Zankyou no Terror

Oh, Zankyou no Terror... How much did I praise you during the early few episodes, but how could I know that you will turn out how you did. Zankyou no Terror (Terror in Resonance or Terror in Tokyo in English) was one of my most anticipated titles of the season and I am sure I was not alone. The show also gained a bit of a hype because of the famous Shinichiro Watanabe (Samurai Champloo, Cowboy Bebop), who I am in all honesty no big fan of, but okay, let's get this review started. Just make sure that I will NOT be able to hide ... all possible spoilers, so just read this review if you have already finished the show or dropped it and don’t consider picking it up again! Or if you just don’t care about spoilers...

The plot, or rather the premise, was what caught my attention and interest at first. “An anime about terrorism?” Sounds thrilling alright, but sadly it turned out to be quite a train wreck with lose plot and lackluster characters in the long run. Basically the show is about two special kids, who build bombs and make them explode, but with no people around so nobody gets hurt. That’s a weird characteristic for two young blooded terrorists, but there are reasons for this, obviously. And they announce their terrorist attacks on YouTube and ask the police riddles, so they may or may not stop the bomb from going off. That’s what I was thought to be quite interesting and I was hoping for there to be a message behind the bombings and some deeper meaning and connections, but sadly that wasn’t so. Either I didn’t get them, or the riddles were just there to make the show appear smart. The show generally shows its story from two perspectives, from the bomber’s, naming themselves “Sphinx”, and the police’s perspective. What I found somewhat disappointing that there was no real tension during the moments when the investigations took place and the investigation process went waaaay too easy. I mean the main detective, Shibazaki, seemingly knows all of Greek mythology (that’s what the riddles are mostly based on) and at one point he clears a riddle because he watches his fat friend play a video game. It reminded me of some cheap Hollywood movie in which the protagonist finds out some very important clue due to something a kid spouts. I’m sure you know what I am talking about.

How the story played out felt a bit cheap in general. I mean Shibazaki (together with "Five" in the middle part of the anime) was the only one driving the plot along thanks to his super knowledge and his daughter who knows a lot about bombs and nukes. Also in the end he meets a few men who willingly agree to just tell him everything he wants to know in fullest detail, just because.

Another point when the show took a huge nosedive in my opinion, was when a former “friend” of the main characters “Nine” and “Twelve” was introduced as their nemesis, called “Five”. Five was basically the point on when I almost gave up on the show. She seemed just like a psychotic woman who had to stop Sphinx because the US said so. And to do this she went overboard multiple times, resulting in countless casualties, damages and wounded innocents along the way, for a ridiculous, nonsensical and compleely unjustified reason and motivation if you ask me. And she also did pointless and silly riddles with bombings, which the main characters now had to solve and disarm… While the character of Five was not complete useless, I do agree that she shouldn’t have been there. They should have spent more time on the "important characters" and explore those more. Speaking of which.

The whole cast of characters was so lackluster, with barely any real explained motivations or fleshed out ones among them, the only decent one being the detective Shibazaki. He was the only one advancing the plot, but even this with the most trivial and convenient ways possible, like I told you before. I mean his relative and one friend gave away the location of the bomb in the last episode, oh my, how convenient indeed. It was so cheap I had to face palm. A lot of answers to the already mentioned riddles by Shibazaki where really sudden and there was never a clear train of thought to follow either him or the actual main protagonists, which was a shame. This could have been a great cat and mouse game like in Death Note, but it was not. There isn’t much to talk about the two male main characters to be honest. Nine was the rather cold and distant guy, while Twelve was the funky and hyperactive one. They have flashbacks to their past every now and then, when the plot feels like it, and that’s about it. We literally learn everything there is to them in the first two episodes, with their motivations being revealed in the very last episode.

The last character I want to mention is Lisa, Sphinx’ female sidekick. She has a highly clingy mother and got bullied in school, that’s where she first met Nine and Twelve, which was the most convenient and cheapest way to introduce her, because for whatever reason Sphinx joined a local school in episode 1, but where never ever seen there again, which makes it pointless and the yet again really, really cheap. Her relation with her mother seemed like an important plot point in the beginning, but was quickly abandoned and never talked about again, which is quie a shame. The only things she then really did where trying to cook for Sphinx, but messing up, helping them out a few times, but messing up, staying at home, but messing up and so on. She also gets kidnapped a few times to drive the plot along, but contributed nothing important or meaningful to the story whatsoever. As you can see, the writing is not really strong with this one. Sadly this doesn’t change in the later episodes as well and even the conclusion was everything else than satisfying and quite anticlimactic. They basically shoved everything we already assumed down our throat in the most forced way possible, though at least it is complete and not inconclusive. That’s a plus.

But thankfully the show is good in two aspects; visuals and sound. The animation was really good for the most part and especially in the first episode gorgeous. The explosions were fluent, the attention to detail on backgrounds and characters remarkable and the use of lighting and shadows impressive too. But sadly the anime has a few quality drops during its duration of 11 episodes and often likes to use 3DCG to animate even two background characters, which is really cheap and effortless if you ask me. Characters tend to lose a lot of detail once they move away from the screen too. Nothing new, but when the show does want to look good, it certainly does. The other thing I want to mention is the soundtrack by the famous Yoko Kanno (Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Cowboy Bebop, Jin-Roh), which was done very well and especially during the show’s high points in the last couple of episodes, the soundtrack really stood out. One particular scene being one scene in a Ferris Wheel, which was in all honesty my favorite moment of the show. The voice acting was solid, but no performance really stood out or caught my ear.

But even with all these flaws, Zankyou no Terror was one of my most anticipated shows each week during the summer 2014 season. The whole thrill of how things can turn out, what will happen next, really thrilled and captivated me, only to be let down again and again…

Okay, let’s get to the verdict.

Zankyou no Terror was such a huge letdown for me in multiple aspects. This begins at the flow of the story, tons of unanswered questions and thin writing, the flat and weak characters and the unsatisfying, yet complete, conclusion of the show’s plot. Zankyou no Terror could have been a great comment on terrorism and a huge controversial thing to talk and discuss about, but sadly it turned out to be a cheap and forgettable popcorn flick with fancy visuals and good music. Don’t worry, Sphinx. I will remember you. I will remember you for being in a show with the first good English I heard in a long time and in my biggest disappointment of summer 2014. Zankyou~

RATING:

STORY SECTION: 4/10
Premise 1/2 (interesting)
Pacing 1/2 (solid)
Complexity 1/2 (has some nice attempts)
Plausibility 0/2 (completely unrealistic)
Conclusion 1/2 (overblown, but well presented)

CHARACTER SECTION: 4/10
Presence 1/2 (fairly typical and not memorable)
Personality 1/2 (generic and some completely bland)
Backdrop 1/2 (some is shoehorned into the plot)
Development 0/2 (non-existent)
Catharsis 1/2 (overblown, but it's there)

ART SECTION: 8/10
General Artwork 2/2 (very detailed)
Character Figures 1/2 (quite generic but very detailed)
Backgrounds 2/2 (very realistic)
Animation 1/2 (sometimes good, sometimes average)
Visual Effects 2/2 (quite good)

SOUND SECTION: 7/10
Voice Acting 2/3 (quite good but no outstanding performance)
Music Themes 3/4 (good tracks and very well used)
Sound Effects 2/3 (ok, I guess)

ENJOYMENT SECTION: 5/10
Art 1/1 (looks great)
Sound 2/2 (sounded good from top to bottom)
Story 1/3 (interesting hook, but that's it)
Characters 1/4 (Shibazaki was not that bad...)

VERDICT: 5.6/10

Yet another over-hyped anime that started off the season and just like Attack on Titan, it became a train-wreck as well. Let me make this perfectly clear from the very beginning: this show is all style and no substance. Whatever deep sociopolitical message is ingrained here is hardly ever explored; the show would rather focus on fancy explosions and cool-sounding themes that don't even matter in the end. With that out of the way, I'll start the review.

Story (25%) - 3/10
My reason for giving it such a low score is the fact that the riddles feel so pointless. And this is a big deal since ... about 8 of the episodes focus on them. I keep asking myself: what was the point of those riddles?; why didn't they use the bomb from episode 1?; why didn't they reveal their motive for the bombings from the very beginning?; why didn't anyone go blind after staring at a nuclear explosion? So many questions.... And of course, all the fanboys are over-thinking the show to death with all their BS about how the show is such a deep social commentary on Japan, despite the fact that the show barely spared an episode to mention all that, instead focusing on pointless explosions and riddles. I can do it too, you know:

Zankyou no Terror is actually a show about how Japan refuses to learn from its past mistakes, just like how ZnT refuses to learn from the mistakes of Death Note and Code Geass. How? By adding another one-dimensional, white-haired antagonist to ruin the show and MORE BULLS*** CHESS.

Art (20%) - 8/10
Definitely some of the most realistic looking backgrounds and effects I've seen in anime. The directing is superb, better than most action flicks, and the explosions aren't cartoony. The animation is spectacular and it felt almost like a live-action movie at times. The character designs are what prevent a 10. As I was watching the show, the two main leads kinda reminded me of the characters in Free! The designs just don't seem very original and they don't stand out from other anime.

Sound (20%) - 8/10
Not as good as Bebop's soundtrack but still excellent. The OP however, didn't leave much of an impact. Not much else to say, definitely some of Yoko Kanno's best work.

Characters (25%) - 3/10
None of the characters in the show are relatable, making it hard to identify with any of them. Nine and Twelve really aren't interesting as characters; after their backstories were revealed, I felt sorry for them but also found them rather dull. Lisa was even more useless than Sakura from Naruto (if that's possible) and Five wasn't interesting in the least bit. Shibazaki was interesting and he was certainly the most humane character but he doesn't get much screen time or development and he is reduced to nothing but a plot device in the end.

Enjoyment (10%) - 7/10
It may be a bad show but it has great art and sound. If you're only in it for the explosions and to be given infodumps by random people about the oh so interesting plot instead of being given something to think about, then you'll enjoy this. But don't expect a good thriller anime, this show is pretentious and has no message to offer that it doesn't outright tell you.

This is a spoiler free review.

Zankyou No Terror has a very intriguing idea which first drove me to watch this. The idea of the main characters being terrorists really appealed to me, as it is something that hasn’t really been touched on at all. I decided then to give this anime a go and for the first 4 episodes I was not disappointed.
The Artwork and Sound are good without being amazing I thought, although the use of English language in this anime is terrible. The opening episodes have us seeing how the terrorists are committing these crimes. They leave riddles to the police to try ... and find bombs that they have placed, making the first half of this anime a cat and mouse game. Up to this point I was very happy with this anime and was very interested to see where it would take me, from episode 4 new characters are introduced and there is a plot twist that certainly dimmed my enjoyment.
The plot twist turns the characters around and the anime drops its terrorism theme until the last episode, which disappointed me greatly. A female (or actually two) character is introduced and focused on heavily in the last half of the anime, these bring in romantic elements. I really didn’t like the switch since I hadn’t seen enough development of the characters for me to believe in the second half of the story. The character development is really bad in this anime, the pacing is bad too. I didn’t like the depth of the characters either, the main female probably had the most of this but her character was really bland for me. The main reason why I couldn’t accept the last half was due to the fact that I couldn’t empathise with the characters because things were moving too fast and not being explained enough. I got why the characters were doing what they were doing, but these were shown in small flashbacks and never expanded on, I got it but I wasn’t convinced.


Story: 5/10- pacing is bad and character development is minimal. Plot twists are uninspiring

Art: 7/10- Nothing bad, Nothing amazing

Sound: 6/10- horrible use of English language loses the points here(why do they never get a Seiyuu that can actually speak English?)

Character : 5/10- Main characters are interesting but have no depth.

Enjoyment: 5/10- First half is great. Second half is very disappointing.

Overall

I decided to give this a 5/10 because it has a good premise and is a solid anime, but I was disappointed since I thought it could have been a lot better with an interesting theme. If you are watching this for the terrorism theme then I’d say you will be disappointed, however, if you’re looking to fill your time with something this could satisfy you.

Before I start, let's take a look at the current score(s) of this show and what it achieved here on MAL:
Over 75% of the viewers gave it a score of 8 or higher and it's currently ranked #186 in total.

But are such scores actually the proper scores for this show? Let's break it down:

Story and its flaws mixed with a bit of rationality:
While it did indeed have its moments, it failed horribly on quite some levels (for example, the motorbike scene was 10/10 material but that was, unfortunate as it is, probably the best scene this show has to offer).
The premise:
Two boys who are ... about as old as teenage boys commit terror acts in Tokyo.
While this sounds interesting in theory, it was executed so poorly that it was cringeworthy at times.
It wasn't even proper terrorism. It was simply two teenage boys trying to catch attention by blowing things up. They didn't ask for anything. They didn't do anything.
They had the technology to hack into the computers of the police yet in the end didn't do anything with that. The show tries to come off as mature and mystical with smart protagonists yet they blow up everything just because "they want attention". Which kind of does make sense in the long-run seeing how they are orphans but the way they approached this was simply stupid. They had a nuke, blowing it up over the ocean would have been enough.
It was way too predictable to be a mystery.
It also had, as previously mentioned, no consistent theme.

TL;DR
Too immature and irrational at times to be taken seriously. Had its moments but lacked in overall performance.

Characters:
They completely lacked any sort of appeal a character should have.
They weren't given enough depth to be taken serious either.
Lisa was basically a plot device to screw the protagonists over and make life harder for them. She had no kind of impact on the story apart from being the "damsel in distress which has to be saved by the proud knight in bright armor (twelve)."
Five was a one-dimensional character who was simply kind of a psychopath. Her actions, "I want to kill you all" - "Oh wait, I don't" - "Nevermind, I will try to kill you" - "Nevermind, I love you" didn't have any sense of consistency.

Also, incompetent police and there's only one officer who can save the day.
GENERIC AND BORING. Because you do know that only he can solve the riddles, you know that there won't be anyone if he suddenly were to quit his job who could stop the "terrorists".

Probably the weakest aspect of the whole show.

Sound was fantastic and fit the show in a perfect way. The fact that, however, the art was so realistic whilst actually showing a cartoon world (not as in "animated" but as in "nobody can die in this show either way unless we planned it". Example: They created an EMP while claiming they never wanted to hurt anyone and only wanted to be remembered due to having been on their own for their whole lives. Yet they did not even consider what could possibly happen to those who use electronic devices to sustain themselves (e.g. heart rythm-helper and/or similar things.)). Otherwise it looked good and helped give off the atmosphere rather well for most of the part.

TL;DR
Overall Zankyou no Terror is a solid 5-6/10 which suffered from flaws which could have been avoided if given enough time. It's quite a shame to see potential with budget being wasted once more.

Coming back to the first sentence: It does NOT deserve this high ranking MAL is giving it if you take it with a grain of salt instead of believing everything the industry tells you.

After watching Zankyou no Terror, the best way to describe it is, an awesome idea gone horribly wrong. "The idea was there, but the execution.... not so."

TL;DR

Story: 3/10
Art: 6/10
Sound: 3/10
Character: 5/10
Enjoyment: 7/10
Overall: 5/10
...
Good points:
+ Exciting, suspenseful throughout
+ Smart and cool main protagonists
+ Good beginning arc

Bad points:
- Poor character growth
- Lousy and annoying antagonists (stop codeswitching between English and Japanese damnit!)
- Lack of character depth
- Lack of any coherent plot whatsoever
- Horrible and unsatisfying resolution
- Poor OP and ED themes

Story: 3/10

For an 11-episode anime, you can't expect any plot deeper than a swimming pool (if you catch my drift), and that's exactly what this plot is like. At the beginning it seems to have some very deep and obscure meaning to it, and in the end, you jump straight into the pool and realize you are only waist-deep. It seems deep initially, but you can hardly even swim, you can only splash around like Magikarp.

The overall plot itself was okay, but none of it made much sense whatsoever. Two kids committing huge acts of terrorism, posting videos of when every bomb will go off and giving a riddle as to the location of the bomb (somewhere in Tokyo). It starts off exciting, that I can give 3 points for, and the suspense and excitement continues throughout the anime. But unfortunately, that's the only thing that this anime offers in terms of plot - suspense, lots of suspense, and excitement. There is some literary appreciation in the discourse of Oedipus, Greek Mythology and other riddle-associated things, but other than that the anime lacks a WHOLE lot of depth. The main motive behind Nine and Twelve's actions seems too small and insignificant for them to be committing so much time and effort to blow things up (and to come up with all those riddles too). They could have easily exposed the truth of their origins via other more humane methods (such as getting evidence - since they are so smart anyway).

The next bad point is the coherence of the plot. Okay, so their goal is to "send a message" to Japan and they target all the areas that are related to the organization which kept them as test subjects. But wait a minute, all of this is literally JUST to make a police officer follow clues to find a similarity between all these targets? The government building, a train, a random building next to a shrine and an airport - all of these owned by some important person in the organisation. I mean, it's just about much easier if you just wrote down the name of the organization at every place you bomb, and you would send a much clearer message - to EVERYONE.

Next, they want to send a message by detonating bombs everywhere, but there's a catch - they vow not to kill a single person? Okay, so you can make everyone evacuate a building, but can you really ensure not a single person is killed when rubble collapses? There are so many scenes in the anime where you see vehicles ENGULFED by the explosion, people running away from falling rubble, INCHES from being crushed. Even on the first attack, they literally had HALF A MIND to KILL LISA who was still in the building! If they were really all that "righteous" and "moral" in nature, why didn't twelve just get LISA to escape in the FIRST PLACE? Nine and Twelve even had the guts to discuss about the merits and demerits of having her alive.

And not forgetting the whole atomic bomb sequence at the end. Okay, so it only caused an EMP wave that's supposed to be harmless and not kill anyone, but wait, there are many people in hospitals all round Tokyo on LIFE SUPPORT! Whoops, just killed them. It's fine, I'm sure they would have opted for euthanasia anyway! And sure you've landed all aircraft in the region, but what about ships? They are basically stranded at sea and the people there face death by starvation. Oh yes, and not to mention all the people at home who are going to DIE OF COLD in the middle of the night because all the thermostats aren't working anymore. Great job guys.

Anyway, another key incoherent part is where you start seeing the US Military/FBI/ISA involvement in all of this. They send their top FBI agent, who somehow HAPPENS to be Five. She just so HAPPENS to be in the FBI after she was taken away from the Athena Project? Sounds pretty unlikely, for a Japanese girl to so quickly rise up ranks in the FBI even if she was prodigy. She shouldn't even be working in a government agency because of her foreign origin.

Not only that, but almost every US involvement scene is ridiculous and full of bullshit. Five and Clarence repeatedly, and I mean repeatedly, enjoy code switching between English and Japanese while TALKING TO EACH OTHER. It's perfectly normal that the switch when they talk to other people, but when they address each other, it's completely UNNATURAL for ANYONE to use both languages simultaneously and without any peculiar reason, other than the fact that the animators like trying their hand at getting the voice actors speak English... uughh!

Next, the US was developing a prototype atomic bomb within Japan. Okay, so HOW did Nine and Twelve know that it was there in the first place? This was never explained. Just because they are really smart doesn't mean they know EVERYTHING?! So now the US wants to intervene after this atomic bomb was stolen. WAIT A SEC, then why didn't they intervene immediately AFTER the bomb was stolen? Why ONLY intervene when this series of terrorist attacks starts happening?

How does the US FBI even get exclusive rights and authority to boss around ALL OF TOKYO's police and security branches in the first place? WHO in his right mind would allow any of this foreign intervention to happen, especially in such a xenophobic place like Japan? Why does the Japanese government not do anything at all whatsoever about US involvement, clearly causing more and more explosions than the terrorists even did? This anime just fails on the logic side on so many levels.

What's more, about Five's plan. Wait a minute, what exactly was Five's plan? Killing Nine? Capturing Nine? Oh wait, I remember, it was about getting the stolen bomb. She really went the round about way of killing her own partner and became obsessed with Nine, playing games with him instead of ever working towards capturing him and locating the bomb.

And the final resolution? Completely bullshit. Random US helicopters fly into Japan airspace without so much as a license, and shoots two innocent civilians down without any backlash from the government, the police and so on. Complete and utter shitty ending. The anime basically spat into my face and said "Screw this plot."

Oh yes, and I forgot about how cliched this whole anime is. Young orphans made test subjects in some secret facility for a secret project, hmm I wonder where I've seen something similar to this before. Oh and wait, they are called by their numbers. I don't suppose one of them would be called number four would you?

Literally, the only thing good about this plot is that it is exciting and suspenseful, nothing else makes any sense what soever, and you cannot take this anime seriously. I give it 3 points for excitement, 0 points for coherence and 0 points for depth.

Art: 6/10

The art for this anime is pretty okay. It has good action scenes, but I felt that many scenes were too unnecessarily dark and it was difficult to see what was going on. Another thing is that there were instances where the camera was shaky in some of the scenes (one with a jet plane shaking off), I'm not sure if that was intentional, but it caused me a bit of dizziness.

Sound: 3/10

Background sounds were good only when there was any action taking place. The OP theme was mediocre, while the ED theme was just bad, plain bad. The background music at the ferris wheel was also very unhelpful and did not suit the theme at all. I'm not sure why they went for the romantic feel, when it was clearly supposed to be a tense/suspenseful moment. The voice actor for Five really should not have tried English. It really wasn't understandable.

Character: 5/10

The main characters were sadly, very underdeveloped. We know abit about their backstory, but not much. How they came from a facility that drugged young kids and made them child prodigies was about all we got about them. Lisa is another quite unknown character. She shows some character growth - changing from a very useless, pathetic girl to a slightly stronger, but still quite pathetic girl. But we know nothing about her past or about why she was even being bullied at school in the first place?

We know that Lisa comes from a broken family but why is it really that she is constantly avoiding her mom? Why is it that she throws her bento set away in a toilet? Why is it that she wants to come home but at the same time doesn't want to come home? What made home so unhomely to her? I know her mum seems crazy in the anime, but at least tell us what the whole problem is rather than just blame it on the "Dad leaves and Mum can't take this world anymore, and takes out her problems on her daughter". Coz this wasn't even mentioned anywhere in the anime.

Next, the antagonists, Five and Clarence, have even less backstory to them. Five, we know, came from the same facility, but all that we know is that she was the "sole survivor" of the lot. We don't really know why she didn't manage to escape when Twelve and Nine both did. She wants vengeance on Nine just because she couldn't win him in chess? Or at any other game? Cmon, stop being a childish nuisance in this anime. The US intervention completely ruined this anime and made it so complicated, that the characters themselves don't know how to react in any of those situations.

Twelve and Nine do show some signs of growth, but very little. Twelve stays the way he is - cheerful and silly, whilst Nine stays serious, moody and cool.

The most interesting character, Shibasaki, knows nothing about atomic bombs but knows a lot about Oedipus Rex and the story behind it. He is a badass cop who stops at nothing to solve the crimes that come his way, and he has a pretty loyal gang of people around him (who literally just met him in the anime, now that doesn't make much sense). He goes on to defy his superiors for justice and saves many innocent lives because of his virtues. But he has a dark backstory too, and was demoted because of a suicide of a person he knew, which he insisted was not a suicide, but vowed to get down to the bottom of it. Luckily for us, he gets his answer somewhere to the end of an anime with a rather unprecedented twist, which was more convenient than surprising.

The character cast is interesting, but not varied enough, and many characters were one-sided in nature. The character development and growth was also much lacking in this anime. 3 points for having 3 rather interesting characters. 1 point for character growth and 1 point for trying to provide some semblance of a backstory. I'm trying to be generous here.

Enjoyment: 7/10

I can't say that I didn't enjoy this anime at all. But this horrible plot completely destroyed my expectations when I watched it. The touching scenes were not touching at all, and I literally laughed my ass off when I saw Twelve and Nine operating this crane thing next to a runaway airplane. I was surprised that this anime was not made a comedy, because it probably could have had higher ratings if it had more comic element inside.

The pacing of the anime is quite good though, there were no points where I felt completely bored out. I was just completely dumbfounded at how stupid the plot could get and how convenient it was for the characters to be there at the right time, and somehow have the right equipment for the job. Still, at least it was enjoyable enough in terms of the suspense and actions scenes to keep watching, even though I knew this anime would end badly. Really badly.

Concluding comments:
This anime should only be watched if you literally have no other anime to watch. Just killing time, basically. It offers little plot depth, little development and growth, and is waaay less revolutionary than the author thinks it is. It's also highly overrated, I feel, on this website.

I was frankly disappointed with the untapped potential that could really make Zankyou no Terror a masterpiece. However, it took the route of a mystery/thriller and forgot to add a solid script, ruining much of its promise.

When I first saw this show, I never fell for hype behind this. Yeah I know... as a self-recluse introvert, I live in a cave and I don’t follow anime on a seasonal basis, but a friend recommended this to me after a long hiatus. I later found out about the director being Shinichiro Watanabe, the same one who made the classic Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo and the ... fairly popular Kids on the Slope. Still, I wasn’t excited for it, but I certainly thought it was cool.

** Take this review with a heavy grain of salt when you don’t mind the negativity or want to see why some don’t like it. I do have some mild spoilers, but most of the time, the facts deal with the premise. I will notify if it really goes into a heavy spoiler. **


Story- 4/10

*Mild Spoilers*
Various buildings and infrastructure were destroyed by a pair of teenagers named Nine and Twelve. Their motives are yet unclear as they broadcast themselves as terrorists under the alias as Sphinx 1 & 2. Giving out riddles for each of their targets, they provoke the police as the gifted detective, Shibazaki Kenjirou, trails on them.

However, the two have a mysteriously troubled past and have brought a timid yet bullied high school girl name Lisa Mishima as their accomplice.

In an 11 episode series, I probably wouldn’t expect much of a plot as the first part of the series was rather formulaic. Our high school students plant a bomb, post a video about a mythological riddle on what appeared to be Youtube and Shibazaki gains a eureka moment to solve each passing puzzle. However, each riddle lacked relevance towards advancing the plot and further expounding the mysteries of the two characters. In another case, Oedipus Rex addresses a deeper meaning, but that was only towards the end.

In addition, the concept of destroying buildings without any casualties appears impractical, requiring a large suspension of disbelief- while technically, casualties also account the injured. Even if there are no deaths, people would lose jobs and the reparation costs would indirectly affect the citizen’s personal lives. It doesn’t have the realistic repercussions as it would appear to have and it makes a much more drastic event such as 9/11 seem watered-down and even harder to compare, aside from seeing an iconic tower get blown up.

9/11 is a sensitive and a complicated topic to discuss, filled with various motives and conflicting emotional reactions towards that event. People of different backgrounds have, to some extent, (whether ambiguously right or wrong) justifications for their beliefs. But I don’t see those same gray areas in ZnT. Now back on track. Nine and Twelve could have simply blown up abandoned buildings and it wouldn’t make much of a difference. Casualties and property damage would be even less likely (since no one’s there) and to a lesser extent, the attention would still be drawn out by the media.

The second half of the series appeared to throw out the realism with this anime as Five was ridiculously added. There were questionable actions when the FBI could have restrained her. Worst off, the story could have easily progressed without her. However, I’ll give credit when credit is due as ZnT ties most loose ends, but it pushes back most of its answers instead of giving a consistently sound structure overall.


Characters-4/10

Within the main cast of the high school adolescents of Nine, Twelve, Five, and Lisa Mishima as well as detective Shibazaki Kenjirou, it seemed a bit flat. Their characterization is done by the bare bones and their character development seems shaky.

Twelve is the brown haired jokester and serves as a foil to the more reserved Nine. However, outside their massive intelligence for software hacking, name memorizing, and grenade chucking, it’s somewhat difficult for me to describe the main characters (in a more negative fashion.) Their motives for terrorism have been pushed aside until the end when it was fairly simple, to begin with. Their past was flimsily expounded when it should have been used to really explain their current behaviors and beliefs. In addition, they lack interactions with other people (besides Lisa) that normally would shine their personalities from different perspectives and asserting its flaws and strengths. However, one may say that they lack in interactions as a part of who they are, but that maybe a crucial mistake when their cat-and-mouse chase with Shibazaki felt disjointed and rather alienated, even when their screen time are close to each other. I mean within the entire half of the series, there was not a direct confrontation between them and it was mostly behind the recorded (or live) electronic screen.

Regardless, possibly the most interesting character in the story would be Shibazaki. He provides a clear motive, based on a troubled past, to apprehend both Nine and Twelve. His habit of smoking helped compliment his overall personality and ambition. Though a minor detail, when he lights a cigarette in the no smoking zone of the police station, it suggests his ideals to follow a sense justice, not the formal law (you can see that applicable in the latter half). His background brought more historical relevance and topics that could be discussed further. Unfortunately, the progress has been stymied due to the monotonous riddles and Five.

Five may have been the most apparent “nail in the coffin” when it comes to ZnT. Her outlandish behavior requires a large amount of suspension of disbelief and it felt unnecessary to have her as part of the cast. I can say the same for the rest of the police who appeared fairly one dimensional.

On the other hand, Lisa could have been a better-utilized character, but the plot served her to be a klutz and a damsel in distress. It is a shame the over protective mother could have been an interesting avenue for some sort of development, but it is never presented properly.

[SPOILERS]
Hypothetically, Lisa’s father could have been a victim of terrorism. Her mother could have seen the news on what happened in the first episode (she never actually saw nor mentioned it) and this would give a better justification to be so overprotective and paranoid instead of a one-sided appeal that would weaken the strength of the analogy about the Japanese government's Prime minister and its surge of nationalism.

Lisa could have developed a distrust for Nine and Twelve based on her mother’s accusations, and yet also become conflicted to have the only people sensibly accept her be a pair of terrorists. Two sound sides would have its complexity and fair reasoning to develop her character as she slowly opens up to the two guys, learning that they haven’t committed any casualties and also bear that same experience of being ostracized.
[END SPOILER]

Art/Animation- 10/10

Simply put, this anime is gorgeous.

I have no qualms about this aspect and I can fully agree even to the fanatics of this show. The animation directing was fast-paced with slick animation presented on highly attentive detail for its art. The choreography was aesthetically well-done and body language projected differently from each character. There were various executed moments that studio MAPPA visually showed without being explicitly telling. I will praise it for that.
The color pallet and art style are different from your conventional anime, often utilizing more somber colors and realistic drawings. It is certainly highly budgeted, and for the most part, it is very consistent with its quality. There some goofs inevitably here and there, but I can't deduct points.

Now, the biggest downside to the art style would be that everything else doesn’t compliment to this kind of style. The outlandish events of the anime polarize the seemingly human presentation, making it more like a cinematic Hollywood spectacle with less sentimental value to it. Some may like it, but I personally don’t.


Sound- 9/10

The sound’s quality is parallel to the art. The opening, “Trigger,” sounds weirdly syncopated and doesn’t cleanly fall to people’s expectations that normally be within the beat. The same can be said with the some of the OST composed by Yoko Kanno. However, for the most part, they are fitting and of high quality for this anime. The main issues for sound for me were the jarring English voice acting for Five (however, the character itself was more questionable.) Fortunately, the dubbing amends that minor quibble.


Enjoyment- 4/10

Unfortunately, this is where my review follows more into an ugly subjective rant.

I came with the wrong mindset with this anime. I was expecting more realism on the aspects of terrorism, not some 11 episode thriller. It lacked the bite in dealing with terrorism, as the motives and target of the two characters should have been explicitly stated from the start to make me care more about the characters (especially when they are on a controversial position as terrorists.)

[SPOILERS]
There were many plot holes and illogical actions that really requires a large suspension of disbelief.

For example, the police normally do not solve literary mythology, but rather they should track down physical evidence and forensics. They should not follow the clues guided by the perpetrators, (to the point of making them incompetent) for the sake of making Nine and Twelve seem highly intelligent. Also video analysis from the aliases named Sphinx 1 & 2 should have identified the so-called terrorist to be fairly young and pale skinned; one with brown hair and the other with black hair. I mean they don’t even bother to cloak themselves. It is even to the point to make a safe assumption that they are high school students. The police could have done a background check on their alias as high school students and find the hidden bomb from the school locker. While I’m bringing this up, the point of being in high school for our protagonists was largely forgotten besides going to the Tokyo Metropolitan Governmental Office, reeling in Lisa (from the beginning) and stuffing the prototype bomb in the locker (near the end.)

There were problems that there wasn’t enough time to build character development in a series with only 11 episodes, but it exacerbated with that mystery because this show had numerous filler moments. Many of the episodic riddles could easily have been truncated and the events of Five seem shaky to even consider it as part of the plot. It really beat around the bush when it really didn’t have enough time for it.

Now, the point and theme of the story would possibly be the disconnection from the society. Those who are disconnected, they may share that common ground of separation and project their far cry towards the general norm with the hope that it will reach. However, the story lacks to address the majority who are connected with society. ZnT does not present that other side, in order to emphasize the stark contrast in the character’s isolation or at least give more meaning to it. Because of this, it really felt one sided and one noted.
[END SPOILERS]


Overall- mid 6/10 (Fair)

Its major shortcomings would simply be its presentation and focus. It's difficult to support a political statement going into the grey areas of polemic concern when a large part dealt with a thriller route. Well, thought-out characters struggle to have depth when a mystery covers them more often than not, while some of the most beautiful directed scenes in a TV series loses its value when character and plot are on the weaker end.

I do see some well executed moments on its lesser details and recommend it to those who prefer a highly fast paced crime-thriller. It certainly takes a step forward by presenting maturity and becomes a breath of fresh air in the anime medium that often features silly high school students riddled with goofy stereotypes (even though it doesn't hurt to like those anime.)

On the other hand, it does take a step back when it comes to dealing with the responsibilities of that maturity. It really disappoints me above everything else to see the wasted potential of fine directing and an intriguing topic when minor tweaks can greatly improve the glaring flaws. I will not recommend it to those who prefer a more concrete plot with character development and for those who would rather see terrorism be addressed more properly.

Zankyou no Terror is a show which is praised by many. Mostly for its premise and the themes of teenagers blowing up buildings instead of peeking on girls. It’s definitely not your everyday anime and even for me it has been a pleasant surprise as I started watching it, with high expectations that is, after having read that top staff is working on the show. I couldn’t wait until I finally got to watch the show, and now, one season later: Was this show really that good? In short: No. But let me explain why, before you downvote my review, if you haven’t already by ... just looking at the score I gave Zankyou No Terror.

Storywise the best part Zankyou No Terror had to offer was its premise. Two teenagers called Nine and Twelve go on a spree of committing acts of terror in an alternate version of Japan. “Not bad”, I thought as I added this show to my Plan To Watch list and the introduction episode delivered great action and directing and lots of things already created questions. I hoped for a nice resolution and kept watching, mainly blinded by the gorgeous visuals, but the first couple of episodes in I noticed something odd. Where is the actual terror? Sure, blowing up a few buildings isn’t a nice thing to do. People spent time and effort creating them and some teenagers destroy them?

Isn’t this rather a larger scaled act of vandalism since it’s never mentioned or implied that people actually got killed in the process? Neither does the population actually seem terrified. There even are fans of the “terrorists”, despite them revealing any sort of political message to the general public. So probably just some edgy teenagers who think it’d be cool to support people destroying buildings in the city, because who knows why.

That’s the first time I really started to question this series and its writing. The second time would be the riddles. Superficially they seem smart and well thought through, but digging a little deeper than merely scratching the surface, they’re actually kind of dumb and if you consider the outcome and the actual motives on Nine and Twelve, they are mere filler and should not be there in the first place as they do nothing but dragging out the plot and to keep the, pretty dumb, police busy.

Around the middle a new character called Five is introduced who is cooperating with the Americans and their motives are pretty vague, as well as how they can act above the local police forces. The whole appearance of this character killed pretty much all the hopes I had for Zankyou No Terror to become an actually interesting cat and mouse-game between officer Shibazaki and the “terrorists” calling themselves Sphinx. Instead it resulted in some sort of hate triangle between the three parties and most of the stuff which happened in relation with the new character had nothing to do with the actual outcome anyway.

Moving on to plot holes and plot conveniences Zankyou No Terror does not disappoint in being a disappointment there either. Without wanting to spoil too much, where did Sphinx get intel about a nuclear bomb being developed on Japanese soil? Why even commit those acts of vandalism? The justification makes no sense. There would have been tons of other ways to get across what they intended. Why promote Zankyou No Terror as a show about terror when it’s not? How was it important that Sphinx move to a school? They have been there like two times. The only reason they did was to introduce the cast to Lisa, a new charac- ehm plot device. Seriously. There’s no other way I could explain that Sphinx went to school. There’s so much I expected and so little I got. Speaking of Lisa, let’s move on to the characters.

Ladies first, we have Lisa. A walking dumbo and plot device. She is being bullied at school and doesn’t have it easy at home. Supposedly a tragic character she just ends up being an obstacle for Nine and Twelve, as her psyche is not explored at all. Does she like being a bad girl? Does she not know what she wants in the first place? She was just walking around, crying and getting kidnapped. She and Twelve had some kind of romance going on which also felt kind of forced considering the situation they are put in.

Then we have Twelve. More of a chaotic guy and Nine’s comrade. They both share a mysterious past which mainly gets explored in flashbacks and like the very last episodes. Not much to say about either because they both don’t develop at all. Five is also one of those with the same past as Nine and Twelve and they all are super smart and seemingly flawless. The reason as to why keep the past of Sphinx a secret is also baffling to me as well as the occurrence of flashbacks. It felt as if the writers just cast some die and randomly decided the intervals of them having flashbacks to justify small doses of exposition. The most intriguing character to me was officier Shibazaki, but that doesn’t mean that much in the show that is Zankyou No Terror and its cast. Really disappointed me there, Zankyou No Terror.

Where I did not get disappointed though were in the category of visuals and sound design as well as the splendid directing of Shinchiro Watanabe. The backgrounds and lightning and effects were gorgeous and I had a blast just looking at the detailed art work. The rain and water also looked great and I barely have any criticism about how Zankyou No Terror was presented superficially. The soundtrack by Yoko Kanno was just as expected brilliant, as well as the Opening and Ending themes. A thing which kind of put me off though was the Engrish in some of the songs and the dialogues.

Did I enjoy Zankyou No Terror though? Kind of. It felt like an action flick you can just enjoy without overthinking it too much. Is there worse shows with around 11 episodes you could watch? Definitely. I can see the appeal this show has and I kinda appreciate its effort but in the end Zankyou No Terror is not a show worth calling “anime of the season” or “anime of the year”. I don’t even think anyone will remember it in the near future. That popularity does not equal the quality of a show is obvious and I’m not saying it is horrible. Wasted potential and a definite disappointment are quite more fitting though.

*Updated after completing the anime)
Best anime of this summer?You got it horribly wrong. (judge this review after watching at least 7 episodes)
I am a HARDCORE detective/mystery genre fan that is why I had very high expectations of this show when I started it but it was a downhill slope starting from episode one. I am not the type of person that likes to write entirely UNCONVENTIONAL reviews but my mind forced me on this one Some people might be bragging about its ORIGINALITY but guess what?*Spoiler*Ever heard of the anime "MONSTER"?The characters background is entirely COPIED from that masterpiece anime. I wanted to wait till ... the show is complete before writing this review but I could not hold myself back anymore.
Overwhelming positive reviews of ZnT are only because of hasty people judging it by first two episodes.

Story 3/10
*Spoilers*
Two teenagers( with mysterious background) attempting terrorist attacks while preventing casualties and a smart-ass detective trying to stop them. Actually I have NO problem with it whatsoever. The use of Greek mythology as puzzles is a little awkward but one can live with it because it is done cleverly. It even focuses on small details of those terrorist attacks. Which should make it an above average anime. So what is wrong with the story then? The problem is that this show presents itself as a serious and REAL crime/detective anime. Then all of a sudden a foreign teenage GIRL '5' appears and sits on the arses of the whole police department of Japan, lets bombs blast (and even makes police plant the bombs *facepalm* ) in public places just in order to catch two wanna-be terrorists. On the top of that starts playing chess with the terrorists on the Airport screens and no one gives a f***, no the absurdness is not over, she plants bomb in a passenger plane and tries to hit it on the airport,risking lives of hundreds, just to kill 2 to 3 terrorists and the Japanese authorities are sleeping? Is this a goddamned REAL CRIME DETECTIVE show? Moreover so when she herself orders to "dont shoot" the terrorist('9') like 3 minutes ago!! Poor writing must not be ignored in such genres.

Art
9/10
The art was pretty suitable for a serious and realistic show and was most of the time OUTSTANDING. Although the anime itself turned out to be mediocre but the art was clearly meant to give ZnT a realistic touch.

Sound
8/10
The opening and ending are pretty decent, the BGM is usually drum music which is unconventional but certainly pleasant to the ears.

Characters
7/10

As already mentioned, the background story of 9 and 12 is literally pulled out of 'Monster' anime, but even then the show reveals this story so late in the show when it does not really matter anymore. 12 is a happy go lucky kind of character and remains the same throughout the show while 9 is your usual serious badass protagonist with a soft corner in his heart somewhere. The girl Lisa has a screwed up Mom who is over-obsessed with her daughter. Lisa herself is a cliche character who cannot do anything and is extremely fragile and emotionally unstable, her purpose and reason is yet to be explored, maybe a hostage/handicap character. The famed antagonist '5' which I've been taking about for quite a long time(who is an old 'pal' of our protagonists) is also completely unexplored, but she wants some kind of revenge on the main characters, due to her hot-air-ballon-ego at the expense of whole Japanese citizens, her personality can be summed up in one word i.e. bitch.*Spoiler-ends*

Enjoyment and Overall
6/10

ZnT started rather brightly, but a lot of flaws in its "REALISTIC" story which is flushed down the gutter after 5 episodes, negligible character development till late in the anime makes it a mediocre anime as it progresses.
Being a huge fan of crime, terrorist and detective shows, it is safe to say that ZnT had a lot of potential but it is utterly wasted when the show deviates from reality, a bit of deviation is digestible(Detective Conan), but when such an anime completely ignores reality just to heat up the rivalry between protagonists and antagonist...... it ends up choking the mystery fans like us.
Though judging it by the eye of an ordinary viewer, the anime is above average(that is,if you ignore all the bullshit and plot holes).

It's 2014, and so, it's rather understandable to be doubtful of new anime.
Sadly enough, this one falls short of entering the ranks of the rare ones that are actually worth watching...

As the premise itself serves as an attractive bait hook, the final package greatly disappoints.
Initally, the first few episodes seduce the viewer through very pretty artwork, and confidently set the groundwork by showing just a tip of the mystery and motives at hand, yet it ultimately stumbles upon itself, leading to an unsatisfying conclusion.

While the cracks that slowly chip away at the script show themselves fairly early on, most of them represented by the introduction ... of two completely unfocused characters that awake undesirable conflict, there are brief hints of brilliance throughout as well, surpisingly, such as the intriguing but sporadic cat and mouse game, or the show's underdeveloped main leads, both of which should have been the series' main focus instead.

What could have followed in Death Note and Monster's footsteps, ended up being the wasted potential we all dislike gawking at in bitter wonder...

This is my first review on here, so please forgive any mistakes and such I might make.
I'll do my best to keep this as spoiler free as possible, but be wary of some minor ones before reading this review.

I originally started watching Zankyou no Terror because I saw it in the recommended section for a few other series that I like and after reading the synopsis and seeing a few images from the show, I thought it looked pretty promising. It also seemed to get good reviews, not just from anime fans, but on mainstream film and tv sites too. While I don't think Zankyou ... no Terror is particularly bad, I also don't think it deserves the amount of praise it seems to have gotten. This is due to the fact that despite an interesting premise, intriguing plot set up, and a really beautiful soundtrack, I feel it ultimately fails to deliver any lasting emotional impact for reasons I will now go into.

Story:
As mentioned above, the premise of Zankyou no Terror seems to be quite an original one. I haven't seen any other anime series that are explicitely about terrorism and while I am sure that there are others out there, I can see why this premise would attract people to it. A story centred contemporary domestic terrorism has the potential to make for controversial and challenging viewing. The opening episodes also suggest that this is going to be the case, and that this is a show that will touch on a number of social issues (such as child abuse, mental illness, social exclusion, goverment corruption, etc). However, after the series concluded, the viewer is left with no clear messages or arguments concerning these issues, which is disappointing to say the least. The story seems more concerned with setting up the mystery behind the two main characters' (9 and 12's) motives and having the detective character (Shibazaki) solve it. While this has the potential to be exciting, and for the first few episodes, it does deliver in terms of tension and does the whole cat-and-mouse pursuit quite well, I feel the story ultimately could have been more ambitious in trying to give the viewer something to think about. 4/10

Art:
The art and animation for this show is overall very good. In particular, there is a beautiful scene in the final episode that takes place on a ferris wheel, with Tokyo lit up at night in the background. Watching only this scene, with the pretty animation and emotional music choice, it would be easy to see why this anime seems to be considered so highly.
The character designs of the mains are also quite good, and while 5 looks a bit out of place amongst the others (who dress themselves in a more mainstream fashion), this fits her personality and makes her seem suitably eccentric and different from the other characters.
However, while the animation is well done, it didn't strike me as being particularly creative. Apart from the scene I mentioned previously, there aren't many that stand out visually. 8/10

Sound:
For me, the strongest point of Zankyou no Terror was unquestionably the soundtrack. In particular the end theme ('Dare ka, Umi wo') and 'Von' stood out and I found myself listening to them outside of watching the show.
While I felt the occasional use of English dialogue in the show didn't really work, overall I liked the choice of voice actors and I thought their performances were well suited to their characters. 9/10

Character:
As an anime with only 11 episodes, it makes sense that the series has a relatively small cast of main characters. I didn't feel overly attached to these characters, however, I also don't think they were particularly badly conceived. My main issue with them is that out of their respective storylines, the narrative only puts a large amount of focus on 9 and 12's, and to a lesser extent, Shibazaki's. While this would be okay in some stories, as these two are the main characters, it makes other character storylines seems undervalued and a bit pointless. For example, Lisa has a storyline and issues of her own that is opened up to the viewer over the course of the first few episodes. However, these are neglected in favour of the two cat-and-mouse chases that feature in the series. Perhaps, in a longer series, more attention and closure could be given to the other characters, but I feel this series puts to much emphasis on its two leads, at the cost of properly seeing through the narratives of Lisa and 5.
While most attention is given to 9 and 12, in terms of character building anyway, aspects of their personalities are left hanging as well. To give an example that isn't particularly spoiler-y, 12 mentions to Lisa early in the series that he has synesthesia and that this is one of the reasons as to why he finds her interesting to be around, since her voice is a very pleasant colour to him. This is (to my recollection) the last and only direct mention of this aspect of him, which feels rather like a lost opportunity considering the medium Zankyou no Terror takes place in and that characters with synesthesia seem to be very rare in popular culture. 6/10

Enjoyment:
As I said in my opening, I didn't actively dislike this series. At only 11 episodes, it was fairly watchable and it's not a series I regret seeing. If nothing else, it introduced me to some nice music and it did have a strong opening and an interesting premise.
However, I wouldn't recommend it to others because of the flaws I have mentioned in my review. I also don't see myself rewatching it. I feel like for a show that had a lot of potential, it fails to deliver and this can be disappointing when watching the plot draw to a close. The ending was underwhelming and I didn't find it particularly emotionally effective, due to weaknesses in the story and pacing up to that point, and a lack of any strong message throughout. 6/10

Overall:
If you like anime that have modern and aesthetically polished animation, cat-and-mouse type storylines, and memorable music, then you may like Zankyou no Terror. On the other hand, if you are looking for an anime that is emotionally deep and politically relevant and intellectually challenging, then Zankyou no Terror is probably not for you. 6/10

Terror in Resonance:

MINDSET:
Explosions, derpy faces, amazing animation and overly hyped. Its devoid of realism and don't think outside the box...

REVIEW:
According to Collins dictionary terrorism is:
The systematic use of violence and intimidation to achieve political ends.
By using this evidence, do I remember any casualties from innocent civilians? No. Even if You may think that there were at least some deaths during the show, they never had the courtesy to at least show some death sequences or just anyone dying as if everyone was plot armoured, and when we do gotten to do the point when people are dying, it felt cheap as if the writers never ... noticed they should even have casualties.

So even the show that centres around “Terrorism” looks and centres more around just blowing sh*t up. It was obvious right from the get go that the two protagonists needed to launch a nuclear bomb at Tokyo, Consequently, right at the first few minutes of the Anime, we see them successfully stealing plutonium without getting caught and instead of even planning to create a nuclear bomb but all what they did was screw around with the police with riddles and demolishing a couple of skyscrapers without even killing anyone!

Character motives are just way too value or feels like it happened for no reason at all. Like why are these people terrorists in the first place? Seriously, You cannot really link up why and how this whole terrorism thing even started! Their were characters who barely get any fleshing out and feel like backdrop. Like the police force who seem to have an important role to the plot yet the show has never really felt that these supporting roles have a larger meaning or have good character exploration for us to even care! The side cast was completely forgettable as one guy only speaks English in the most Asian way possible and who even cares about such people or anyone in that matter?

Plot device characters are surprisingly everywhere in the Anime, but even if the role was there and the character is grasped well, how can we care? No one ever develops as if we were to show our sympathy at the end. Token girl of the two terrorists was unnecessary, she doesn’t have a role to the plot, she doesn’t even help out the characters emotionally or physically and we never even knew why she's so emo in the first place, since all what she does is look sad! Overall, the cast was an absolute train wreck.

Sure before the unholy revival of the 5th episode it did felt like a good show with how it handles the story. Of course society mass panicked from the extreme vandalism, the police was actually doing something. Though the riddles that the terrorists set up were just plain silly like trying to figure out some cryptic Greek myth to find some number that will lead the police force to enemy HQ felt more hip and cool like a beta version of Death Note. Yes, characters were still terrible at that time, but it seem to contain more self-awareness any ways.

When the show attempts to create some epic revelation twist as a pathetic attempt to blow everyone’s mind, it feels more like stuff being made up along the spot rather than something that feels organic. In this one moment when we reveal the master mind whose behind through most of the weird causes in the show we instead found that it was just one of the detectives friend who committed suicide... Yeah, epic revelation guys I sure had an asthma attack after that one...

At this fifth episode we see the show completely collapsing into itself when he reveal a psycho chick whose only personality is just to be a Yandere, but also: We some of the most asian and most downright cheesiest and the most unmoralistic use of “Engrish” in a damn while! I know these people are meant to be American and this Asian Psycho has to speak English for them to understand, but its still a thousand times better just to leave all of those scenes in just Japanese; I can't help but to utterly face palm and feel ear raped every time I hear it!

Though that is not the biggest of my issues, its when the show decided to hit the mind blow fest, and throw in a bunch of random details of the story that don't add up to anything, and even if it does somehow make sense, it still felt cheap or more importantly some random sh*t where supposed to care about, but ends up being pretentious. As if it was so cheap for the reason why psycho chick was psycho was because she was drugged in school. Can't I ever be more uncaring for such a plot device?

Overall, for something that is meant to be some intense mystery thriller, its horrible, since we don't care about the characters and too many of them feeling like a plot device or just there for absolutely f**k all. The show is classified as “GOOD” until you pass episode 5, and I did enjoy it for what its worth in a certain extent. Consequently, the show ends up not being bad, but another mediocrity because of that factor alone.

Since I never cared about the show, fans were trying to speak at how this show has a “Political Message” yes, even if its excactly true on whatever the show tries to conceptualise, like how making a school for uber smart people so they can farm their genes that will save the needless problems in Japanese society, was presented too subtlety! Yes they somehow vaguely explained it, but even if it was obvious, the reasons just don't really feel natural, and is more of a pretentious arse pull! And even if the message was handled well enough for us to get it, I still cant help but to not care, due to badly directed characters and story.

MAPPA is one of those Animation companies that don't really make the best kind of Animation, well its either mediocre or above average, and they did Animated Hajime No Ippo for whatever that fighting show is worth. Any ways, it was very clear that MAPPA allowed there Animators some fun and creative freedom while still dumping cash bags of savings to make some of the most consistent and well made backgrounds. There is this feeling when there’s a lack of CGI, which is always a plus side and despite of them using a lot of greys, it does make a nift contradiction with some bright colours thrown in whenever someone is outside. The character designs still range to pretty good, or just plain cheap! Like one of the police men having massive eyes and how he's part of the supporting cast. However, most of them give this feeling to synchronize with the whole themes of the show regardless if it was presented badly. How the camera just moves a bit from time to time for no apparent reason is a nice touch, and there were moments like the Ferris Wheel scene when I just want to feel at least some emotion just because it was choreographed so well. Clearly, there has been a lot of thought put into this.

The OST has a strange vibe to it feeling rather unfitting for this kind of show, but it somehow blends well with the whole terrorist thing with crazy visuals. They do use mainstream instruments like the guitar and piano to an extent, but my main issue is that its just too ambitous for me to gladly listen to on a structured basis. It is an OST that feels very odd, it gives You this bizarre, yet somewhat emotional impact. It is clearly one of those OST's that You need to listen by Yourself to get the gist of what people say about it. The OP, does fit in well with the OST, and sure it doesn’t get me excited, but the visual choreography is just a creative use for us to get into a weird mood. The ED is skip worthy, but it is very calm if You'd like to listen to it.

LEGACY:
Its always going to be the Animation of how people will remember such an over hyped mediocrity. Its always going to be the damn budget that I will forever remember on how aesthetically pleasing it was. Even if everyone says that its good, I believe it won't be long until more and more people will cough up to downgrade the overall score...

SCORES:
2.5/10 – The characters have nothing but to fill a one or two dimensional personality, and some of them are complete plot devices or just there or no reason.
4/10 – Its cool just to see the it until episode 5, when the story being on of the redeeming factors collapses into itself.
8.5/10 – A great mix of very creative choreography and a crazy budget that stays consistent.
7/10 – The music is refreshing from the common OST, but its a bit too bizarre for me.
FINALE: 5.5/10 – Its a lousy piece of sh*t if it wasn’t for the budget.

In a word, ZnT was disappointing. There was a lot of hype surrounding it, but it fell very short of my expectations. I did like the sound and art, but ZnT did not have either developed characters or a developed story.

ZnT had an interesting concept, but it's not novel. It's basically a newer and far less thrilling version of Urasawa Naoki's "Monster" (which, by the way, is excellent). ZnT is about mysterious teenagers with 'evil' plans for the rest of the world and the super-smart, fallen-from-grace adult who is trying to catch them. It could have been an excellent story, but the anime is ... unfortunately so riddled with cliches and 'surprising twists' that it lacks any real suspense. ZnT also only has 11 episodes, which may not seem like a lot, but each season of "Free!" only had 13 and each still managed to have a solid plot independent of the other.

These characters are incredibly superficial. You are introduced to one facet of their personality and never get to see more than that. I could probably forgive that for Nine and Twelve, because they, as the main characters, are given more screen time, but absolutely not for Five, and Lisa, to a lesser extent. Five was a completely useless character. To me, she added absolutely nothing to the overall plot and only served to extend the series to 11 episodes - without her, this anime could easily have been like 6 episodes. I didn't see her final plot twist coming, and not in a good way - I was so disappointed with her exit because she could have been a good supplement to the existing characters, but instead, she appeared and disappeared and nothing about the story changed. At all. I also would have liked to see more from and about Lisa (personal favourite, because she's the most 'human' to me). Shibazaki was decent, but he was like a more cliched version of Tenma (from Monster). Also, I refuse to believe that the police are as incompetent/arrogant/stubborn as they are portrayed to be. Really, you're going to keep ignoring this genius detective, multiple times, even though he's clearly proven himself to be very intelligent about these things? Yeah, no.

Overall, ZnT is just very flat. There is nothing extraordinary about it; indeed, there are many, far superior manga and anime of the same genre. There are too many cliches, too many 'plot twists', too many dimensionless characters... That said, it's not awful. I think it could be the prototype, if you will, of a longer series that expands on the plot and characters, which could end up being interesting. So, if you're looking to kill a bit of time (each episode ~25 min) and don't particularly care about watching something amazing, then you'd probably enjoy this.

I was very excited at the prospect of a terrorism-themed show, considering how taboo and controversial a topic it is. However, while "ZnT" may have been fun to watch, it certainly didn't deliver on all aspects.

The Art and Sound are, honestly, the best thing about this show. The visuals, especially in the first episode, are stunning, and it's apparent there's a very large budget. The OST by Yoko Kanno is wonderful. OP is nice, ED is alright.

Characters are one of the two biggest problems with this show. THEY LACK BACKING AND DEVELOPMENT... While you can somewhat feel attached to them, due to us not totally ... knowing WHY they are doing what they're doing (and then giving a shitty, under-developed reason as to why at the end -- but that's a story problem) certainly bogs down the steam. ...and then we have Five and Lisa: utterly simple (and/or useless) characters that are rather 2-dimensional. It's a shame the female characters are the ones that hurt the series the most... Only the detective seemed to really develop or get anything out of this entire story.

Setting was your usual Japan... except under attack (and somewhat fleshed out).

Episodic value was good. I was excited to come back and see the show every week, but the episodes (especially the middle ones) had some pretty big holes that were never closed. Pacing was awkward near the middle as well. All this content backed into only 11 episodes... it really shows that they left stuff out that was important.

The story was a HUGE mess. While these actions are cool and daring, we never really learn of ANY [REALLY GOOD] reason they are being taken. I understand the premise that the writers were going for, but the lack of development on Nine and Twelve's backstory really made the ending reveal have a minimal impact. I want there to be MORE.

Overall, "Zankyou no Terror" could have been a LOT better if there were more episodes in which they could flesh out full and complete character backstory and story development. It was fun to watch, but really wasn't that wonderful.

Zankyou no terror is an anime that mixes thriller and drama. After looking at the reviews here and after seeing the design of it, I decided to give it a try.
It was a good anime. I think it had a great potential which was unfortunately hardly availed. It could have been a great anime, however it lacks of something.
On the positive side there is the enjoyable design. Each character has its own characteristics and not a single one looks like another one. Each character has a special aura that corresponds to their personality. Even better, the animation is really fluent.
On another plan, the ... dark atmosphere that englobes the anime from beginning to end suits the story really well and nothing is out of place in that sense.
On the negative side, the story was good but wasn't profound enough. It isn't detailed enough. It seems that we are just rushing from one action to another with little phases of sentimentalism and reflection.
To begin with I think that this anime should have been much longer and could at least have had 5 more episodes. It would have given more time to analyse and maybe better explanations on some things. In fact after seeing the whole thing I was quite disappointed since I waited for something much more deeper with such a story line. It now just looks like an empty story. The effects are great but the story and the characters lack of deepness. At the end there is no real message and the story in itself is really messy and we keep loosing track. There is no real direction which can be really confusing. There is no focus on anything and at some points second characters seem to be as important as main characters.
Finally, I was really disappointed by the end because it underscored its lack of real meaning. It didn't reach my expectatives and didn't give me the "more" I was hoping for.
However, I must say that I enjoyed watching this anime. For me it is a fair anime that is good if you don't have anything else to see and is actually really entertaining.


(My english might not be perfect, sorry for that)

Don't watch it.

*possible spoilers*


This anime started well, for the first few episodes it really had me intrigued but all my questions remained unanswered episode after episode and then half way through they add an antagonist who was frankly, really crap, she trys to kill hundreds of people after a game of airport chess (really? how do they expect us to even imagine that?) all to kiss one of the main characters.

Speaking of which, the characters, there was just nothing that made you feel for them or relate to them, nothing, for a moment in the last episode I thought that everything was planned ... just so he could see the northen lights before he died (I don't really think you can in Japan anyways..........) but it was less then a second and pff... just nothing. The girl could have just not existed, she does NOTHING in the whole series, like the antagonist says, she's just in the way all the time.

The only thing I liked was the animation and the music and the intrigue in the first few episodes. But I wouldn't recommend it to anybody at all.

Zankyou no Terror expects to be taken very seriously. It desperately wants every single moment to feel extraordinarily heavy. Thanks to the use of dim colors, a melancholic soundtrack, and the resounding lack of energy from any of the cast, it's obvious that the director is trying to play your emotions like a symphony. There's really no problem with this, but where it essentially screws up is in the execution of all of this seriousness. ZnT is so obsessed with moving the plot forward that it puts little to no thought into making sense of anything that happens. There's a scene where the detective, Kenjirou, ... is absolutely baffled about where this group of terrorists might be, and while he was speaking to one of his co-workers, this co-worker was glued to some mobile game, and that game gave Kenjirou the exact clue he needed in order to figure out where these terrorists would be. It's troubling to think that our detective found something out solely based on his friend playing that specific part of that game at that exact time. That's an insanely laughable coincidence. If this guy wasn't playing whatever he was playing, the show would have turned out much differently and perhaps it wouldn't have continued at all. Zankyou no Terror does this a lot throughout the story, and it makes it so damn hard to take seriously. They want you to respect Kenjirou's detective skills, yet it almost always relies on coincidence. It's sorta similar to how House M.D. cures his patients by accidentally figuring things out throughout the mini-arcs of the episodes. He's not actually smart, the writer just wants him to appear smart in front of people who don't care enough to think about it. The same can be said for Zankyou no Terror. Kenjirou was never smart, he just figures things out by coincidence to get the story over with quicker.

My biggest complaint here is that there was absolutely no attempt to create a realistic and intelligent detective. Instead, the show was too focused on being a thriller that doesn't care about how the terrorists get found, as long as they get found and the story carried on.

"Oh, Sherlock, what do we say about coincidence?"

"The universe is rarely so lazy."

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Development and Synergy
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In terms of how the characters come to be, the two mains (Nine and Twelve) have very interesting, although vague backstories. The ambiguity added a certain charm to it, but unfortunately this charm is hard to fully realize when you get to know them, and slowly realize that they aren't very likable. The show spends almost no time developing the characters because it's so focused on moving forward with the plot. There are scenes where you see romance occur which is likely an attempt to humanize them, but the romance feels too forced to even count as "development". At most, the creators give us brief hints at their backstory, but that never tells us about them. Instead, it simply shows us where they come from and what happened to them to make them get here. Zankyou no Terror's eleven episodes go by so quick that it has almost no time to take a rest and develop these characters. You could argue that doing so might've screwed with the pacing, but there have been many films that have introduced us to five or six characters at once, never stopped the action, and by the end, had us falling in love with the cast.

Zankyou no Terror may give us a backstory to these characters, but the characters themselves are never fully fleshed out and it feels like their personalities aren't important to the actual objective of the show. It's understandable that the anime was going for a more plot focused narrative rather than being character driven, but a more obvious attempt to flesh out the two mains would have been admirable.

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Twelve and Lisa
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In terms of the romance, it creates for some of the most visually and aurally stunning scenes in the series and arguably in all of anime. However, there's no need to call it anything more than "visually and aurally stunning" as the more you dig, the worse it gets. The romance is about as forced as you would expect from a series with seriously underdeveloped characters. Twelve and Lisa seem to have this "unbreakable" bond even though he had threatened to kill her only a couple of episodes before they started working together and not much was done to develop their relationship in the time between that. Their romance goes as far as a collection of beautiful looking scenes with an absolutely incredible soundtrack accompanying it. It never felt like there was a true connection between the two and it seemed like they loved each other just for the sake of loving each other. It's easy to understand why someone like Lisa would fall madly in love with Twelve, but for why Twelve would fall in love with Lisa? It seems ridiculous. Lisa was lonely and desperately looking for someone to share her moments with, so her falling in love with a dangerous guy who does bad things to everyone except for her makes sense. However, Twelve never seemed like the kind of character interested in that sort of thing and even if he was, it was never shown to us. Because of this, Lisa feels less like a substantial character and more like she was made with the sole purpose of humanizing Twelve, and it was a huge waste of potential for her development.

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Hard to Hate
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Zankyou no Terror may have many problems, but, it's difficult to dislike the series. In fact, Zankyou no Terror is a very successfully engaging thriller. Every second keeps you at the edge of your seat, and a majority of the scenes are beautifully illustrated and gorgeously orchestrated. It's easy to see why so many got obsessed with the show. When immersed into what you see, you sometimes have trouble acknowledging flaws. You could say that the show is a success specifically based on how much it engages the viewer, but that's an extremely biased way of looking at it. In other words, if it entertains you, you'll like it. If not, you won't like it. Besides from the entertainment aspect, there isn't much to take from it. This is one of the reasons why it's easy to have mixed feelings about Zankyou no Terror. Although it was enjoyable, it was a gigantic mess. However, if you look at it as nothing more than a simple thriller (even though it tries to be much much more), you might have a hell of a time.

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Interesting Story
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The plot to Zankyou no Terror is eccentric and occasionally ridiculous, but the overall theme is admirable. The story starts out simple but slowly gets more and more complex and once you've reached the end, you feel like you've finished off with the complete opposite of what you started with. This isn't a bad thing, as the ending to Zankyou no Terror is pretty compelling.

Without spoiling anything, the plot is possibly one of the best parts of the show, however, this is only because the story works in unison with the action. It's safe to say this show would be even worse if the elements of suspense were removed or altered since they can't really exist without each other. However, relying your show entirely on suspense isn't a good thing. Having more things to admire this show for would have been preferred, but unfortunately, all it gives us is an anime that's beautiful on the surface.

Zankyou no Terror also uses excessive amounts of symbolism through illustration and it's rather interesting. Sometimes it feels a bit pretentious, but in most cases it makes the narrative moderately more compelling.

The "villain" of the series also felt underwhelming. It seemed like she should have had more impact on the story than she actually did. Sure, she caused trouble for the main characters a whole lot, but it never feels like anything important actually came out of her. She clearly meant something to Twelve and Nine, but she never meant anything to the viewers and that's easily associated with her poor development.

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Perception
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Zankyou no Terror was never trying to develop its characters or make any type of sense. It attempts to be symbolic and meaningful, but in essence, it knows for a fact that it is a quick, heart-pumping action thriller. This is part of the reason why it's so easy to enjoy. It's similar to watching something like John Wick, it has moments where it does try to be more than it actually is, but in reality, it's just an insane "rule of cool" action movie.

Does this take away from the experience? No, not entirely. In fact, only after finishing Zankyou no Terror did all of its flaws manage to find its way through my thick skull. Once you finish, you'll find an abundance of problems, but while watching, you have so much fun that you won't care enough to acknowledge the flaws. That isn't me trying to debase fans of the show or anything, I experienced the exact same phenomenon.

That's why it is one of the few shows where people (including myself) have trouble determining if it should be judged on how good it is, or how entertaining it is. Occasionally, the feeling of "I enjoyed that show a lot" hits me, but then sometimes the feeling of "that show was pretty shitty" hits me. How to determine a balance between the two? I have no fucking clue.

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Verdict
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Although Zankyou no Terror has a lot of flaws, it's easy to admire. It's an anime full of mindless thrills, but when the thrills aren't happening, it's pretty underwhelming. For the most part, character development is awful and looking at it from a standpoint that is logically sound, it's a mess. However, the show is too compelling to disdain. Watching Zankyou no Terror keeps you at the edge of your seat for a majority of the time and it's unfortunate that the qualities of a good anime couldn't mix with the already present qualities of an extremely thrilling anime. Watch Zankyou no Terror for the thrills and only the thrills, don't go in expecting anything more than heart-pumping action.

Zankyou No Terror is the story of the “why”, the “what”, the “when”… “How”, and so on.

I wasn’t particularly interested in the series, I mean I make the custom of watching the series that came out in such block, but I never really got into it… until the first episode. The damn thing is so attractive to the senses and in general much more solid than the average series that is not something I could just ignore, then I never really imagined the mediocrity that came after.

The plot revolves around two young terrorists that go in a rampage so they can expose some secret plans ... made by the usual suspects, plans that involved some degree of human experimentation and secrecy juicy enough to feed the needy. After that the series focuses in the intrigue behind the terrorist attacks made by the group, and the police efforts to catch them.

You might except some interesting back-story and some intense development to the characters, after all the secrecy seems to have some dark history, so why not?… well you are left stranded as there’s no solid or interesting character or story development whatsoever, not of their origin story, their relationship as survivors and avengers, their motives which seem to be so important to them, etc. you name it, this series is as arid as your favorite desert (not the wet ones).

And that’s the main issue with this one, it’s full of potential yet lacking so much in the content department. It seems they thought the whole terrorist attack thing would stretch far enough to fill the whole series… but it doesn’t, the whole thing just feels incomplete as not even the apparent star of the series, this being the “detectivesque” story that fills most of the chapters, is overly scripted and unexciting as the plot itself lowers the tension behind them via its less than intense characters.

I could go on and on, as to wonder why there is not more development between the protagonists and the enemy featured later, why aren’t more back stories to characters such as Lisa which supposedly play a contrasting role to the protagonists (you are left in the let’s assume this thing as the obvious stereotypical answer), how far does the secrecy goes so we can feel the intensity and urgency of the plot, an a long etc. which is not worth the time… since the thing already ended along with every chance of this being something more.

Anyway, good idea, good visual quality, a definitive letdown… it didn’t particularly pique my interest, as I said, but it’s worth the warning.

Being a Watanabe project, and his first since Sakamichi no Apollon, Zankyou no Terror was always going to fall victim to the "hype train". However, now that months have past since the series has finished airing, it's now possible to review this anime series without having the over-reactions and other influences that hype trains entail.

The first few episodes of this series are executed well. The first episode focuses on the two young terrorists as they carry out a terrorist attack on an office building. This episode is fast paced, well directed, intense and sets the bar high for the series. The next episode details ... the aftermath of the terrorist attack, before the next terrorist attack happens, this time with a riddle involved for the police to solve. Again, like the pilot, the second episode is just as intense. But one odd thing is mentioned; the idea that the terrorist attack in the first episode didn't kill anyone. While at the time this wasn't a major issue, it was the first moment where it seemed the show could be flawed.

Zankyou no Terror continues over the next two episodes in a similar vein to the previous two, but then episode five comes along. Here, they decide to throw a spanner in the works; a new antagonist is introduced. Having a new antagonist isn't always a bad thing, however in this case there isn't much time to develop another character and the new antagonist is almost cartoonishly evil (there's a minor explanation of her personality later on, but it isn't enough to excuse her antics). This ruins the grounded feel the anime had over the previous episodes.

Now with a new antagonist, Zankyou no Terror spends the next few episodes focused on the random antics of the antagonist instead of exploring the themes and characters introduced in the first few episodes. When these antics are finished, it's already the last episode of the show. Hence, this is the situation that's left when the series concludes (without spoilers):

- The main duo never get developed past being savants with a bad past
- Lisa is completely insignificant to the plot
- The second antagonist's actions didn't affect the overall plot, nor did they help convey any message
- Shibazaki is the same as he was in the beginning of the series
- The terrorist attacks are portrayed as harmless when clearly many people would have been affected
- Any commentary on issues such as the lasting effects of nuclear bombings, USA's influence on Japan and general government corruption are rushed through, leaving no impact on anyone watching.

But there are still some positives to Zankyou no Terror that lasted for longer than the first four episodes of the show; the cinematography, animation quality and soundtrack. The most notable is the music, done by Yoko Kanno (known for Cowboy Bebop as well as many other anime). The soundtrack is perhaps one of the best I have ever heard; enhancing every scene and aspect of the show and is good enough to listen to over and over as a stand alone album. As for the animation quality, everything is fluid and of a high production value from beginning to end. It is clear that great care was taken for the technical aspects of the show.

If there was ever an anime that would be described as "wasted potential", Zankyou no Terror is it. With everything going well for the first third of the series, it's disappointing to see things fall apart as they did. Since two thirds of the show are fairly frustrating to watch, I can't recommend Zankyou no Terror to anyone. However, if you are set on watching the show, it won't be the worst experience ever as there are far worse shows out there. Sadly, there may not be another anime focused on terrorism for a long time.

The plot progression was slow, the writing was sub-par and the characters came off as empty due to poorly plotted character depth. The building up to the climax was slow and tedious, mostly because the key draw of the show was tied to our main cast whom I didn’t really care about and who were hardly developed along the way; which raises a problem for me with TiR (Terror in Resonance): Sacrificing character development while trying to tell a story that is character-driven. In doing so it shot itself in the foot since the message of this show depends on the character depth of the ... cast.

Throughout the journey of TiR it raised a lot of questions to hook us, a great deal of which aren’t answered until the last episode. A lot of these questions deal with our protagonists, Nine and Twelve.

The overall story revolves around Sphinx, an anonymous organization consisting of Nine and Twelve, who are supposed to be these troubled but exceptionally smart teens that want to send a message to the world, and they’re willing to use bombs and threats to do it. They want the world to know about the bad things that happened to them in their past, and that isn’t revealed until the last few episodes. Throughout the series we are clued in that that message has to do with their troubled pasts via flashbacks and brief dialogues between them.

Because we know so little about any character throughout this series I found it hard to care about any of them. The few clues we have of their lives are mostly visual in nature, or by their interactions with other characters who are equally (if not more) lacking in depth.

Nine is pretty much the cold calculative guy, but he’s not as cold as Lelouch (from Code Geass) or Light Yagami (from Death Note). This is ironic because you would think it would take heartless resolve to use bombs in public places to get people’s attention. You undoubtedly risk killing, or at the very least injuring, people in the process. This is supposed to be eased off by the fact that our protagonists are super smart. This, however, leaves the question lingering of whether or not they, being as smart as they are, could’ve found a better alternative.

Twelve is the polar opposite of Nine in how he relates to others; he’s still just as smart though. As a person, he’s fairly happy-go-lucky and care-free. I suppose that’s meant to identify his innocence or underdeveloped character. He doesn’t seem to have any goals of his own; he’s pretty much attached to Nine out of some sense of camaraderie and came off as more of a loyal dog than a friend. It isn’t until near the end of the show that his desires become clearer.

Lisa is pretty much an average girl who gets mixed up with Sphinx because she was stuck between a rock and a hard place (partly because of Twelve, the rest because of personal issues dealing with her home and school environment). She doesn’t fit in in terms of smarts, but she has one thing in common with them; loneliness. She acts as a medium to help flesh out the characters of nine and twelve more concerning their relations with people who aren’t like them.

Five is a crazy chick from Sphinx’s past who is obsessed with beating Nine in a game of intellect and will do so using any means necessary. She works with the US Government to help put an end to Sphinx. Her purpose seemed to form a contrast between herself and Sphinx in terms of their morality. Apart from that, her character made no sense, resulting in a superficial and meaningless entity. No surprise considering she received zero development throughout the whole series.

Shibazaki is the detective working on bringing Sphinx to justice. He acts more as plot tool to help us understand Sphinx more than anything else.

The climax of the story felt empty. I found myself asking “What was the point? Did Sphinx have to go to such extremes just to get that message across? Was it worth it?” and also, “For being so smart you’d have thought they would find a less risky alternative to meet their goals.” My conclusion is that it wasn’t a reasonable story; some of their actions didn’t match the characterizations they were meant to portray. That lack of reason from a show that seems to want to emulate reason is what put the nail in the coffin for me.

I would not recommend this show to anyone who cares about character depth or plot. I wouldn’t even recommend it to someone who doesn’t, simply because the show takes itself seriously. If I recommended it to anyone, it would be as an example of poor execution.

(This review does not focus on any segment and is more of a reasoning of why I gave ZnT a 5, I do list good points but I mainly point out the bad things, this is still a review and structures like one.)

Shinchiro Watanabe has made some goddamn memroble ass series', in the year of 2014, the first one which aired in Winter was Space Dandy, a fun and enjoyable show which got good response from audience, a second season came out in Summer, during summer, this show also was airing, and it got massive amounts of praise, but in reality, it didn't really need ... all of it, this didn't really feel like Watanabe's works. His other works feel free to do anything, for example, in Cowboy Bebop, the plot and characters were given to us in about 8 episodes and from there on, the story could do what it wants, it could focus on any topic. Here it just feels strict and forced, 11 episodes really isn't enough to spread the story here. Cause of this it makes characters feel less memroble and have less time to develop, now I'm not saying that 11 episodes is way too little for a show, there's amazing shows that are only 11 episodes such as The Tatami Galaxy. The developements needs more time and the plot needs more explaining and the explaining done in this show is rushed and needs to take its time.

Now I sound like i'm saying way too many bad things about this show and sound like I'm just gonna shit all over this show. Well not really, some key points to this show is the music and animation, this is not the only good things about the show but I do want to get it out of the way. The music is general is goddamn beautiful, its OST is filled with vibrant and calm moods, its a OST I'd actually pay money for. The OP is creative and inutitive with its vibrant animation and great concept of its music. The ED is a sad tune to really make you feel sympathy for some of the characters and the one it focuses on. the voice acting is solid and performed well by the characters. I could go on a whole paragrah or two saying how beautiful the music is, but this is a review, not a music analyzation. The animation is well done, everything seems hyper-realistic, people actually drew all this shit! The character designs are drawn well and look realistic as animation forms. This leads to the next good couple of things about this show.

The realism of this show is a whole 'nother level compared to other anime's worlds, it makes slice of life look like a puppy. Yes you heard me, a thriller's world makes a slice of life's look childish. The world is what you'd expect in modern society, the show even shows you some civillians lives when something happens and their reactions, it really shows you this isn't some place where anything can happen out of nowhere. This just sucks you into the show, even the technology used by the main MCs fr
or bombing and hacking are actual things from the real world such as Apple products, Sony, even out of that. Now I'm only mentioning this to show its realism, not, 'the MCs use Apple, the MCs have shit taste, why aren't they using [insert non-apple thing here]? Take a note of that.

The only way I was able to watch this show was cause of this world alone, other than that, it seems, meh. There isn't really much else from that. The characters are intriguing at first but as you learn about them, by the last couple of episodes, the only entertainment is the tense scenes, music and beautiful scenery. The world is pretty much how it would act in panic mode which has been done before in anime. So really, the beautiful world just becomes something frail.

Now for the only thing i haven't mentioned, the characters, the glue between Story and Enjoyment. We have Nine and Twelve, Both these are the MCs and are terrorists, the interesting thing about them is that they don't kill anyone when doing their attacks. By the end of this show, even when we know all about their pasts, we still don't know why they don't kill people during their bombings. Now their personalities (no pun intended) are average at best, Nine is smart, brutal and poker face all the time man while Twelve is happy, clumsy and smiling all the time man. Their bond is strong, they both act as if they're brother of sympathy and pain. Later on in about episode 4 or 5, Lisa joins in on 9 and 12. As much as I don't wanna say it, she's more of a plot-device than anything and is goddamn useless to the plot. We don't know shit about her past, she gets bullied for some reason and she runs away from here mom cause she's overprotective, why she runs away? What does her mother really do? Sure we see her call and text her daughter (Lisa) more than usual but we don't know much about her. She has a bond with 12 yet why we need this bond? We don't really know, probably added for fanservice and pointless shipping. What I'm saying in this long paragraph in summary is that these characters have their ups and downs but in reality they feel rushed and leave plotholes.

Story: 5
Art: 10
Sound: 10
Character: 6
Enjoyment: 5

Zankyou no Terror has so much potential yet dosen't have enough episodes nor time to space it out. Its a good idea done poorly. I like the idea of the terrorism. I like how smart 9 and 12 are. I like how they plan out their bombs. I like how they trick the police. I love the fuck out of the world, music and animation. This show could have been something amazing, if it had 22 episodes and had more time to flesh out things, this show could be a deep message about terrorism. Do I reccomend this show? Well not really, but as time to waste, go ahead, its only 11 eps and can easily be finished in one sitting. ZnT is good ideas wasted.