Zankyou no Terror

I'll start this review by saying I started watching this show with no prior knowledge about the writers and the premise, so I had no idea what to expect. What I found was a mature and compelling story that kept me entertained throughout the season. Even in such an amazing season, it managed to shine through as the anime that defined the summer of 2014. Even compared against such great shows as Gekkan shoujo, Tokyo Ghoul, RE:Hamatora and Aldnoah;Zero, Zankyou no Terror stood on top. Story: 10/10 There are many stories that focus on anti-heroes and terrorism, yet none have come close to the level of maturity foundin ZnT. This shows succeeded in areas that other shows such as Death Note faltered. You will find no edgy character development here; no shonen-esque elements. This is the kind of show that you could quite happily show to any non-anime orientated friends with confidence that they won't leave mid-way through, or that you will have to justify why so-and-so is making unnecessary fanservice. Art: 10/10 The art style of ZnT perfectly fits the tone of the show. There are many still-life scenes in ZnT, and each one perfectly captures the essence of Tokyo. After seeing Tokyo rendered in both Tokyo Ghoul and Tokyo ESP, the realistic calming images in ZnT were a breath of fresh air. The character design also mirrors the art style: realistic enough to provide a sense of severity, yet different enough to give the show an underlying artistic element. Despite some background characters lacking detail in some parts, this is expected for the first release of an airing show and does no detract from the overall excellence. Sound: 10/10 There are very few shows in which I decide to buy the OST, and even fewer in which I will continue to listen to the songs many weeks later. These songs bear a strong resemblance to 'songs from a cold country' which is a phrase that will become clear if you watch ZnT. In short: the sound is beautiful, elegant and very melancholic. Character 9/10 Both 9 and 12 have starkly contrasting personalities: 9 being blunt and mature with 12 being childish and playful. Lisa describers them as having'a smile like the sun and eyes like ice'. However it goes far deeper than that. Underneath 9's calm exterior lies indescribable grief, and under 12's smile lies a form of severity to match 12s. At this point many watchers would criticise Lisa fir being 'bland' or simply a plot device. However it is impossible to imagine the show without her. Not only does she create a contrast, with her troubles with her mother against 9 and 12 orphan statues, she shows a great deal of development over the show's progression. Finally I will touch on the characters in the police force, and how ZnT manages to capture adults in such an appropriate way. The police are neither shown as mindless soldiers, nor as clumsy un-organised oafs, and although the duo play along with them, the police are never antagonised. Enjoyment 10/10 From episode 1 I was hooked. No other show kept my interest like ZnT. Now that it is over I feel as if I have gained something from the experience To summarise, Zankyou no Terror showed a level of maturity and elegance I never expected from anime, and it is my hope that other shows in the future will learn from ZnT.

Zankyou No Terror is not a show about terrorism. Before you roll your eyes and point your finger at the obvious “Terror” emblazoned in the title, I am serious on this one. While the topic is addressed at times, the crime thriller genre is merely a tool the show wields to sculpt out its socio-political commentary on Japan. If you are expecting a deep-seated exploration of the subject of terrorism, this show will not satisfy you. So please chuck those expectations into the trash and enjoy the show for what it is. Zankyou No Terror tells an engaging tale of generational conflicts, post-war nationalism, isolationfrom modern society and the hopeful rebellious spirit of youths. The story kicks off in a grounded, realistic setting of present day Tokyo. 2 teenage terrorists, who go by the names of Nine and Twelve blow up the Tokyo Metropolitan Government building, and in the process accidentally involves a girl called Lisa Mishima. Flashbacks reveal Nine and Twelve to have escaped from a mysterious institution when they were children, hence cloaking their motivations in mystery. From then on, the show continues its crime procedural routine that lasts for a few episodes: Nine and Twelve would plant a bomb, release a video on Youtube under the name ‘Sphinx’ and challenge the police to solve a given riddle before the next bomb explodes. All the riddles are based on the Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex, and interesting choice that gives the audience parallels to think about- especially the idea of patricide and sacrifice in the pursuit of truth. We also get introduced to Shibazaki, a detective who gets caught up in the cat and mouse game against Sphinx. He is a character whoe has been casted out from society just like Sphinx and Lisa. These first few episodes are thematically condensed and provide solid insights into modern society. The characters of Zankyou No Terror are not complex, after all, the show is more thematically-focused as compared to being character-focused. Zankyou No Terror is not condoning the main characters’ acts of violence, rather, it wants the viewers to reflect about why they were forced into committing those acts. The show does succeed in evoking the emotional depths of its main terrorist duo and Lisa: the need to escape from the clutches of modern society, the youthful drive to challenge the world that rejected them, the yearning for human connection. This would not have been possible without the brilliant aesthetics and production, which are definitely the show’s strongest point. The polished direction is among the best in recent memory, taking the viewing experience to a cinematic level at times. The show efficiently manipulates camera angles and colour palettes to heighten atmosphere, while the lighting frames the scenes purposefully, stirring up a sense of alienation. Yoko Kanno absolutely delivers when it comes to the Icelandic-inspired soundtrack- the music is a blend of acoustic and electronic that sets the mood perfectly, constantly evoking the melancholy felt by the characters. It brought in the pathos needed to execute the best moments of the show. Of course the show is not without its faults, which mostly lie in the script. The show takes a generic popcorn thriller route at times, and when you have a show that is rooted in realism (even referencing Tor and virtual currency), many events ended up requiring suspension of disbelief, which might put off some viewers. This fault appeared with the introduction of the show’s antagonist, Five, an agent deployed by the U.S government. The intervention of the US highlighted the problematic relationship between Japan and U.S., but Five came off too cartoonish. As a childhood friend of Nine and Twelve from the mysterious institution, her abnormal upbringing might have been the reason for her hugely childish behavior, but she often went overboard with her dramatic theatrics. The setup of her plans were ridiculous and Hollywoodesque, which led to silly contrived scenarios that clashed with the tone of the show. When her arc came to a close, she was cast in a more humanized and sympathetic light, but her character did more harm than good to the show. Thankfully, the show picked up again afterwards, where it made an interesting choice in joining the narrative with the ongoing issue of Japan’s rising nationalism. In spite of its shaky narrative, Zankyou No Terror is a show that presented relevant themes and concluded with an emotional ending. The show does not fully dig into its themes or answer the questions raised, but it articulates its reflections on society well and its best scenes are truly memorable and affecting. It is an ambitious and passionate production with plenty of substance to appreciate.

In a season filled with giant robots, teenage dramas and supernatural violence, Zankyou no Terror stands out from the usual crowd with its focus on the rarely explored subject matter of terrorism. Shinichirō Watanabe, renowned director of Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo, and Kids on the Slope, once again teams up with Yoko Kanno and the newly formed Studio MAPPA to delivers one of the highlights of the summer season 2014. Zankyou no Terror or Terror in Resonance, opens up with two mysterious male teenagers named Nine and Twelve, carrying out a heist at a nuclear fuel reprocessing facility and ends up stealinga device that contains plutonium. Six months later, in the sweltering heat of summer, both of them, call themselves Sphinx, commit a series of terrorist attacks on Tokyo under and caught up in their schemes, is a teenage girl named Mishima. Through a series of circumstances, she willingly becomes an accomplice in their plans to pull the trigger on the world. Characters Having spent their entire lives together, I felt that Nine and Twelve are two sides of the same coin with the same intentive goals in mind but exhibiting different mannerism as they go about their terrorism business. Nine is your emotionally distant teenager in glasses and approaches the work of Sphinx in a business-like manner. The Ying to Nine's Yang, Twelve more like a playful cat than anything else by the way he plays with a grenade as if it was a ball and prefers to drive a motorcycle when speeding his way through traffic. Both of them are extremely intelligent and physically capable and they soon make short work of anyone sent to apprehend them. The catch is that, while their acts of terrorism causes an enormous amount of damage, they are setup in such a manner that no fatal causalities occur. It is to the testament to Watanabe's skill that viewers can relate to characters like Nine/Twelve instead of the psychopathic monsters that the mainstream media often demonize terrorists as. Completely opposite to the our males in every way possible is a female highschooler named Lisa Mishima. She comes across Twelve during their demolition of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building and given a choice between dying or becoming a member of Sphinx, she chooses the latter. Casted out by society due to her broken family and being the constant target of bullying by her classmates, Lisa garners a fair bit of compassion from me. While I was sympathetic to her situation in the earlier episodes, as the series went on, my patience began to wear thin at just how inept this depressed teenage girl is at everything. It would be too much for me to expect that she would turn into a goddess of terrorism but a little more usefulness out of her would have gone a long way into fostering that emotional connection with the audience. I do admit, realistically speaking, for a bumbling depressed schoolgirl to be involved with such large-scale destruction, Lisa plays that role to a T. Hot on the heels of Sphinx is Shibazaki, a former ace detective who comes back to active duty as he successfully decrypts the various riddles. He certainly doesn't fall short in the characterization department as I perfectly understood his motivations when comes to stopping Nine/Twelve. Being an old grizzled man filled with experience, he has the demeanor of a mature adult who is very committed to the idea of justice. At the same time, he does have these nonchalant moments that make him feel like a real investigative veteran accustomed to the norms of the world. Even though Lisa did get a little on my nerves, I did genuinely enjoyed all the characters and their journey throughout the show for the most part. For the most part. Five Of course, even though the next major character is a bit of a spoiler, I cannot ignore the effect that Five had on the show when she is introduced partway through the story. Being the primary antagonist by working against Sphinx and subjugating the Japanese law enforcement agencies, she is, by far the weakest part of Zankyou no Terror. Clad in a sailor school uniform, she brings an wildly overbearing presence into the story with her antics and games. The first of two issues that I have with her is that she seemed too omnipotent when facing off with the already formidable Sphinx and damages much of the grounded realism that the show sets itself up as. Second, I could dismisses her bat-shit crazy actions if her character had an interesting motivation and background but Zankyou no Terror drops the ball in that aspect leaving only hints of what might have been a fantastic villain. It's not that I wish that Five didn't exist but I want to see her character be rewritten in a way that was more restrained and fleshes out her story. That being said, she was anything but dull and was at least entertaining, even when her actions didn't jive with the core plot. Visuals and Sound Accompanying our band of teenage terrorist on their quest for vengeance is the stellar soundtrack by anime legend, Yoko Kanno. Having worked on Cowboy Bebop, Ghost in the Shell: SAC and Macross Frontier fame, she produces a sound that is insidious, subversive and unsettling for the viewers. With haunting guitar riffs, subtle electronic beats and jazzy undertones coupled with the occasional outburst of sound during action scenes, Yoko Kanno skillfully tailored her composition to suit the gritty tense atmosphere of Zankyou no Terror. Studio MAPPA has done an absolutely breathtaking job when it comes to the animation quality and comes close to what is expected of an anime movie instead of an ordinary TV production. One of the first things that viewers will notice are the muted colors and attention to detail that is intended to sets up modern-day Tokyo to be as realistic as possible. Backgrounds are expertly detailed from the reflective sheen on vehicles in traffic to the cluttered mess of a former detective's office to a Ferris wheel glowing in the rainy night sky as it carries its passengers on a ride. When it comes to 3D CGI, which is often a tricky thing to balance out in anime, it done to support the various angles and scene composition to gives Zankyou no Terror its cinematic quality. Although Studio MAPPA is still a newcomer in the industry, it has demonstrated it has the talent and potential to become a powerhouse within anime. Themes Aside from the very pretty explosions, Zankyou no Terror has pretty of depth to draw from with its ideas of a increasingly modernized society and its pitfalls while alluring to ancient mythology. By incorporating fancy pieces of technology like Twitter, YouTube and virtual currency as well , it makes the viewers think about the fragility of our current reality. Although, it doesn't provide any answers, Watanabe's work is certainly more than capable of generating an immense amount of discussion as to what it all means for the characters and our current world. Conclusion From the very beginning, I knew that Zankyou no Terror was going to be one of the very top shows from the summer season and maybe even earn a very rare 10/10 score from me. The question was whether it would be able to maintain the standard set out by the initial episode and the answer teeter somewhere between an 8 and 9. Lisa and Five certainly didn't do the show any favors as they could have as they represented the polar opposites of either being useless or completely all-powerful and insane. If Lisa would have been a little more capable and Five was toned down while given a complete back story, I would be incline to award higher marks overall. Other than those two flawed characters, every other aspect of Zankyou no Terror, from the distinct soundtrack by Yoko Kanno to the cinematic visual direction of Watanabe and his take on the touchy subject of terrorism mixed in with a little conspiracy, is certainly not lacking in quality nor relevancy. 8.5/10

If you had a tough childhood, blow up an atomic bomb. Zankyou no Terror is an original psychological thriller show. It is a different take on terrorism, and received massive hype during its airing for supposedly "thrilling" and "realistic" execution. However, what's the anime really about? A couple of kids running around bombing stuff to solve their problems. Plot: A video on the internet regarding a mysterious group called "Sphynx" gets the attention of Japan after unknown people destroy a Tokyo Government building. Nine and Twelve, children with number codenames and the masterminds behind the terrorism act, begin their game of riddles where the result of failure isa bomb detonation, while leaving subtle messages behind the bombings. The plot is seemingly very intriguing and unique at first, with the audience starting to wonder what's this all about and what's the point behind it. Sadly, that ends with the premise. Nothing really important happens from the main plot in this show. It's summed up very easily - a bunch of kids are playing a riddle game in hopes for someone to come and solve their problems, all of this with a bomb twist. The way they wanted to make this all happen is incredibly stupid and unlogical, and it just becomes obvious that explosions exist for the sake of explosions. There's no real depth or a message this anime wants to translate: everything is just extremely shallow. We get no idea as to why the main characters wanted to approach the situation this exact way, or how the hell did they manage to do it. It is praised as being "very innovative - exploring the society's problems in a unique way", and dear god that's just so wrong. Despite the popular belief, and that the anime thinks it has that, there's actually no terrorism in this show. "Terror" as a word means "to frighten". "Terrorism" - acts that are intended to create fear, are perpetrated for a religious, political, or ideological goal or for demands. None of these things apply to the show, sans the last one which is so subtly hinted that it is impossible to derive it in such a way without relying on massive amount of plot conveniences. (which this anime uses for god knows how many times). Fear doesn't exist in the show, because there's no global perspective - it feels like the bombings are just an everyday thing and nobody cares much that their lives are constantly in danger. So what do we get? A useless plot element. It is just suprising why the characters don't do the first logical thing possible and instead create an extremely unlikely plan that is almost sure to not work (but because of plot convieniences, that becomes possible) and has the exact same result in the end. Characters: The characters of the show suffer from being one-dimensional and uncharacterized. The main protagonists, Nine and Twelve, have their own personality traits (Twelve being sweet and easy-going, Nine being serious and determined), but that's about it. Their backdrop is hinted to be something extremely horrible, but it is never elaborated in the show. Instead, the fragments of their backstory just randomly inserted, and it is impossible to actually guess the scale of importance of the events in their past until much later in the anime, when it comes off as very disappointing and underwhelming reveal. The main problem with the protagonists, though, are that they just don't fit to be terrorists. The show attempts to please the casual viewers by making the main characters a pair of teenagers that are super smart, but it forgets to also give enough of a motive for them to start doing what they're doing this exact way and not just going to the police and tell them what the hell happened in their past. The pair is joined by Lisa, who receives a lot of attention early on, but nothing happens with her character. She joins the duo simply to be a plot device and to drive the conflict of Five and the protagonists the way the anime wants to it to go. She has her own personal problems, but they're not focused on, and she just comes off as a dull character with a clumsy trait. She receives no reasonable development and apart from one scene, extremely irrelevant to the story, so it's really sad to see the potential and the focus shown to her early on being wasted. Next on we have the antagonist Five. Okay, she is an extremely stupidly written character. Her motives are contradicting, she gets the same cliched antagonist traits and actually is irrelevant to the end result. I personally have no idea why she was needed in the anime, most of the logical inaccuracies happen around her, and she is a fresh air of "generic" in a rather unique anime. The anime just wasn't fit to include a character like her, and that can be witnessed in her last scene in the show which was probably the stupidiest thing I've ever seen in anime this year. The best character of the show is Shibazaki, and he's a friggin plot device. That's how sad it is. He is the "plot convienience" Sphynx was searching for to fulfill their insanely unlogical and impossible plan. Shibazaki gets some character development, has some sort of a character backstory that is somewhat believable and reflects on his current character quite well, but he gets pushed into a side role after Five is introduced. His personal drama wasn't elaborated much, but he was the only character on which "the rule of cool" worked. It was much more enjoyable and believable to watch him solve the riddles than witnessing Sphynx presenting them (why so serious?) The side cast doesn't really exist in this show. Everything revolves around 4 (5 with Shibazaki's sidekick) characters in a story that actually has the entire population of Tokyo in direct influence. All other characters are just plot devices that are there to assume a certain position and for the anime to have realism in this aspect, but they are completely irrelevant. And since the next segment is going to talk about how there's no realism in this show at all, the above point becomes moot. Writing: And here we go. The most pretentious anime of the year. Let's start off with the impossibilities. It is IMPOSSIBLE to have no casualties after you destroy such a massive building. 9/11 had around 300 people killed on ground level, excluding the firefighters which is another 300. Total number of injured people was 7000. Here, we have no casualties even though the entire evacuated group happened to be next to the building when it exploded, and a mere 50 injuries. That's just so bullshit and immediately kills any immersion. You have a girl jumping from the 4th floor on the ground and she doesn't even get her legs broken, let alone a scratch or bruise? Are you seriously telling me two teenagers stole a friggin atomic bomb from a mass security nuclear facility? And are you seriously telling me the government took 0 actions to find out more about that and locate the stolen bomb before the attacks started happening? And it's just the first episode, guys. There's atleast dozen occurences of straight up impossible and illogical bullshit in every episode. It slows down between the second and the fourth episode, and that's where I thought the anime could actually be good but shit hits the fan again when Five is introduced and we witness the greatest chess game ever - using airport terminals. Moving on to the riddles, the whole method is stupid and over the top. The duo needed the exact guy who was willing to research them this exact way, and they found a guy not only willing to do that but who was also a part of an incident which involved someone affiliated with their problem - what are the odds! We are never shown how they plant their bombs or how they manage to create them - everything already seems to be completed and in place and then we just need to wait for a boom. The pair are terrorists, but it was cringe-worthy watching them go nuts over a bomb which couldn't be defused, and that they could be labeled as murderers. The fact is that if this anime followed any string of proper logic, they would already be murderers at the very first bombing. The thriller part is done very, very weakly. The whole thriller is that the audience doesn't know what the characters know but don't reveal because TENSION! That's not thrilling to watch, that's just f*cking frustrating. Their whole story is very predictable, it is very obvious that something happened in their childhood and they wanted revenge but there wasn't enough motive to start blowing stuff up, as the scale of events in their childhood wasn't so bad or shocking, and they were probably too young to understand all that. We have no information on what happened inbetween their childhood and the present events, and the duo talks like the Rising Hope Academy thing happened yesterday, when in reality anyone would most likely forget it over time (and sure as hell wouldn't start blowing up the city). The anime tries to make everything complex and mature and deep but everything comes out so messy that even a 10 year old child could write a more fluent script than this. There is just way too much to talk about in this section, but I need to keep this short enough and not to spoil anything. The anime is not clever, it is pretentious. It tries to be something that it's not, and tries to be something that it fails to be. Since the show relies solely on being "logical" and "thrilling", if there are no other elements to get hooked to, you simply cannot enjoy this show because it's not "logical" and "thrilling". The only thing that is positive and worth mentioning is that there's no fanservice in this show. The comedy is very very little but it doesn't fit, but because there's almost none of it that's not a problem. Animation and Sound: Credit will be given where credit is due. Animation looks salad in this one, especially the explosions. The character designs are okay, although Five looks like a clown for some reason. What I would like to talk about more is the soundtrack. Yoko Kanno nails one yet again. It is the best soundtrack of the year, with amazing piano arrangements and dramatical music fitting perfectly with the atmosphere. Standalone songs, such as "Hanna", are just amazing to listen. Overall, soundtrack is the only thing I really enjoyed in this show, and I have no complaints and arguments against it. The sound is also well made, the explosions sound realistically, especially in the last episode. The only complaint I have in the sound department is the awful Engrish and subpar voice acting in general, although Shunsuke Sakuya did a good job voicing Shibazaki. The opening to the show is beautifully animated with decent music, but strangely enough, it doesn't fit with the anime at all. What is overlooked is the ending to the anime, which is simply animated but has some beautiful music and I ended up enjoying it way more than the opening. Summary: Zankyou No Terror is the definition of a pretentious anime, and a victim of the Code Geass R2 syndrome. It is overhyped because it is "different" in execution and the themes. Mind if I tell you, that being "unique" is not automatically being "good"? It has an amazing soundtrack, but I suggest just buying the OST album instead of watching this, if it's just for the music. Overall, a disapponting watch, but if you want something pretentiously clever you could check this out. Final Verdict: 3.9/10

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