Ziro and Zero are arch rivals. Ziro is always one step ahead of Zero, and usually makes his plans fail. Unlike Zero, he is a rhombus. Not a tilted square, not a diamond, but a rhombus.
Origin[]
The reveal of Zero for ARA Smash Bros.
The date is December 18, 2016. During the time ARA Smash Bros teasers were posted throughout the month on the official ARA Discord Server, one such reveal was posted for Zero on that fateful day, with the splash art text saying "ZERO OBLITERATES THE COMPETITION!" This confirmed Zero's appearance in ARA Smash Bros as playable.
The owner of the server, Kidsy128 was infamous among the members for spamming bot commands in every channel EXCEPT the bot channel. One of his favorite bot commands was the NotSoBot command .magik, which CASes the last posted picture and reposts it, but distorted. It can distort the distorted image as well. Kidsy happened to use NotSoBot's .magik command a little bit after Poyo Ride had posted the Zero image. Kidsy ended up using the .magik command twice on the Zero splash art. The result?
A highly distorted version of the original splash art. Notably, Zero was no longer the round donut he is today, but instead a crude rhombus. His eye was also about as wide as his body and the background was ruined. This Zero image distortion quickly reached memetic status on the ARA Discord Server. Everyone knew about this distorted splash art. To put that into perspective, NOBODY on the ARA Discord actually followed Air Ride Adventures. Ask any ARA Veteran who the main character of ARA was, and they'd be clueless, but they all knew who that rhombus version of Zero was.
Poyo Ride was notably the first to try and name the server's new meme, dubbing it "Zero Seventeen," due to the existance of 02 and the Kirby fandom always designing possible Zero Threes. Eventually, someone came up with the name Ziro. Ziro was named Ziro because on the now infamous splash art, the E in Zero is heavily stretched out, almost making it look like an I at first glance.
Due to how popular this random image became on the server, Poyo Ride decided that Ziro must be added into ARA as a character. His wiki page was created on the very same day Zero was confirmed for ARA Smash, and also on the same day Zero's wiki page went live.
Gallery[]
Ziro's official artwork.
More Ziro artwork, notably using a rhombus stolen off of Google Images as the body.
Ziro Two. This was going to happen.
Ziro with a big, blurry eye.
Trivia[]
Despite his popularity, the splash art and a teaser being posted on the ARA wiki in the same style as all the other ARA Smash teasers, Ziro was NOT added into ARA Smash Bros as a playable character. He was instead a stage boss.
Kidsy's Ziro icon, featuring Ziro with a different color scheme.
Kidsy128 posted some fanart on the ARA wiki shortly after Ziro's creation, randomly depicting Ziro with a light gray body and a blue eye instead of the normal white and red. Poyo Ride says he probably wouldn't have changed Ziro's canon design to be that, but thought it was a pretty neat color swap, and one of Zero's palette swaps in ARA Smash Bros is a homage to it.
While he owns the series now, nothing has been done to Ziro's canon design in Air Ride Adventures.
Ziro would have appeared in Kirby's Wonderful Adventures if that series had gone on, as evidenced by the character sheet posted for that series featuring Ziro in the bottom row as well as Ziro having his own page on the wiki.
Ziro lives in the Hypir Zoni. This name is a reference to how Ziro's name came to be, by replacing all of the Es in the name with the letter I.
Ziro's eye has seen tons of variations in artwork. In the infamous splash art, his eye is very wide, almost as wide as his body. In his official artwork and the Ziro Two artwork, his eye is similar to Zero's. Kidsy's artwork makes his eye a rhombus. Other Ziro art by Poyo Ride make his eye almost as big as his entire body.
