Reviews

Zankyou no Terror is a psychological/mystery thriller that will evoke memories of Death Note in the way that the two main characters "Twelve" and "Nine" play with the police. The story makes use of many riddles and mysteries to progress the story while also alluding to the past so the viewer can understand the characters' motivation. With that said, there was poor development of "Five" (one of the main antagonists) which ultimately felt a little rushed and brought the overall story of the anime down. The anime had excellent music which really brought the story to life and its worth the watch.

{Story} - The story started out excellent and I was engrossed in the mystery and psychological aspect from the very first episode. The problem the story ran into was their introduction of "Five" as an antagonist who was very poorly developed and really distracted from the main story. We are never given a reason for Five's interference other than she "is continuing a game from the past". The story did have a very interesting and complete resolution which saved it from its downward spiral.

{Art} - The art in Zankyou no Terror was nothing special but was certainly not bad. The only time it really stood out was in a moment when Twelve began to talk about his synesthesia (the ability to see sound). Other than that moment, it was pretty average but not bad.

{Sound} - Zankyou no Terror made excellent use of music throughout the anime and the opening and ending pieces were both excellent. I had no complaints about the sound or music and it definitely added to the flavor of the anime.

{Character} - Probably the weakest point of the anime. In an 11 episode anime, its difficult to give any depth to the characters and this really came through with both the two female main characters. Neither felt like there was any character progression and both felt poorly developed. I had originally planned to give the character section a 6/10 score, but ultimately decided to bump it to a 7/10 due to the development of the detective Shibazaki who was developed quite nicely.

{Enjoyment} - While the middle of the anime suffered due to the introduction of Five, the anime was quite enjoyable due to its incredibly fast pace and psychological/mystery aspect. I binge watched all 11 episodes in a row and never got bored (although Five definitely detracted from the show).

{Overall} - Overall I gave Zankyou no Terror a 7/10. The show had excellent potential but suffered from poor character development, poor character motivation and a few plot holes. If the show had been given even one or two more episodes to flesh out the backstory on Five a bit further, it may have saved her entire "arc", but the lack of displayed motivation to the viewer really felt unnecessary and dropped this anime from an 8/10.