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.
