This is my favorite Noitamina series that has aired so far, in 2014!  Zankyou no Terror delivers on all fronts, week after week– the voice actors in this anime have done tremendously at breathing life into these characters, all the while, supported by a very stirring soundtrack and stunning visuals.  Zankyou excels at telling a story by dangling the dramatic actions of its characters in front of the viewer and combining it with clean, crisp and mature style of animation.  A solid and thought-provoking production from start to finish!

Bitcoin, Amazon, all of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Meetings, creating thermite reactions, disarming a bomb, to the savant syndrome, so many pieces intellectually tied together in building up for something massive.  I am loving this series!  While Zankyou has a very focused soundtrack here–without the music, I do not believe this series would have had such an impact.  Without intentions to back it up–Lisa jumping from the blown-up building and into Twelve’s arms, Shibazaki’s account of life in his younger years in Hiroshima, the Sphinx investigation reports getting leaked (loved that scene in Episode 4 where Kinoshita threw a tantrum knocking over those videotapes), Five’s initial scene getting off the plane, the police raiding the school in search of Nine–every scene is constructed from the ground up with help of this majestically direct musical score.  Yoko Kanno, the composer, has outdone herself, as this is the best work she has ever done, hands down.  The song, while Twelve was disarming the bomb, beautifully portrayed the emotional struggle they both faced as the clock was ticking!  Can’t wait to hear the rest of what she has in store for the final two episodes!

For the past eight narratives we’ve been building up to the grand finale and here is where we are regaled with so much information!   Almost at the climax of this series, and this became so riveting!  ‘Betrayal’ becomes the new motif, indelibly becoming a part of the narrative; its plot involving Twelve choosing Lisa over Nine, and his original plan–or is this what the writers are making us think?

Cliffhangers–personally, I can take them or leave them but when a series is very much well-grounded in being intense–adding in this element of surprise can be very rewarding in the end; it’s such a fantastic feeling after watching an anime of high quality like this one!  Code Geass suffered greatly from poorly executed cliffhangers that came out of nowhere and I’m starting to notice that Aldnoah.Zero is following the same kind of trend.

Zankyou keeps every dialogue bit and expands on it with grace–the plutonium being an atomic bomb, Aoki’s discussion with the detectives,  Five falling over from the savant trauma parallels to Nine’s head experiences and even Lisa fainting!  Twelve revealing the location of the bomb.  Every scene adds hype into the next segment so smoothly and it works out very very well!

We still have yet to see Twelve and Lisa out of the ferris wheel scene…On top of that, Shibazaki and Homura learn of the higher-up who developed the Athena Project!  Have to wonder what Shibazaki will end up doing having this knowledge.  I’m very glad that the Aomori scene in the first episode has proven pivotal in just about every episode we’ve had, and now the big reveal has occurred– interesting in how the two detectives handled this!  Not to mention how the school has been in the background this entire time (since Episode 1), and we finally get it pieced back into the story here!  The facility known here as The Settlement abducted kids in order to artificially create the savant syndrome inside of them by giving them a drug so they could enhance more capabilities in the brain.  Amazing! We have to wonder how this will play out here–is the Diet Secretary the father of Lisa?  If so, how would Twelve feel about all of this, and will he exact revenge on the very family that erased any normal life he and Nine could have had? Incredible again this week!

Did I see that right?  Was Aoki trying to poison the detectives here?  Following Aoki’s comment to Shibazaki and Homura about how it would be prudent to leave, talking about Shigeru Yamamoto, and then after their discussion about The Settlement, followed it up with a dissatisfied look over the fact that their tea had gone cold–I’m wondering if the detectives will make it out alive.  This most frightening person was just introduced to us  in this episode, juxtaposed with the amazing cinematography  throughout that entire scene!  A week is too long to wait for the next episode!

OVERALL IMPRESSION: 10/10

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