Zankyou no Terror – 11 Review

*gasp* It’s almost as if Sphinx aren’t actually terrorists to begin with…!

At the beginning of this season, I definitely looked at Zankyou no Terror as a contender for the best series of this season. It had potential and if anything this series did show these seeds of potential. In the end, though… the only award it could get is for the most pointless ending.

Zankyou no Terror – 08-10 Review

I don’t think an ordinary person would have plutonium to begin with…

*sigh* Well, that wasn’t spectacular. Sure, it wasn’t like I had high expectations or anything but I thought, the series would at least be able to deliver some decent amount of depth with its third act. Instead, what we’ve got was Japanese people struggling to insert Western cheese into an anime. And it seems those people don’t seem to understand how or why that particular Western cheese was made, the same which they are now unwittingly using in this series. I had hoped the series would be able to deliver some revelations that would give the whole series more coherence and depth and I feared stuff like what’s happening right now would happen. It’s not the worst-case-scenario at least but it’s also far away from the best-case-scenario. For all its interesting elements, I don’t think anyone will think of it much in a year or so.

Zankyou no Terror – 07 Review

Actually, why ARE Nine and Twelve called terrorists in the first place…?! Time was when you needed a cause to become a terrorist.

I really don’t have the patience anymore to put up with this series’ bullshit. After seven (of 11 or so) episodes I’m still not sure what the story is supposed to be. Sure, I can guess. There are a couple hints –  but there’s nothing definite. And if a series does SO little to explain its story, I really don’t feel like doing the work for it. Even if my experience with various tropes would help me to fill in the blanks for this series flawed storytelling, I really wouldn’t think that this would be an excuse for what this series is doing. And yet here we are: 7th episode – and still there’s no significant story-beat to put all this nonsense in order. One thing I suspect is happening here after reading this interview of the series’ director Watanabe is that this series wants to be like an US-action-TV-show – except that it’s in Japan and that it has anime-elements like its reliance on teenager-protagonists for example. But due to the fact that Watanabe (or one of the other writers) don’t really understand what makes the shows tick that inspired this series, Zankyou no Terror has become the shallow affair that it is.

Zankyou no Terror – 05/06 Review

Sure, but some cautionary tales really work better without any empirical evidence.

What does this series actually want to appear like to its audience? The thing that really confounds me about this series isn’t what is going on or what character fulfils what roles, it’s the simple question what the purpose of all this is supposed to be. At the beginning the series was too mysterious to answer that question. The series really just pondered about its own meaning for four episodes without reaching a conclusion or some other form of answer. Instead, this evil girl gets dropped into the action and now everyone’s panicking that the price to actually finding the answer to that mystery may be too high. At least, as long as it requires for someone really villainous to hunt down the “terrorists”. I don’t know… Nine and Twelve aren’t exactly hero-material and they aren’t anti-hero-material either because it isn’t clear what their deal is. So, right now the series really just wants you to cheer for the lesser of two evils here. And maybe this would be interesting if the series had actually already addressed the important question of what the hell is going on in this series.

Zankyou no Terror – 04 Review

What a witty metaphor! Seriously, this series desperately needs some self-awareness when it comes to referencing present-day-stuff.

Zankyou no Terror isn’t a series I hold in high regard right now. It’s competent, it’s ambitious, it has a good direction and it clearly has something say to the audience (who knows at this point if anyone actually wants to hear what that message is) but the story… It’s not very complicated. And it’s not because there aren’t layers to this series’ story, it’s because the series shies away from embracing its own story. It languishes in the presentation of its premise while not really moving forward to the next stage of that premise. The series doesn’t have any deep drama or characters being able to push the plot forward. The pacing is VERY slow so far and even if the series gets better at nailing all the facets of its themes, there’s still an obvious lack of story-development. Also, I’ve already said that this series’ finale will ultimately decide whether all this will be worth it but watching this on a weekly basis shows that that’s more something you should do in a movie and not in a series. In a movie you can have over an hour of seemingly insignificant plot only to make it all seem important with one really good plottwist.  But with a series you have to build up attachment and investment in smaller doses instead of going for the one big reveal that completes the whole puzzle. But I don’t think Zankyou no Terror is aware of that.

Review-Roundup: Zankyou no Terror 03, Sailor Moon Crystal 02, Tokyo Ghoul 02-04

Apparently humanity’s solution in their battle against ghouls is to hire humans who are even creepier than the ghouls.

Just as a heads-up for those few who weren’t already aware of it: Nickelodeon has cancelled the last five episodes of Legend Of Korra’s third season. I will review the last episode to air tomorrow. The creators of the show have already announced, though, that the series will continue on Amazon or whatever other site is desperately chasing the future of digital Internet-Streaming-TV these days.  But now as for the series I will review here:

Zankyou no Terror 03: Nobody so far seems to have an Oedipus-complex but Nine and Twelve still pose riddles to the police-force like they’re the Sphinx. Only now Shibasaki is the boss. After all, his smartness has never brought him anything but trouble anyway, so it’s no wonder that he gladly chooses to get involved.

Sailor Moon Crystal 02: Education is brainwashing and smart girls have no friends – The Sailor Mercury Story.

Tokyo Ghoul 02-04: Kaneki hates being a half-ghoul and all the drawbacks this existence brings. But it’s not like he can change back and so he has no choice but to learn how to live with this burden. But even as a superstrong ghoul shit doesn’t happen less, actually shit happens now way more often in Kaneki’s life since he had become a ghoul.

Zankyou no Terror – 02 Review

That’s a rather weird approach from Lisa to research the Oedipus-story. Wouldn’t you rather grab the encyclopaedia or even better yet… use the fucking internet?! And if she’s already committed to reading up on the Oedipus-story, why did they show her reading the manga-adaptation?

Zankyou no Terror is daring. That 9/11-imagery from the first episode and then the second episode covers another bombing already, this series really doesn’t want you to forget it’s about terrorism… not that it has become clear what’s actually going on in the heads of Nine and Twelve. I don’t think it’s a great series right now but it’s certainly not generic. From its tone to the fact that it has put two teenage-terrorists at the centre of the story. It’s still interesting to watch… but it’s not very entertaining so far.

Review-Roundup: Magimoji Rurumo 01, Zankyou no Terror 01, Persona 4: Golden 01

Instead of regretting that he has been a misogynistic pervert his entire life so far, he’s lamenting the fact that DESPITE that no girl has ever liked him. Yep… Magimoji Rurumo sure knows how to sell tragedies.

So far, I think I plan to blog Aldnoah.Zero, Zankyou no Terror and Akame ga Kill!. Persona 4: Golden may also be interesting but only if it can prove its existence with plot-twists and whatnot. But here are my first impressions for the following three series:

Magimoji Rurumo: A despicable pervert is stuck in a life of devoid of girls (and rightly so), but one day a witch appears before him since he had incidentally summoned her via some ritual. Then he stops her from saving his life while sacrificing her own because within minutes he had started to like her for some nonsense-reason. Then, a year or so later, she comes back and he has now a whole ticket-book with which he can order the girl to do magic. But then the talking cat informs him that when he used up all of those, he will die (… definitely, I mean, it’s kinda similar to the previous situation). But she doesn’t know that he will die this time around as well once more… And… It’s a fucking mess, guys!

Zankyou no Terror: Two weirdos with too much freetime do terrorist-stuff (without killing anyone) and a timid girl who’s also a bully-victim with serious anxiety-issues gets (more or less) dragged into their affairs. Also! A soundtrack by Yoko Kanno! (Yay!)

Persona 4: Golden: It’s Persona 4, but Yu is better at kicking ass and he has now an amnesiac tsundere-girl to take care of. Of course, this deserves a 1-cour-long anime series!