Zoids (short for Zoic Androids) is a franchise most known for its titular Zoids, giant animal-like mechs. Zoids thematically (and mechanically) function closer to the "real robot" subgroup of the mecha genre, unlike Mazinger, Getter, parts of Gundam, etc.
Zoids' presence is primarily through model kits, manufactured by Takara-Tomy, the company currently responsible for the Transformers Masterpiece line. The franchise itself first appeared in 1982, with anime running from 1999 to as recently as 2019, with an anime announced for 2020. The extended literature of Zoids, similar to the Transformers series, has lots various entries featured with the model kits (called Battle Story, basically promotional material), as well as the video games. I will not be covering those entries in this post.
A quick note, of course! I am not an expert on Zoids, and I have not seen any myself yet, although it's on my watchlist! Information for this guide came from the Wikia, Wikipedia, and reddit. If something needs to be corrected or added, please mail me or tell me on Twitter (use nice words, please!).
With that, I'll go into the anime that make up the Zoids franchise.
As I said earlier, the anime for Zoids started in 1999, and has a few entries since then, split into their own continuities for the most part. As such, there is not really a "watch order" for Zoids. Even so, here's the release order, up to what has come out at the time of this post.
Chaotic Century -> New Century -> Fuzors -> Genesis -> Wild -> Wild ZERO -> Wild Senki
It is worth noting that, according to the Wikia, Wild and Wild ZERO are not related to each other. However, Wild Senki will be a sequel to Wild ZERO. Finally, according to the Wikia, Wild is basically a reboot of the franchise, making it a decent starting point if you don't want to start with any of the earlier stuff for any particular reason.
As I am in no way an expert on Zoids, if you are interested in reading the comics, check out this Wikia page, as it has more information than I could ever hope to provide without plagiarizing.
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