Peps' Anime Wrap-up: Zankyou no Terror

Last year's summer anime season featured a mixed bag of genres. While Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun was light and fun, the other end of the season's spectrum came in the form of the dark and heavy Zankyou no Terror.

Zankyou no Terror is another of those anime titles that you don't recommend to just anyone. Unless the person receiving the recommendation is game to try anything or has a particular affinity for this type of storytelling, then it's not the first title I would recommend. But that fact doesn't make it any less of a must-watch series.

A nuclear fuel processing plant is infiltrated and plutonium was stolen, the perpetrators only leaving behind the message "VON".  Several months after the event, a video of two masked men calling themselves Sphinx 1 and Sphinx 2 is uploaded online. This is the beginning of a series of terrorist acts that would disrupt the peace and cause panic among the citizenry, with the authorities struggling to figure out who they are and solve the riddles that they provide as clues for their next target. Disgraced detective Shibazaki Kenjiro seems to be the only one who can make any headway with the riddles. Meanwhile, Mishima Liza is bullied at school and longs to escape her life, catching the attention of a couple of transfer students. After getting trapped in the middle of the Sphinxes' first attack, she finds herself involved with the two young men Nine and Twelve.

Zankyou no Terror is a thriller at its core, the underlying mystery behind the terrorism enacted by the Sphinxes the driving force of its narrative. Every character has a story to tell, but those particular stories have to unravel over time. Their connections to each other can range from the coincidental to the fateful, but all are nonetheless far reaching in their significance to the story of why two seemingly gifted individuals would resort to creating a violent impact on the world.

There's not much that's light in the series.  Even Twelve's exuberant nature seems to be a by-product of whatever it is that he and Nine has gone through in their past. And the heavy tone of the series is punctuated by the muted palette utilized by the animators. The lack of bright imagery or colors is extremely helpful in conveying the world as seen by Nine, Twelve, Lisa and Detective Shibazaki.

You're never quite sure who the villain is in Zankyou no Terror, but that experience as an audience member mirrors how the series's general populace remains unaware of what happens behind the scenes as those in power work on keeping them safe. Even the very troublesome Five and her even more troublesome actions warrant a second look or a deeper understanding. But even the realization that you shouldn't take a character's actions at face value doesn't mean that every character is worth your empathy.

Zankyou no Terror lives up to most of the potential expected from it. I say most, because its eleven episode run made it difficult to fully explore the mysteries of the past shared by Five, Nine and Twelve, or flesh out the results of Detective Shibazaki's investigations. But even with those shortcomings, the series does well with the elements that it does focus on. It's not hard to be interested in the mystery or to enjoy the action scenes that prompt the major events in its storytelling. And that's more than what many other anime titles aspire to achieve when tackling the same genres that Zankyou no Terror features.

Happy viewing!!