hamstergeddon.
When Dib asks about underground classrooms, one can hear Zim scream "Why does it hurt?", one of his lines from The Nightmare Begins.
When Zim holds up Tak's "Kick Me!" note, the smiley face on it has female Irken antennae.
When Zim is shown halfway inside a mailbox, on the mailbox is the same symbol used on the Conveyor Belt Planet, an Irken shipping and handling planet.
As Tak flees, she ejects the inside of her ship from its outer shell. However, when it crashes to Earth, it is whole once more, leaving up to debate how Tak got away alive.
When Zim uses GIR as a tracking device, it is most likely a reference to the Pilot when Zim places a listening device on the back of Dib's head.
Tak makes a reference to the Roboparents in this episode, although she had never actually met them. This is either a mistake by the writers, or a hint that Tak had been following Zim for quite some time.
This episode is called "Invader Tak" in the Nick website.
When Gaz asks the computer if there are any video games in Zim's base, the response is no. However, in the Pilot, Zim can be seen playing a video game. Also, Keef asks Zim the same thing in Bestest Friend, and Zim replied in the affirmative. Zim is also seen playing video games on the Mariel Cartwright variant cover of issue 1.
This episode was going to be a one hour episode, but Nick didn't want a one hour episode unless it was something important to the series, so it was cut down to twenty-two minutes.
It is hinted in this episode that Zim does in fact take place in a futuristic time, because Dib says that people used to give out candy and cards.
It is shown that Gretchen has a crush on Dib when she gave him meat. Dib gave most of his attention to Tak, much to Gretchen's dismay.
Things You Might Have Missed
The screens on the Control Brain from when it sees the future features clips of the Irken Armada from the opening scene of The Nightmare Begins.
When Tak opens up her locker and finds the meat (Zim's 'courtship gift' to her), you can see a picture of Zim taped to the side of her locker, though it's ripped in half.
When Zim walks into his base and GIR is upside-down looking at him, the television in his base is playing the Acne Blast Man commercial from the episode Rise of the Zitboy.
The girl
Dib panics.
that the wieners attack disintegrates when the camera moves away.
When Dib first enters Tak's base, you can see a pizza box fly by on one of the lifts.
This episode shows the most Bloody GIRs; the first one is seen on the back wheels of the Meat Ship when Tak first appears, and the second is seen on her left shoe when Dib confronts her in her base.
When Zim says "Yes, yes, so you blame me for your horrible life, blah blah, big deal!", he is holding a can of Poop Cola, which he is sprayed and burned by later. This means he can handle it internally, but not externally.
When the students first greet Tak, and the jet outside takes off, the last couple of frames of the shot shows someone's math homework with some egregiously incorrect answers.
Inconsistencies and Animation Errors
If one looks close enough as Tak blows a hole in Zim's house and leaves, one can see that Zim has no lenses on. The lenses are back on in the next frame.
When Tak laughs after Zim says "WHAT IS THIS, and what is this plan?", the neck of her uniform is purple when it is normally pink.
During the scene in Dib's kitchen, while Zim and Dib argue on top of the table. The cup of liquid that Zim set down when Dib walked in the room disappears and reappears randomly throughout the argument.
Also, when Zim jumps out the window, the chair that Professor Membrane was sitting on suddenly disappears.
When Zim is talking to Dib at the table, his tongue turns blue for an instant when he says "planet".
When Tak pours her food tray on Zim's head in one scene, one can see that her arm is shown as it is when out of her disguise.
When Tak first confronts Zim, GIR is in his dog disguise. However, when she finishes, GIR's costume is nowhere in sight.
When Zim claims that Tak "stole this plan from me", the. colors on Zim's PAK are reversed. However, when GIR says "No she didn't!" and Zim yells "BE QUIET!", the colors return to normal.
During the scene in which Tak explains to Zim how he ruined her chance of becoming an Invader, there are stripes on her arms when there normally aren't.
When the GIR-controlled MiMi is about to grab Tak's face, the SIR Unit's eyes are normal instead of blue.
During the first few times Tak uses her mind control implant, the light streak that passes her eye is bright blue. When she tries to use the mind control on Dib, the light streak is purple instead.
When Zim is listening to Tak's plan, Dib's ears are gone.
When Zim, Dib, Gaz, and GIR are about to listen to Tak's plan while they're walking they suddenly appear out of nowhere.
As the camera pans over to Zim's house after his meat incident, there is a road behind his house, which is not supposed to be there.
When Tak is laughing after Zim rejected her, her mouth opens really wide and her nose disappears.
For a minute when Zim yells "THERE"! and the viewer can see Tak laughing, she stops laughing. For a few frames when her eyes are wide open, her right eyelash is purple instead of black.
When Zim is talking to the Tallest, watch closely: The black PAK pods on Tallest Red's puppet repeatedly disappear and reappear in some moments.
When Gaz says "Hey, what's this thing?", her mouth doesn't move until the camera pans over to her.
During the scene where Dib tells Zim that he likes Tak, his nose disappears for a few frames.
Just as the transmission is cut the first time Zim calls the Tallest, his right antenna disappears and then reappears behind his head.
When Dib turns his head to ask Ms. Bitters about the old traditions of Valentine's Day, his nose goes missing for a couple of frames.
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