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.
