Zankyou no Terror Episode 8 Discussion

BRK25 said:
My biggest question that I'm getting is Lisa's place.

If she's not a part of Shibazaki in any heritage, then there must be something going on that we don't know in the works. There's no way they put her in and has no service or use.

Waiting on that cinematography.

Kurini said:
Ugh, the ugly CG that doesn't fit the animation @00:10:02. I'm nitpicking.

Things are falling apart for Nine and Twelve. Twelve is being reckless. What can he possibly do alone against Five and all the polices. ><

Btw, the full version of the ED is out. :D

dokidokidoing said:
I hope you don't mind me giving my two cents about the show.

I like Lisa. I've never been part of an abusive household, but I have been bullied several times in the past, and I identify heavily with her desire to please, be useful and to fit in. I'll be the first to admit that that's an overpowering desire that doesn't always make you act rationally. The things I was doing in my early/mid-teens... you'd honestly think I should've known better (heh...). She's a lost kid trying to fit in with other lost kids, but the problem is that these other kids are facing circumstances that are way out of her depth- something that didn't fully hit her until this episode. People say that she doesn't really belong anywhere... I think that's kind of the point.

As for Five... I think her character actually makes sense considering the background we've been given. We know that she, Nine and Twelve were from an institution that essentially robbed them of their identities. Nine and Twelve escaped, but Five didn't, so I'm assuming that she completed whatever conditioning process that the institution offered. Because of that, Five's development and maturity has been messed up. Simply put, she's a unbalanced kid stuck in a more mature woman's body. I'd go out on a limb and say that Nine and Twelve would probably have ended up like her if they hadn't escaped. I think it's interesting to note that she chose to embrace this hollow, childish insanity- Nine implied that she could have escaped from the institution if she wanted to. The following is purely speculation, but maybe it's her way of making up for the loss of her previous identity. The show never struck me as being particularly realistic in the first place, so her character didn't really bother me.

At its core, I think Zankyou no Terror is a story about outcasts trying to connect with each other. As much as I enjoy how the show handles things thematically, and as much as I enjoy the visual storytelling (I think this is one of those shows where the visuals/cinematography/music are as important as the dialogue in helping viewers fill the blanks), it isn't perfect. I think it's obvious that Watanabe wanted the show to be equal parts psychological study/social commentary and action thriller, but he hasn't really succeeded in weaving those elements together. So he chooses to deal with them separately instead. Mind you, I think he deals with each individual topic well enough, but the narrative would have been smoother if he'd somehow meshed the two together. And I think this disjoint in the narrative isn't a recent problem- in my opinion, it was present even in the earlier episodes, though it manifested differently then.

pakoko said:


It's definitely refreshing to see your comment amongst comments that more or less all say the same thing about Lisa or Five. I definitely get that characters have been a problem for this show, but the main focus of this show is not necessarily about the characters' development. Some people are so caught up about Lisa doing something stupid or Five acting like a classic villain (what does that even mean?) that they're like "See? there she does it again!" like it matters hugely looking at the series as a whole. The show has so much more to offer than just its weak characters, like the story, great cinematography, beautiful animation, and amazing soundtrack that it doesn't make much sense to rate this show lowly because one (or two) character(s) ruins it for viewers.

Lisa was not supposed to be anyone special. I don't know what people's expectations were, but she wasn't supposed to be some super intelligent hacker or some secretly crazy arson. She's a completely average, softspoken girl that just happened to witness Nine and Twelve during the first bombing. Have you ever considered a scenario in which the protagonist is actually not that special? Put yourself in Lisa's shoes. If you were to be picked up by two skilled terrorists, chances are you'd mess up just like Lisa. Sometimes people are forgetting that we're not watching a shounen anime in which Lisa will develop some hidden ability. She's an outcast in a realistic society that is trying hard to fit in and do something right for a change, but keeps failing miserably. She's practically been doing nothing her whole life, but I guess people expected that she'll suddenly become a crazy good terrorist or develop into some strong, outspoken hero. She shouldn't be bashed on every single week for every single stupid thing she does, but I suggest that people wait to see or at least theorize why she's one of the main protagonists despite her being a VERY unlikely protagonist.

Five's circumstances are not known 100%. But like you said, she probably didn't want to become who she was right now. It's implied that she was experimented on with various drugs, and we see her suffering some withdrawal symptoms as a result of drug addiction or overdose. We get a glimpse of Five's true character this episode for the first time and people still hate her as a "classic villain" because of a couple mean things she said to Lisa. Rather, she only seems evil and psychotic because she is desperately trying to kill Nine and Twelve. We'll have to wait to see what her exact reasons are, but she's certainly suffering. It's like if she doesn't kill Nine and Twelve soon she'll die or experience something along the lines of death. She's been downright evil not caring about who she kills because whatever the consequences are of failing to kill Nine and Twelve is driving Five insane and making her fearful.

Well said on your last paragraph. Watanabe definitely isn't perfect in his execution of this show, and because he was trying to approach the psychological study/social commentary and action thriller together, it's understandable that he'd sacrifice characters to become more like plot devices in order to deliver a story strong enough for a 1-cour.

Toaki90 said:
Shibazaki could have 2 daughters you know..

pakoko said:


It's definitely refreshing to see your comment amongst comments that more or less all say the same thing about Lisa or Five. I definitely get that characters have been a problem for this show, but the main focus of this show is not necessarily about the characters' development. Some people are so caught up about Lisa doing something stupid or Five acting like a classic villain (what does that even mean?) that they're like "See? there she does it again!" like it matters hugely looking at the series as a whole. The show has so much more to offer than just its weak characters, like the story, great cinematography, beautiful animation, and amazing soundtrack that it doesn't make much sense to rate this show lowly because one (or two) character(s) ruins it for viewers.

Lisa was not supposed to be anyone special. I don't know what people's expectations were, but she wasn't supposed to be some super intelligent hacker or some secretly crazy arson. She's a completely average, softspoken girl that just happened to witness Nine and Twelve during the first bombing. Have you ever considered a scenario in which the protagonist is actually not that special? Put yourself in Lisa's shoes. If you were to be picked up by two skilled terrorists, chances are you'd mess up just like Lisa. Sometimes people are forgetting that we're not watching a shounen anime in which Lisa will develop some hidden ability. She's an outcast in a realistic society that is trying hard to fit in and do something right for a change, but keeps failing miserably. She's practically been doing nothing her whole life, but I guess people expected that she'll suddenly become a crazy good terrorist or develop into some strong, outspoken hero. She shouldn't be bashed on every single week for every single stupid thing she does, but I suggest that people wait to see or at least theorize why she's one of the main protagonists despite her being a VERY unlikely protagonist.

Five's circumstances are not known 100%. But like you said, she probably didn't want to become who she was right now. It's implied that she was experimented on with various drugs, and we see her suffering some withdrawal symptoms as a result of drug addiction or overdose. We get a glimpse of Five's true character this episode for the first time and people still hate her as a "classic villain" because of a couple mean things she said to Lisa. Rather, she only seems evil and psychotic because she is desperately trying to kill Nine and Twelve. We'll have to wait to see what her exact reasons are, but she's certainly suffering. It's like if she doesn't kill Nine and Twelve soon she'll die or experience something along the lines of death. She's been downright evil not caring about who she kills because whatever the consequences are of failing to kill Nine and Twelve is driving Five insane and making her fearful.

Well said on your last paragraph. Watanabe definitely isn't perfect in his execution of this show, and because he was trying to approach the psychological study/social commentary and action thriller together, it's understandable that he'd sacrifice characters to become more like plot devices in order to deliver a story strong enough for a 1-cour.

pakoko said:
Posting something I've said in another thread:



So Lisa ends up leaving and gets caught by Five. Nine and Twelve, more so Twelve, realizes that he can't let Lisa leave him like this, so he chases after her. There are surprisingly a lot of parallel to the play/musical "My Fair Lady."

What did we learn?
1) Rising Peace Academy executed the Athena plan to gather gifted orphans. The contents of the experiments are not known yet, but judging from pharmaceutical companies and other medical companies, children were tested with novel drugs it seems. Seems like they used gifted orphans as lab rats.

2) Lisa is not Shibasaki's daughter. This just puts more of a question to her character besides being a damsel in distress.

3) Five is not fooling around. She is desperate to kill Nine and Twelve for some reason we don't know of yet. The plutonium is definitely going to play a big part in something, we just don't know what yet. When she describes Nine and Twelve as "having no future," I wonder if all the gifted children are running on some kind of time limit?

4) First time Twelve doubts what they're doing is right. Twelve goes to save a girl he basically doesn't know much about rather than sticking with Nine. What's making him so fond of Lisa?

Shibasaki also points out that the term "terrorist" is used too easily nowadays because of all the terrorist attacks we've had. Instead of seeing Sphinx as trying to achieve something greater, people nowadays are blinded by destruction and fear and categorize people who "disturb the peace" immediately as "terrorists."

LOL DA FK LISA YOU DON'T PUT POCKY IN CURRY XD

BRK25 said:

You know what people complaining on these Lisa and Five remarks reminds me of?

A true story.

Went to Ihop with friends, there was a table next to us, a family ordered their food, they were friendly and all. Things were going well

BUT

The mother ordered a nutella breakfast platter and asked the waiter why said Nutella wasn't on there. When she was told they ran out, she was visibly frustrated and said it herself. When she asked for the manager and was told he wasn't here due to the time the IHOP opened, the whole family left in outright anger.

ALL FOR A CONDIMENT!

I'd understand if it was underocoked or not presentable, no, for a simple thing as a condiment....Didn't even ask to be given compensation, left without a another thought.

Seriously, you can't enjoy the full picture but we must nitpick the smallest things that are wrong. Maybe it's a human thing where we see something close to perfection or amazing and want to drill holes in the logic or flaw and be glad we saw a plot hole than accept what we have.

That's why Baka and Test, the tone handed to be very light, we don't have an issue and are okay with things going crazy.

But here, with the tone, the smallest error must be scrutinize under a microscope and be bigger than what it really is. It's a shame. Cause despite the characters on the weak side, everything else has been phenomenal.

dokidokidoing said:
I hope you don't mind me giving my two cents about the show.

I like Lisa. I've never been part of an abusive household, but I have been bullied several times in the past, and I identify heavily with her desire to please, be useful and to fit in. I'll be the first to admit that that's an overpowering desire that doesn't always make you act rationally. The things I was doing in my early/mid-teens... you'd honestly think I should've known better (heh...). She's a lost kid trying to fit in with other lost kids, but the problem is that these other kids are facing circumstances that are way out of her depth- something that didn't fully hit her until this episode. People say that she doesn't really belong anywhere... I think that's kind of the point.

dokidokidoing said:

As for Five... I think her character actually makes sense considering the background we've been given. We know that she, Nine and Twelve were from an institution that essentially robbed them of their identities. Nine and Twelve escaped, but Five didn't, so I'm assuming that she completed whatever conditioning process that the institution offered. Because of that, Five's development and maturity has been messed up. Simply put, she's a unbalanced kid stuck in a more mature woman's body. I'd go out on a limb and say that Nine and Twelve would probably have ended up like her if they hadn't escaped. I think it's interesting to note that she chose to embrace this hollow, childish insanity- Nine implied that she could have escaped from the institution if she wanted to. The following is purely speculation, but maybe it's her way of making up for the loss of her previous identity. The show never struck me as being particularly realistic in the first place, so her character didn't really bother me.

dokidokidoing said:

At its core, I think Zankyou no Terror is a story about outcasts trying to connect with each other. As much as I enjoy how the show handles things thematically, and as much as I enjoy the visual storytelling (I think this is one of those shows where the visuals/cinematography/music are as important as the dialogue in helping viewers fill the blanks), it isn't perfect. I think it's obvious that Watanabe wanted the show to be equal parts psychological study/social commentary and action thriller, but he hasn't really succeeded in weaving those elements together. So he chooses to deal with them separately instead. Mind you, I think he deals with each individual topic well enough, but the narrative would have been smoother if he'd somehow meshed the two together. And I think this disjoint in the narrative isn't a recent problem- in my opinion, it was present even in the earlier episodes, though it manifested differently then.

skudoops said:

I think you are misunderstanding some of the criticism of Lisa (actually just my criticism of her, I actually agree with a lot of what you are saying). She's fine as a character for what they are aiming for but fitting into the show she seems out of place. Firstly she doesn't really affect the plot until over half way in, which is pretty strange for a main character and when you do think about how they used her she seems like the Rei (EVA) of this series. She goes from being completely irrelevant to being a pure plot device just like that, with her own personal struggles and past very briefly touched upon and her actions are simply to get the story moving along. The biggest problem for me is when I think about the show without Lisa I feel absolutely nothing would be lost.

skudoops said:

I don't think I agree with you here because if I were to condition a person for military use, the first thing would be to stamp out the child like behavior. Five's overly complicated plans make very little sense to me for someone who is conditioned. Let's use this episode as an example, why would five send the bomb to the building 9, lisa and 12 were in? Wouldn't it have simply made more sense to simply wait for all of them to come back then get them then? Instead she makes it quite aware that she knows Lisa's face for what reason exactly? The whole thing seems pretty forced and over the top. As for realism, the show (at least in the early episodes) tried very hard to explain how things worked (such as the bomb) and went into a fair amount of detail about the plans 9 and 12 came up with. If you didn't think so that's fine, but it seemed like they were going for a much more realistic approach, that's why a lot of people have a problem with 5's over the top character.

katsuhan said:
Feels so forced and pretentious

Firstly how the hell five knows that these 2 would save Risa so that keeps her card? How the hell that these 2 and Risa dont even realised what is missing?

5 is overrated i cant see anything so special about her at all, beside being so forced, why the heck she can figured out Risa and 12-9 current location from Risa's card?

And why did Risa have to be a plot device, she deserve better than that, she looks so promising,

Anything started out so good but it getting worse, i think this series should be around 15 or 20 eps, so it isnt rushed and forced.

mayukachan said:
Please have a season 2 or sequel movie. You need it!

Anyway, things are finally falling into place and Nine and Twelve have to act up and think of the consequences because they're trapped now. This show gives me Mawaru Penguindrum vibes more than just Death Note because of the

Verdure said:
If five had lisa's/9/12's address,why didn't she arrest them already?What's the point of the bomb?To think that there are multiple cameras tracking lisa,why aren't there any on 9/12?What's the point of this game?This show is getting more and more illogical.Though i must admit i do enjoy Shibazaki scenes.

BRK25 said:
I don't think I agree with you here because if I were to condition a person for military use, the first thing would be to stamp out the child like behavior. Five's overly complicated plans make very little sense to me for someone who is conditioned. Let's use this episode as an example, why would five send the bomb to the building 9, lisa and 12 were in? Wouldn't it have simply made more sense to simply wait for all of them to come back then get them then? Instead she makes it quite aware that she knows Lisa's face for what reason exactly? The whole thing seems pretty forced and over the top. As for realism, the show (at least in the early episodes) tried very hard to explain how things worked (such as the bomb) and went into a fair amount of detail about the plans 9 and 12 came up with. If you didn't think so that's fine, but it seemed like they were going for a much more realistic approach, that's why a lot of people have a problem with 5's over the top

orchidork said:
this episode was predictable. the events i didn't want happening in this type of show ended up occurring.

lisa ended up pulling an idiotic move and now 9 and 12 are going to have to face the consequences because lisa decided not to use her brain.

also, how do the police not know that 9 and 12's hideout was bombed? shouldn't they investigate that bombing?

12 picked a girl he hardly even knew and who was more of a nuisance than an asset over 9. i bet that gutted 9

fanshii said:


There ARE mentally unstable people in the military though - some of them have been in the jail even, it's not uncommon. Maybe not so high in power as Five, but... still. I agree that she is a little over the top though, but I don't think it ruins the show as much as some people make it to be - it's still one of the better shows this season imo. It certainly must be disappointing for people who were expecting a realistic approach through the whole anime, but I think it's still very good anyway.

pakoko said:

tl;dr Not trying to argue here, but I'm just saying Five's over-the-top personality has a reason and she clearly shows that this episode. We have to wait for the exact reason why she's so desperate on killing Nine and Twelve to the point of killing innocent lives, but the focus shouldn't be on how much "sense" her plans make because obviously it's not going to make sense if you're not Five and if you're not the scriptwriter for ZnT.

skudoops said:

Well, I do hope they clear up the reasons for her behaviour, there should be an info dump coming soon so that may or may not clear everything up. That's why I said this show feels like I'm watching it from the middle going on to the end, there's a lot of critical information missing that would help understand the characters a bit more.

For instance I personally I think 12's eagerness to help Lisa is due to guilt he feels from leaving 5 behind. Now that's a stretch, but given what we know of their past it doesn't seem all that unlikely, however only 9 has been shown to get troubled by the event, so my theory loses credibility that 12 is helping Lisa because he doesn't want to leave another friend behind. However the experience they went through is probably the same reason 9 didn't want to deal with Lisa in the first place because they showed how much it affected him.

TLDR: They just need to fill in the blanks for me to understand 5.

geralt said:
I feel like Twelve's attachment to Lisa is quite weird, as it's not like they had that much time to bond.
Apart from that, the episode was decent, Shibazaki slowly finding out the truth about the Athena plan was probably the most interesting part. Also, Five finding Lisa as soon as she left was too convenient and an example of lazy writing in my opinion, because unless the Tokyo in Zankyou no Terror is as big as my room it shouldn't be that easy to find a person.

ChibiEmmyChan said:
Lisa was making dinner when the guy came with the bomb. And when she ran out of the building and met with nine and twelve I couldn't help but think of what she would say when she explains what happened.
Lisa "Well I was trying to make dinner when..."
Nine or Twelve "What sort of food were you trying to make that it would explode like that?!?!?"
Lisa " No no! It was the package not the dinner! A guy came to deliver a package. "

Darstorm-Sandude said:
What is the name of the song that plays right after the OP in this episode?

pakoko said:
Yeah I've had a discussion with someone else about this problem and I think Watanabe is holding too much out on us on the necessary background information

Takuan_Soho said:


The problem with your problem is that it is a sign of a poorly thought out plot that replaces story with style (in this case Watanabe's signature ear for music). He isn't "holding" out on the background information, we already know who Lisa will end up being the daughter of (and her relationship with the police officer (and yes he will die)), its just that since there is no real story there is no need to go into any more depth about them.

There has been 4 writers in only 8 episodes. This explains why the story is so disjointed, it is more a relay novel than an actual coherent story. Which is why in the first couple of episodes we see the MC's as hard core terrorists who will blow up a 60 story building and steal plutonium, but in subsequent episodes have transformed themselves into pacifists who wouldn't hurt a fly and are seeking to "save" Lisa (12 in paricular has transformed without a single explanation at to why).

Too many cooks spoil the broth, and too many writers for an original work (as opposed to basing it on an external source) takes great beginnings and turn them into crud. Suisei no Gargantia, Galilei Donna, K, all had multiple writers and all ended up being horrific despite intriguing beginnings.

Zankyou is unraveling as those other shows did, and I unfortunately have no hope that they will be able to salvage what had been a brilliant start. Good animation and music will rescue it for some fans, but it will be for those reasons, not the story.

That said, would love to be proven wrong, but I would rather go in with NO expectations, than to go in and have my hopes crushed.

Verdure said:
If five had lisa's/9/12's address,why didn't she arrest them already?What's the point of the bomb?