Terror in Resonance is so far the only anime I have seen that has compelled me to write a review, only because I am so split on the themes and ideas this anime portrays. If Shinichiro Watanabe is the best sheep herder of the land, then Terror in Resonance is the black sheep of his group. Let me get into why I think this and why many of you likely share the same opinion with me.
This isn't a surprise, everytime Watanabe directs and storyboards a show, you can see it. It looks clean and easily understandable, it also seems like everytime MAPPA works on a show without legitimate slave labor schedules it always turns out good ranging to fantastical. I don't really have much to say here, except this is most likely the best thing about the show besides the soundtrack. It is clean, fluid, the effects are great and the small uses of CGI are too.
Yoko Kanno continues to bring her A game in everything she creates. She is actually magnificent. I have even less to say here then the animation portion, you know what to expect from her. Standout tracks are "Von", "Crystalized" and "Birden". (She composed Cowboy Bebop, Wolf's Rain, Ghost in The Shell Standalone Complex, Kids on The Slope, and a couple tracks of Space Dandy.)
This is where problems start, BUT where the show starts is riveting and intense, it shows a facility in the middle of a snow storm, two boys are stealing a nuclear bomb, and they succeed. They leave behind graffiti, it says "VON". After this heist you are shown those two boys who enacted it, "Nine" and "Twelve". As they walk to school. They meet glances with the third main character, Lisa. Twelve sees her being bullied by a group of girls and decides to intervene in his own deformed way. After the school day ends, Nine and Twelve are shown creating another scheme through the POV of someone new. An ex-detective named Shibazaki. He is shown a YouTube video from his co-worker of two boys dubbed "Sphinx" with Sentai masks on, announcing a weather forecast of "darkness over Tokyo sometime after 3PM". Shibazaki passes it off as kids goofing around but seems to keep interest in the back of his head.
This is the start of the cat and mouse, the best part of this show. Shibazaki trying to catch Sphinx. I am going to assume most of you have seen the show and not read out any more of the story. I think the first six or seven episodes of this show are great and start to lull you into the false sensibility that this show is fucking awesome. But it falls off infinitely hard, soon after the main antagonist "Five" is introduced. She is one of the survivors of the facility Nine and Twelve came from. She exists just to be an insane manic foil to the protagonists. She wears lack of personality on her sleeve, and when she dies they try to make it seem bittersweet but I feel literally nothing for her because there is really nothing about her that is unique or engaging at all. She is just a psycho. Back to the start of this paragraph, cat and mouse. The act of trying to catch Sphinx is actually intensely engaging, watching Shibazaki and the two boys battle each other with wits. These are acts of terrorism they are committing, they have no remorse and show no remorse for anything they have done, which is why I side with Shibazaki over them every step of the way (he is also just a much better character then the two boys). During episode 7, a bombastic airport puzzle is ensued onto Twelve and Nine by the antagonist Five. They use the airport as a chess board to find out where a bomb is planted inside, that is meant to explode and frame Sphinx. They have to work together with Shibazaki to stop the bomb creating a sudden ally, it's good shit and engaging. The episode obviously, ends with their success and an amazing scene of Nine saluting Shibazaki with the Sphinx mask on and escaping. After this episode, literally everything falls apart. It feels completely aimless and like it has no clue what to do, it has shot its load prematurely. No terrorist acts are being committed by Sphinx anymore which means no cat and mouse. They start to use Five as the engine for the plot instead which just simply doesn't fucking work because she is stupid, psychotic and cringe. She kidnaps Lisa after the Airport attack and it leads into most likely the greatest scene in the show. In Episode 9 Lisa is put inside a moving ferris wheel with a bomb strapped to her chest. Twelve is goaded into going inside her ferris wheel car and defusing it while the wheel moves. It leads to an intense, sad, and bittersweet scene where every ounce of your attention is put onto these characters, scenery, and the song "VON" playing in the background. Convincing you for a second that these characters are people I care about and do not want to see die, that these characters have a personality that is written above a side character from a big shonen. I constantly rewatch this scene and am bewildered that an ending can tank a show this hard. It all could have been like this scene, it could have been an emotional story about two children who have PTSD and a girl who runs from an abusive household, balancing the grey morality of committing terrorist attacks to send a message. But it is half assed, and the ending proves it. Terror in Resonance segways into its ending soon after Five dies. While Twelve was defusing the bomb on Lisa's body, Nine realizes he won't come back anytime soon. Nine takes the nuclear bomb they stole from episode 1, rigs it to a balloon and lets it float into the sky. He activates it triggering a blast in the sky above Tokyo (FOR SOME FUCKING REASON). This leads to a huge power outage and basically no civilization as everyone has evacuated. Cut to the three main characters, they are frolicking happily at the site of the facility the two boys were experimented on. It seems like they are trying to convey this is a "win" for them, it does not fucking feel like that at all what the fuck just even happened???? But onto the next shit that doesn't make any sense, one thing leads to another, Shibazaki teleports to their location out of fucking nowhere and basically says the whole world wants to know what they are, and why they did what they did. If they our caught, everything about them will be put in the light. Sphinx has cemented themselves as a historical event, their voices can never be silenced, so Shibazaki just thinks they should turn themselves in and talk, because he knows they wanted to be caught, he knows that it was their goal to never be silenced again, and THEY know they needed someone to see it through and catch them. After this arguably good dialogue, US military helicopters teleport out of fucking nowhere into the scene to apprehend Sphinx. Nine brings a button above his head, it belongs to a massive bomb inside a nuclear powerplant, he threatens to detonate it if the US forces do not leave. The US Forces are told to shoot to kill anyway, just because they know about the airport incident and other incidents. The absolute stupid bullshit thought process is given, "Even if the bomb is real we can't do anything about it now so just kill them". Twelve is sniped from the helicopter, amazing music plays and I feel nothing. Nine yells and cries out and is going to detonate the bomb, but is talked out of it by Shibazaki, saying he will bring everything they wanted to expose to light. This magically makes Nine stop all emotion for his best friend and brother who just got gunned down undeservedly and he hands the detonator away and assumedly gets gunned down too. This is the absolute worst thing in the show. This ending, these final two or three episodes. A complete failure and disappointment. Choosing to ignore the morality established between these two boys who have shown no remorse for absolutely anything they have done, just to pussy out at the end and not have him push that button. If he pushed that button this show would be saved. Are they terrorists or empathetic protestors? You cannot have both, and if you could have both, it certainly wasn't done well here at all. I thought the show was building up to them causing a nuclear winter, because in the opening it shows a nuclear winter, and the lyrics say "Winter covers everything". The shows final scene is a pitiful conversation between Lisa and Shibazaki. A year has passed and everything has resolved and been put into the light of day. Justice has been brought upon the people behind the facility that Nine, Twelve and Five were at. Lisa and Shibazaki are visiting the graves of Nine and Twelve and have a conversation about what VON means, they come to terms and understand it means "Hope". Credits roll.
What a disappointing clusterfuck of failed morals and plot contrivance to a very good first couple episodes.
Boring, no personality, and empathetic only when it serves the plot. If explored on more I would probably feel a lot more positive about the show. Shibazaki is the best out of everyone, and Five is an extremely lame antagonist who exists just to be a psychopath.
Summary
This is Shinichiro Watanabe's dud, his one big fuck up. You are better off watching literally every other show directed by him. "MAPPA, Yoko Kanno, and Watanabe, there's no way this can be bad right?" was my thought process going into this show, and I was thoroughly proven wrong. This is only eleven episodes so I suggest it if you are even slightly interested in anything I have said, just so you can have your own thoughts and opinions on it.____
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