Zankyou no Terror is an original psychological thriller show. It is a different take on terrorism, and received massive hype during its airing for supposedly "thrilling" and "realistic" execution. However, what's the anime really about? A couple of kids running around bombing stuff to solve their problems.
Plot:
A video on the internet regarding a mysterious group called "Sphynx" gets the attention of Japan after unknown people destroy a Tokyo Government building. Nine and Twelve, children with number codenames and the masterminds behind the terrorism act, begin their game of riddles where the result of failure is a bomb detonation, while leaving subtle messages behind the bombings.
The plot is seemingly very intriguing and unique at first, with the audience starting to wonder what's this all about and what's the point behind it. Sadly, that ends with the premise. Nothing really important happens from the main plot in this show. It's summed up very easily - a bunch of kids are playing a riddle game in hopes for someone to come and solve their problems, all of this with a bomb twist. The way they wanted to make this all happen is incredibly stupid and unlogical, and it just becomes obvious that explosions exist for the sake of explosions.
There's no real depth or a message this anime wants to translate: everything is just extremely shallow. We get no idea as to why the main characters wanted to approach the situation this exact way, or how the hell did they manage to do it. It is praised as being "very innovative - exploring the society's problems in a unique way", and dear god that's just so wrong. Despite the popular belief, and that the anime thinks it has that, there's actually no terrorism in this show. "Terror" as a word means "to frighten". "Terrorism" - acts that are intended to create fear, are perpetrated for a religious, political, or ideological goal or for demands. None of these things apply to the show, sans the last one which is so subtly hinted that it is impossible to derive it in such a way without relying on massive amount of plot conveniences. (which this anime uses for god knows how many times). Fear doesn't exist in the show, because there's no global perspective - it feels like the bombings are just an everyday thing and nobody cares much that their lives are constantly in danger. So what do we get? A useless plot element. It is just suprising why the characters don't do the first logical thing possible and instead create an extremely unlikely plan that is almost sure to not work (but because of plot convieniences, that becomes possible) and has the exact same result in the end.
Characters:
The characters of the show suffer from being one-dimensional and uncharacterized. The main protagonists, Nine and Twelve, have their own personality traits (Twelve being sweet and easy-going, Nine being serious and determined), but that's about it. Their backdrop is hinted to be something extremely horrible, but it is never elaborated in the show. Instead, the fragments of their backstory just randomly inserted, and it is impossible to actually guess the scale of importance of the events in their past until much later in the anime, when it comes off as very disappointing and underwhelming reveal. The main problem with the protagonists, though, are that they just don't fit to be terrorists. The show attempts to please the casual viewers by making the main characters a pair of teenagers that are super smart, but it forgets to also give enough of a motive for them to start doing what they're doing this exact way and not just going to the police and tell them what the hell happened in their past.
The pair is joined by Lisa, who receives a lot of attention early on, but nothing happens with her character. She joins the duo simply to be a plot device and to drive the conflict of Five and the protagonists the way the anime wants to it to go. She has her own personal problems, but they're not focused on, and she just comes off as a dull character with a clumsy trait. She receives no reasonable development and apart from one scene, extremely irrelevant to the story, so it's really sad to see the potential and the focus shown to her early on being wasted.
Next on we have the antagonist Five. Okay, she is an extremely stupidly written character. Her motives are contradicting, she gets the same cliched antagonist traits and actually is irrelevant to the end result. I personally have no idea why she was needed in the anime, most of the logical inaccuracies happen around her, and she is a fresh air of "generic" in a rather unique anime. The anime just wasn't fit to include a character like her, and that can be witnessed in her last scene in the show which was probably the stupidiest thing I've ever seen in anime this year.
The best character of the show is Shibazaki, and he's a friggin plot device. That's how sad it is. He is the "plot convienience" Sphynx was searching for to fulfill their insanely unlogical and impossible plan. Shibazaki gets some character development, has some sort of a character backstory that is somewhat believable and reflects on his current character quite well, but he gets pushed into a side role after Five is introduced. His personal drama wasn't elaborated much, but he was the only character on which "the rule of cool" worked. It was much more enjoyable and believable to watch him solve the riddles than witnessing Sphynx presenting them (why so serious?)
The side cast doesn't really exist in this show. Everything revolves around 4 (5 with Shibazaki's sidekick) characters in a story that actually has the entire population of Tokyo in direct influence. All other characters are just plot devices that are there to assume a certain position and for the anime to have realism in this aspect, but they are completely irrelevant. And since the next segment is going to talk about how there's no realism in this show at all, the above point becomes moot.
Writing:
And here we go. The most pretentious anime of the year. Let's start off with the impossibilities. It is IMPOSSIBLE to have no casualties after you destroy such a massive building. 9/11 had around 300 people killed on ground level, excluding the firefighters which is another 300. Total number of injured people was 7000. Here, we have no casualties even though the entire evacuated group happened to be next to the building when it exploded, and a mere 50 injuries. That's just so bullshit and immediately kills any immersion. You have a girl jumping from the 4th floor on the ground and she doesn't even get her legs broken, let alone a scratch or bruise? Are you seriously telling me two teenagers stole a friggin atomic bomb from a mass security nuclear facility? And are you seriously telling me the government took 0 actions to find out more about that and locate the stolen bomb before the attacks started happening? And it's just the first episode, guys. There's atleast dozen occurences of straight up impossible and illogical bullshit in every episode. It slows down between the second and the fourth episode, and that's where I thought the anime could actually be good but shit hits the fan again when Five is introduced and we witness the greatest chess game ever - using airport terminals.
Moving on to the riddles, the whole method is stupid and over the top. The duo needed the exact guy who was willing to research them this exact way, and they found a guy not only willing to do that but who was also a part of an incident which involved someone affiliated with their problem - what are the odds! We are never shown how they plant their bombs or how they manage to create them - everything already seems to be completed and in place and then we just need to wait for a boom. The pair are terrorists, but it was cringe-worthy watching them go nuts over a bomb which couldn't be defused, and that they could be labeled as murderers. The fact is that if this anime followed any string of proper logic, they would already be murderers at the very first bombing.
The thriller part is done very, very weakly. The whole thriller is that the audience doesn't know what the characters know but don't reveal because TENSION! That's not thrilling to watch, that's just f*cking frustrating. Their whole story is very predictable, it is very obvious that something happened in their childhood and they wanted revenge but there wasn't enough motive to start blowing stuff up, as the scale of events in their childhood wasn't so bad or shocking, and they were probably too young to understand all that. We have no information on what happened inbetween their childhood and the present events, and the duo talks like the Rising Hope Academy thing happened yesterday, when in reality anyone would most likely forget it over time (and sure as hell wouldn't start blowing up the city). The anime tries to make everything complex and mature and deep but everything comes out so messy that even a 10 year old child could write a more fluent script than this.
There is just way too much to talk about in this section, but I need to keep this short enough and not to spoil anything. The anime is not clever, it is pretentious. It tries to be something that it's not, and tries to be something that it fails to be. Since the show relies solely on being "logical" and "thrilling", if there are no other elements to get hooked to, you simply cannot enjoy this show because it's not "logical" and "thrilling". The only thing that is positive and worth mentioning is that there's no fanservice in this show. The comedy is very very little but it doesn't fit, but because there's almost none of it that's not a problem.
Animation and Sound:
Credit will be given where credit is due. Animation looks salad in this one, especially the explosions. The character designs are okay, although Five looks like a clown for some reason.
What I would like to talk about more is the soundtrack. Yoko Kanno nails one yet again. It is the best soundtrack of the year, with amazing piano arrangements and dramatical music fitting perfectly with the atmosphere. Standalone songs, such as "Hanna", are just amazing to listen. Overall, soundtrack is the only thing I really enjoyed in this show, and I have no complaints and arguments against it. The sound is also well made, the explosions sound realistically, especially in the last episode. The only complaint I have in the sound department is the awful Engrish and subpar voice acting in general, although Shunsuke Sakuya did a good job voicing Shibazaki.
The opening to the show is beautifully animated with decent music, but strangely enough, it doesn't fit with the anime at all. What is overlooked is the ending to the anime, which is simply animated but has some beautiful music and I ended up enjoying it way more than the opening.
Summary:
Zankyou No Terror is the definition of a pretentious anime, and a victim of the Code Geass R2 syndrome. It is overhyped because it is "different" in execution and the themes. Mind if I tell you, that being "unique" is not automatically being "good"? It has an amazing soundtrack, but I suggest just buying the OST album instead of watching this, if it's just for the music. Overall, a disapponting watch, but if you want something pretentiously clever you could check this out.
Final Verdict: 3.9/10
