Lisa Mashima has been the wild card of the entire series one that has kept this plot moving forward in quite a huge way.  Because of her, Nine gave her the decision of being an accomplice or dying, Twelve rescuing her from the police, she threw a wrench in Five’s plans at the airport, the apartment exploding resulted in Nine and Twelve starting out fresh, and here she’s gradually developed an emotional connection between herself and Twelve.  It’s even more than that!  These artificially savant syndrome teenagers don’t carry the weight of emotions, and with a normal person apart of Sphinx it was only a matter of time before they start having second thoughts about it all.  Twelve never would have gone back to help Nine out here if not for Lisa– the park scene illustrated this point greatly!  It will be intriguing to see how big of a connection Nine and Twelve will have emotionally by the end of the final episode next week.

The car chase scene with the decoy vehicle had such fluid animation!  Wow!  As the finale arrives next week it’s only normal for a 1-cour series of this caliber to start killing off its characters, fleshing out personal agendas and setup a cliffhanger that has surpassed all the previous episodes– the atomic bomb.  It really is a shame that this series cannot be longer as I would have loved to have seen a lot more cat and mouse games against Shibazaki and Sphinx’s riddles.

Zankyou no Terror remains to be an intense anime series, and the cinematography is probably the best of the year so far but I do have some qualms about this episode here.

As solid as this episode was with its political scandal, top-secret Athena Project and American government’s involvement this did have a few pacing issues.  How did Twelve and Lisa get off of the ferris wheel without get apprehended by Five’s men?  I would have thought after receiving the location of the bomb, Five would have at least left some men behind just for the instance that Twelve would have something up his sleeve.  You would think someone as smart as her would have left them there as a card she could use later on, but since this show is ending next week I can understand why the writers have chosen to develop it this way– a bit disjointed.

Nine turning himself in just gives deeper meaning to how much planning has been put into this series, but I cannot help but think that this bomb might not go off at all–  perhaps, that was his intention. Two outcomes could have happened here, one situation where if the conference were to happen than it would mean a collapse of the Japanese government and public outcry for the missing 26 children.  The second option the writers could have chosen here was to really very much set this bomb off killing everyone– wonder if an official or even Sphinx themselves will make it in time to evacuate all the citizens out of Tokyo before the bomb blast goes off.  So many different things can happen here with a cliffhanger like that!  The part that very much rubbed me the wrong way here was Clarence.  This guy’s an FBI agent full well knowing Five is falling off the handles and so he drops his guard so easily here!?  It felt very weird.  Also why did he go along with the unarmed group plan with this thinking settling in the back of his mind?  He knew within that short amount of time Five was subject to insubordination and she’s been weak since the last episode, so why go this far?  I can understand why Five did what she did in that she’s the only one who has caused injuries with the bombings and now she’s allowed Nine’s conference to be cancelled and thus causing what we had here. An end to justify the means.

The ending to this spectacular series will be next week, and with tons of questions hanging one has to wonder whether the ending will be rushed or not.  Also has anyone noticed the retail Blu-rays/DVD’s on the website doesn’t list Episode 11 in its list.  Strange.  With Noitamina having an additional 24-minute timeslot to use up this summer season [Zankyou being 24 minutes and Psycho-Pass being an hour] it would be very cool to see this series do a reversal and have a surprise second half with the additional 24-minutes they might possibly have for the Fall 2014 season.

OVERALL IMPRESSION: 9/10

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