Music from a cold land and the story of the hero oedipus. Terror in resonance is an excellent, thrilling, psychological drama that has solidified itself as one of my favorite one-shot anime. Warning that this review will include spoilers, because an anime like this is hard to discuss without them.

#Plot (8.1/10)

I think one of the biggest strengths in terms of Zankyou no Terror’s plot is how unique the premise is. In 2014, I’m not sure there were any other anime with such a large focus on terrorism, much less terrorism that didn’t involve indiscriminate murder (something the characters made clear they were against). Immediately the show hooked me in the opening sequence, and I think the brief exploration into Twelve and Nine’s possible school life was interesting and made you imagine “what could have been” if they hadn’t been subjects in the Athena project. Concurrently, I think the way they depicted Shibazaki’s character and his drive to uncover the Sphinx was great.

I do think the plot falters at the introduction of the antagonist Five, but I also think it helped to keep this from being another slow paced detective drama. They went for more of an action thriller in the second half vs the mystery thriller of the first, and I generally think it was successful. In terms of plot issues, one thing that did stand out to me was just how expensive this whole endeavor had to be for Nine and Twelve. There was never much discussion surrounding how they secured the funds to support all their terrorist activities, but I wouldn’t say that point took away from my enjoyment.

#World/Setting (7.7/10)

This show takes place in modern day Tokyo and generally speaking, is without much change in location. However, I do think this story couldn’t have made many changes to this without becoming unrealistic. As far as terrorist psychological thrillers go, I think the grounded setting made sense.

#Characters (7.8/10)

If I were to run down my ranking of interesting/enjoyable characters, it would probably look something like:
Twelve
Nine
Shibazaki
Lisa/Five
For me, Twelve was the most interesting and believable character, with Nine trailing right behind him. It was great to see him shown off as this carefree, energetic guy who in the same breath, can threaten to kill the girl he saved from a bully. His development of feelings (romantic or otherwise) for Lisa was somewhat obvious, but it made sense given his only real connection before that was with Nine. It was almost as if he was curious about this “thing” called a human, and gradually realized they might not all be bad, given that he then evolves from wanting to save Lisa from the plane, to betraying Nine to save her again. And while I had no real issues with Nine, he did feel somewhat one-note as the brooding, silent ikemen and didn’t change much over the course of 11 episodes. Shibazaki was similar to me, in that I’ve seen that same detective trope many times before in Western media, so his character felt a bit over used. As mentioned earlier, I think Five sped up the pace of Sphinx’s crusade, but her character itself was also somewhat predictable. My thoughts on Lisa were that the shy, bullied high school girl trope has been beat to death by now, but she did lead to a bit of development for Twelve, and caused some cracks to show in Five’s facade. However, this show did come out 10 years ago, so some of those tropes used in other anime may have been inspired by this.

#Visuals (8.4/10)

MAPPA is as MAPPA does.

I had absolutely no complaints with the visuals here. The art style is beautiful and complements the vibe of the show perfectly. The action sequences were well designed, and I didn’t feel like much was missing by way of animation. In fact, the animation did an excellent job at highlighting the best part of the show which was…

#OP/ED/OST (10/10)

I am not an audiophile by any means, but even I could tell a lot of work went into choosing the song and visuals for the OP and the soundtrack. The vibes here were matching Call of the Night levels to me, which is a compliment of the highest level.

#Enjoyment (8.5/10)

I am not one to watch many psychological thrillers, but Terror in Resonance has me rethinking my tastes. This was an excellent show that kept me on the end of my seat for the majority of it’s runtime.

HOWEVER

The ending definitely lost points for me. While it was powerful, and the final goal revealed was in line with my expectations, the way it was done just didn’t sit right with me. After everything, for Twelve and Nine to essentially become martyrs because the Americans tracked them down somehow despite there being no electricity in Japan just did not hit. How did they even know they were at the Settlement? If the Americans were so pressed about their involvement not getting out, why would they let Shibazaki live? These were just a few of my unresolved questions at the end, and I think the show stumbled more than a bit here, but overall Terror in Resonance held its own and produced an excellent and entertaining story in just 11 episodes.

format(webp))