Howlorihara

When the first episodes of Zankyou no Terror were released, I was prepared for this to be the best anime of the year.  This was an anime that I was anticipating for well over a month before its release.  The plot looked like it was taking on difficult subject matter in a mature style.  After watching the last episode, I conclude that it did handle many elements with great skill but it is not the masterful work that I expected.

Story:  Zankyou no Terror begins with Lisa, a girl bullied at school and the victim of a mother whose obsessive tendencies cross the line into abuse.  She becomes acquainted with two boys (known as Nine and Twelve) who she discovers to be terrorists.  Ultimately, this is the area where I believe this anime does not meet expectations.  Firstly, I do not think that this show knows what genre it should be.  It tries to treat itself as a mystery.  It presents its audience with evidence surrounding the bombings as if it wants us to figure it out with them, and it tries to create plot twists by the end.  Yet, the mystery it presents is not a mystery.  All the important parts of the case are elements the audience can guess fairly easily.  I honestly did not think that these issues were supposed to be a big secret.  I thought we were going to find them out pretty quickly and then move on.  However, so many of these are revealed in the last two episodes as if the creators had been keeping it under wraps the whole time.  It ended up feeling a little cheap in a plot that had better things to focus on.  It also fell into too many cliché scenes for its genre.  Villain X attaches a bomb to character Y and says I will blow Y up if you don't do Z.  It's almost as cliché as tying the leading female to the railroad tracks while the villain twirls his moustache.  I also think they ruined one of the things that made me excited about the show in the first place.  I wanted to see this story told from the point of view of the "villain".  I was actually looking forward to seeing some characters with a really warped sense of justice, believing that the acts of terrorism they cause are just.  I think that would have been an incredibly risky move that would have paid off incredibly if done correctly.  It would have been giving up a lot of the "likability factor" in trade for some truly fascinating psychological studies.  What we get instead is a particularly sad attempt to turn the terrorists into good guys with a cause in which they do not want anyone to die.  Furthermore, the end does not feel justified.  When I found out the reason behind their terrorist plots I could not help but think that their plan was incredibly convoluted.  For genius characters their plan was over complicated to the point of stupidity.

Animation: In complete contrast with the story, the art is close to perfect.  Not only is the animation smooth and detailed, the creators also chose the perfect style to accompany the dark atmosphere they were going for.  The art is as close to realism as possible but keeps with a severely muted color scheme so certain scenes almost appear to be in black and white.  Yet, the small areas of color that are included really do draw your eye.  I specifically remember a scene where Nine and Twelve were having a conversation and blue of Nine’s glasses was the only color I could see. 

Sound:  Firstly, the songs chosen for the soundtrack matched the mood perfectly.  The opening and closing feel modern but also seem to include an interesting feeling of solitude.  All of the music flows nicely with the scenes and does heighten the mood whenever they are present.  All of the voice actors also do an excellent job with their respective rolls.  However, my only problem is with the woman who voices Five.  It is stated clearly that this character has spent a very long time in America.  Thus, this character does speak a lot of English.  I cannot understand a majority of what she is saying. However, my main problem with it is that all of the English lines feel entirely dead.  There is almost no emphasis or emotion put into these lines, especially when a majority of these are meant to sound commanding.  While I understand that this area was probably difficult to voice, it was distracting and tended to kill the mood.

Characters:  I wanted to like this area so much more.  In the first episodes, they set up some interesting personality types.  I truly wanted to see Lisa actually interact with her mom and I wanted to see more about how this family life affected her psychologically.  However, that relation does not evolve past her mother screaming at her and Lisa running away. In the long run I felt like that is all she was.  She is well meaning but does not have the skill set to associate with terrorists.  That is pretty much it.  I also feel like some of her errors make her look like a complete idiot.  I do not mean she makes some silly errors here and there.  I mean that she tries to put strawberry Pocky in a stew and expects it to taste good.  Someone does not need to metaphorically burn water to show that they are a bad cook, and having her put Pocky in a stew feels like something a child would try.  Twelve ultimately doesn’t evolve much beyond the dual personalities the creators set him up with.  He is made up by his ability to be both adorable and threatening.  It is interesting at first and he has a lot of really unique lines that made me curious to see this character developed more, but in the end he doesn’t.  Nine is mostly aloof.  He is mister misunderstood and mister distant.  He evolves a little further than Twelve but not enough to make it feel like the creators took this character far enough.  The detective Shibazaki is only smart because the other detectives are idiots.  If your terrorists keep giving you riddles about Oedipus and mythology… go read a book on Greek mythology.  I kept feeling like the only reason he understood the riddles was because he was the only one who studied.  Five is completely irritating and badly set up.  Her character has almost no impact on the plot because her importance was in the past.  But what don’t we get from this character?  Flashbacks.  She does not have any important flashbacks.  We need a comparison between the relationships/ characters back then and them now.  Her current involvement leaves me uncertain of what the character is truly talking about half the time and makes me ask “Is this really that important?!”  I feel like the mystery aspect of the show should have been entirely dropped in order to put more development and focus into these characters.  They started out really well but took a back seat to the detective work about half way through.

While there were elements of this show that I truly enjoyed I cannot get past the plot holes and lack of development in certain areas.  Some areas were played so strangely that even the areas that are done well cannot evolve beyond them.