This really is the best show of the season!  Orphans that completely vanished in the early 2000’s by a possible government-operated group–a rather intricate idea that wove so many of the questions from the previous episodes and began tying a lot of them together.  This episode does shed some light on the possibility of Twelve operating outside of Nine’s motives since the beginning.  Still, I can’t fathom how this series and Space Dandy share the same creator.  It just displays how diverse he is at establishing himself as a director–creating two highly enthralling series that are polar opposites of each other!

Megumi Han sure has improved her English this time around!  Within that single scene she managed to enunciate intrinsically better than any of the previous episodes that had English dialogue. Great work here!

Finally they used Ryo Nagano’s ‘22′ song from the soundtrack in this week’s show.  When I heard it on the OST for the first time, I was curious as to how they would fit this into the episode.  It strangely illustrated a stop and start moment for the main cast!

This had to be the best build-up episode we’ve have had all season, if not the year so far!  So much happened in the span of 24 minutes!  There are only two other series that I can think of off the top of my mind that did this very well– Ping Pong, The Animation and Space Dandy, especially Episode 21.

I have to hand it to Watanabe, here, for designing a psychological thriller anime that doesn’t let up even in its slowest moments–this is the kind of stylistic series I want to see more of!  Production values are insanely high, as every scene is so incredibly detailed–Shibazaki and Hamura’s walking sequence against the heated, summer countryside, was animated so beautifully!  The soundtrack had new pieces accompanying the visuals and one song that we’ve already heard before was completely revamped!  It’s fantastic to see a show tie in so many elements around it to tell a concrete, intellectual narrative.

The biggest surprise of all was Shibazaki’s daughter–the dialogue between the two of them was very much real.  You can definitely see that they are father and daughter–their chemistry was so strong together, truly a monumental scene that lasted only a few minutes ended up feeling a whole lot longer!  The fact that Kinoshita has a wife and child shown in that very brief scene just adds to the realism of Zankyou.  This show doesn’t hold back one bit!

The repercussions against Shibazaki and his team saving Lisa from the plane last time gave the investigative side of this show a heck of a lot more freedom than it ever had before!  We’re back to having analytical elements in this anime and its about time!  It’s also interesting to note how the media is portrayed in this show–the Sphinx videos are abruptly uploaded in the beginning episodes and the news reports are so accurate; it’s a great contrast to what is actually occurring behind the scenes to the viewer.

The first few episodes gave us tremendous insight into Sphinx and the Japanese Police–presenting itself on a whole other level!  One in which there was an indistinguishable view of the Police and the Terrorists that played off wonderfully here.  On one side is the Metropolitan Police Department left in the dark with little to nothing but a text message to go on from the plane explosion.  On the other, Sphinx appears to be splintering; Twelve is developing feelings for Lisa and refers to the plans at hand as “ours” not Nine’s, no longer backing every nuance of Nine’s scheme.

So what do they do here?  They choose to denounce the culprits in Sphinx; however, Shibazaki and his team know full well it isn’t the truth in the slightest.  Interesting to see how this plot continues to have more layers from each character peeling off!  I say this, referring to Shimada being unaware of the issues from the higher ups, and the fact that Kurahashi has an inkling that someone is pulling the strings elsewhere.  Five being from the ISA, transferred into the FBI only to be sent to Japan, invokes a new question:  What exactly is the Japanese Government hiding here?   The FBI is taking complete control of the Sphinx situation, but the even crazier part is that they may not even be the real FBI!  Clarence seems to have some kind of authority to keep the Japanese Police at bay.

That scene between Five and Clarence strongly hinted at a new sublplot, we haven’t had yet before.  Deception.  How long can Clarence keep the Japanese Police from finding out Five’s true motives, and that is just the tip of the iceberg!  Are Five’s motives the same as the FBI’s?  Immense framework of information is laid out before us, and with only a few episodes left, I wonder how much we (as the viewers) will be left in the dark about.  Also, did anyone notice Five having the head trauma sequence that Nine previously had?  This point very much elaborates how there may be a high probabability that there is a strong correlation to Twelve’s comment about “not having enough time”  and those tremor events.  It’s just as the title suggests, a Terror in Resonance.

Tokyo, Shinjuku, Aomori all are settings that seem to give a bigger picture of what’s really happening.  Stolen petroleum at the facility in Aomori, the young man taking bribes to misuse the crane to create the first bombing attack, and Nine trying to get Shibazaki to uncover the connection of the bombings–Rising Peace Academy. Every bit of what we’ve seen is slowly getting pieced together.  There is also the young man Shibazaki and Hamura interviewed in this episode–the one with the Sphinx mask hanging on his wall–might suggest that the end result will be changing how we view terrorism. Shibazaki’s comment, making light of Sphinx’s actions and contrasting with the past, does just that.

Can’t wait to see what happens next!

OVERALL IMPRESSION: 10/10

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