Terror in Resonance

Von means Hope.

Hope that you will be remembered, that people will remember you lived, that you will get the justice you seek.

Maybe I was too young to get it the last couple times, maybe I just wasn't in the right stage of my life to get it, but on this particular rewatch, I think I get it now. To wish to leave behind a legacy, to scream to the world and tell them what you experienced when it seems like no one will listen. Of course, it's obvious how these themes pertain to Nine and Twelve, so instead I will analyse how these themes relate to Lisa and Shibasaki.

Bullied and alone, Lisa does not eat lunch with her friends but instead alone in the toilets, and she comes home to an abusive household. After meeting Nine and Twelve and becoming an accomplice to an act of terror she runs away from home. She is absolutely alone, and no one seems to truly care. When she is saved from a confrontation with the police by Twelve she asks if they want to blow it all up, the world. Twelve laughs but after being neglected and abused it seems that this is what Lisa wants her legacy to be, to assist in acts of terror for a cause she does not understand, she feels wronged by the world, finds solace in terrorists, and wishes to blow up the world. She tries to help Nine and Twelve as much as she can, she cooks food for them, she creates a distraction for them at the airport, and she tells Twelve to leave her to die when she has bombs strapped to her chest. She truly lays her life down on the line for Sphinx despite being totally unaware as to their motives or goals, all she wanted was for someone to care, and when she finds that in Twelve, she is willing to die to become a part of their legacy. And she does become a part of their legacy, by learning the whole truth and witnessing their death, she carries the legacy of Sphinx with her.

Shibasaki is a disgraced detective, after sticking his nose where it didn't belong, those in power stripped him of rank and title, shoving him off to the archives to await retirement. When the Sphinx case begins, he contacts his superior, Kurahashi and solves the riddle shortly before the bomb explodes, solidifying his solution as correct. Living in the shadow of the case he couldn't solve, he rejoins the detectives in order to solve the Sphinx case. When the American government takes over the case he sees it as another failure, so he acts out of line and goes to the airport, the site of another bomb to ensure his legacy isn't of a detective who couldn't solve his greatest cases, but of Razor Shibasaki. When he aids Sphinx at the airport, he realises that there is more to this group of would-be terrorists who have not taken a single life but instead would protect life. After being put on indefinite leave he researches the Sphinx case much more thoroughly and follows the leads he could not if he were interested in job security, but he is about to be fired either way, so he takes the opportunity he has. It leads him to the mastermind of the Athena Plan, where he learns the Sphinx case and the case he could not solve are one and the same. This is his chance to mend his legacy, and to prove to the world who would not listen to him that he was right all along. He meets with Sphinx and just like Lisa, learns the whole truth and witnesses their death, Shibasaki escalates the truth to the world such that they can ignore it no longer, and in doing so, he too becomes another part of Sphinx's legacy. The legacy of Shibasaki and the Sphinx.

I think I get it now, my first time watching this show as an adult, I felt a deeper meaning, I could always tell from a younger age that there was something Zankyou no Terror was trying to say something important to me, I think I get it now.

In Icelandic, Bless means Goodbye.