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The Plot So Far: 「FALLING」
「CALL & RESPONSE」
「SEARCH & DESTROY」
「BREAK THROUGH」
「HIDE & SEEK」
「READY OR NOT」
“I came to settle things with you.
“I was surprised to find that you made a friend. But that just means you have more weaknesses.
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「DEUCE」If there’s ever been an episode of this series that made me sit back and think, it was this one. Sadly, it’s not entirely for good reasons, and this whole affair with Five leaves me somewhat disappointed. Zankyou no Terror is still an entertaining affair, but the development’s taken a tumble following a promising start. I mean come on, I know you’re excited about the whole chess in an airport concept, but knights simply don’t move the way you’ve depicted it on screen! In all seriousness though, Five’s arrival on the scene was something I quite liked. Unlike the Police Department, she was someone that could give Sphinx the challenge they were looking for, and I felt that her involvement would only escalate this series’ story to heights it couldn’t have reached otherwise. Three episodes in to Five’s reign of terror however, there’s two things for certain: she might be capable of providing the former, but she’s definitely not providing the former (yet). And honestly, I’m at a loss here because the potential and the results just don’t match up, and it’s a jarring inconsistency that makes me shake my head. Point in fact, considering Five’s ability to lure Sphinx into an arena of her choosing, her getting duped so easily by Twelve’s hacks comes in as rather comical. One could reason Twelve’s synesthesia gave him a distinct advantage in this regard, but it shouldn’t have. Five knows exactly who they are, what they want, and how they’ll act. Combine that with the setup time she received, and there’s just no feasible reason for Twelve being able to slip away so easily, let alone be able to easily locate and bypass their connected lines so easily (no security at such an obvious access point?). It should’ve never gotten to a point where Lisa’s involvement could’ve played any significant role in the first place, yet it did, and it did so in barely a third of the episode. That said, one could reason that Five went through this with the belief that even if Nine did find her, there’s no way he’d shoot her. Thus, the end game with the plane and the bomb would remain the same no matter what. It’s still a bit of a stretch considering how she reacted to Twelve’s disappearance—she clearly intended to have him captured—but it could be a valid argument nonetheless. The problem here lies in the fact that she didn’t account for Shibazaki’s interference, which when combined with the sloppy job from the special assault team to derail her “intricately laid plans.” There’s an explanation here that she simply considered Shibazaki and the rest of the Police Department as too incompetent to act, but at this point we’re talking about a lot of ifs. For better and for worse, suspension of disbelief is definitely an increasing factor within this show. There’s the feeling that we (or at least, I) may have gotten the wrong impression of what kind of show Zankyou no Terror is however, and I guess it’s something that’ll just require some expectation calibrations to get through. After all, the aforementioned doesn’t change the fact that the show remains constantly a good watch—especially in regards to Watanabe’s depiction of terrorist acts. The whole idea of using a plane as a mobile, airport targeting bomb was plain (oh the jokes) over the top, and it’s still pleasantly surprising how Watanabe not only doesn’t have qualms depicting such incidents, but also in thinking them up to be used in the first place. Looking forward especially, there’s a lot more to see here as well. Ranging from how Five’ll exploit Lisa’s involvement to the measures that’ll be taken against Shibazaki, it reasons that there’s a lot of entertainment still to be had—even if it might require some more suspension of disbelief to stomach some of the actual developments. Either way, I know I’ll be continuing to watch to see how it all ends, but if we ever look back and try to look for a point where the views on this show diverged, I’d say this would be it. |
She wasn’t expecting Shibazaki what so ever. I bet his bosses will not be pleased with him and might try to do something horrible to him. I see him working with the others soon to foil a much bigger plot.
This episode practically sealed it for me, I don’t think Five or Clarence, or any of her personal team, work for the FBI. Or if they do, that’s really just a cover for who they’re really working for, which I think is that secret organization Shibazaki mentioned a few episodes ago, that are trying to keep their evil secrets hidden at any cost.
The question is, what’s going to happen to Shibazaki from here? I don’t think they’ll take too kindly to his interruption, nor the fact that he now knows a lot more about the situation than he should.
I too think Shibazaki is in danger, and more than just his career. Five is an extremely smart psychopath, and she promised that he would pay. She could do anything including framing him as being Sphinx’s accomplice in the police force, to simply killing him and making it look like a suicide. In both cases, destroying what reputation he has left.
I wouldn’t underestimate Shibazaki too much , he is a genius too
Well, he isn’t really a stranger to defying his superiors, given what was revealed about him in an earlier episode. But the difference this time is that he has four colleagues backing himself up. Combining that with the fact that Shibazaki is well….just Shibazaki, I suspect he’ll be fine.
Blowback. Even if any US government agency – and FBI would be last of them to do so, CIA jumps to mind when dirty operations on foreign territory are involved – would be interested in using bombs to kill people on terrain of allied state, the very consequences of possible leak would make the course of action non-palatable. In the age of wiki-leaks nothing stays hidden forever. One anonymous mail to the press and US could have say farewell to alliance with Japan, complete with bases in Okinawa and Yokosuka. Simply too much at stake. And the more people are involved, the more risk that something can go wrong (hello Murphy!).
Also, any FBI involvement would ahd to be negotiated thru official channels, namely law atatche in the US embassy, usually FBI liaison to the local law enforcement. Even if they have Japanese police superintendent in their pocket/ranks it would be all too easy to call the embassy to blow the FBI cover.
There is much answers that we don’t have yet. So far we have hints of government-infiltrating conspiracy, plus possible ties to foreign forces. Where we do go from here, only creators of the show know at the moment.
So far we are closer to Matrix than to Tom Clancy of Frederick Forsyth.
The fact that she was too focused on Nine makes me think she doesn’t care much about Twelve. She has a stronger personal grudge with Nine—probably as a potential mind rival. I think she was also so over her head, expecting obedience among the police—which makes me think that she’s rather lacking in people-smarts. It’s jarring that she failed to anticipate the D plan (none of the above)—a.Nine/b.Twelve/c.Lisa—but it does give her some weakness, making her not as OP as she’s presented at the start.
The mistake in Lisa’s part will hopefully develop her character, and I’m thrilled to see how she becomes immersed with Nine and Twelve’s plot.
Quite funny as this was probably the most “conventional” episode of Zankyou thus far (no mythological riddles or obtuse portrayals to sink the teeth into this week sadly). Even with the issues concerning the chess game this was still a fun episode. The biggest concern IMO though is not so much the story, but rather the time the story has been allotted to wrap things up. So far there is no indication Zankyou will be anything other than a single cour run. We still have yet to see what Nine and Twelve are after, the actual organization they and Five herald from, and what the actual endgame will be. Quite a tall order for a show that has been doing everything right and slowly setting itself up to be one of the most unique and attentive anime offerings this year.
Personally I am hard pressed to see how Zankyou will be able to sufficiently deal with all its remaining secrets given only four episodes remain, but I will give it the benefit of the doubt. It’s not very often these types of shows come out so I have hope that Zankyou will succeed in meeting the goals Watanabe has set out for it.
Now that you mention it, I’m suddenly flash-backing a bit to Watanabe’s previous work in Sakamichi no Apollon. I loved the show personally, but towards the end there were definitely some pacing issues that cropped up. Like you I hope it works out, but suddenly I’m a bit more worried than I was before.
Good Lord that was intense…
We may be watching this for different reasons, because after this episode, something was clear to me as well- I have never, EVER had that much of an adrenaline rush from an Anime before. Ever. I’ve been enjoying them almost religiously for over a decade now, but good Lord, I’ve never felt such an intense reaction before… You’re trying to look at this from a more realistic PoV- which unquestioningly has it’s own merits, but I’ll be honest, I feel that you would be unable to enjoy something like this to the fullest without a fair degree of suspension of disbelief. The setting thus far, the actions, reactions and interactions have all been remarkably realistic, and it’s understandable to view this as trying to share a profound thought- which it very well may be, but I would really encourage you to give this episode a re-watch, hopefully in a different light. Put yourself in a characters shoes and lose yourself in it. Then come back and please, let me know if anything changed with your view of this particular episode.
TL;DR enjoy it as fiction should be enjoyed- this fiction, in particular, is to be savored, in my humble opinion.
Cheers,
AGH-RMS
I’ll try rewatching the episode with what you said in mind, but I think I’ll still be a little disappointed in the recent turn in the series toward the surreal. Not because there’s anything wrong with that in particular, like you said this is fiction and should be treated as such. However in the first few episodes the show introduced itself as an almost “what if” scenario, displaying itself (very much on purpose, I think) as a semi-realistic story so that we would be constantly asking ourselves “what if this happened to us now?”. This, to me, made the show that much more interesting and exciting. The introduction and actions of Five, however, felt out of place in this context and the result was that the last few episodes were kind of awkward (for me) to watch.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s still enjoyable, but I doubt that I’ll come out of it at the end with anything particularly memorable which at the start I thought the show the potential to be.
I wish Nine had shot Five in the face when he had a chance and save us all the trouble of having to deal with future episodes of 9/12 having to constantly butt heads with this annoying Engrish spewing sociopathic trope.
https://randomc.net/image/Zankyou%20no%20Terror/Zankyou%20no%20Terror%20-%2007%20-%20Large%2039.jpg
Yandere much?
Her eyes are beautiful and not just in this picture. In every moment she was on screen, her eyes captured my attention. Maybe i’m watching this show too closely. haha.
From the start I started counting all these obvious unrealistic elements in this episode, halfway through I gave up counting and watched it with a mindset as with any standard hollywood action movie.
twelve slipping by five makes perfect sense; dont forget that nine and twelve had originally planned to attack the airport in one of their bombings. This implies that nine and twelve know the layout of the airport pretty well, explaining twelve’s ability to dodge the camera’s as expertly as he did and dupe five.
Complaining about suspension of disbelief in a show where the main characters are high school age genius orphan terrorist raised in a shady government institution having more expertise in explosives and technology then Batman facing mentally unstable teenager with an American counterintelligence team under her control comes off as kinda…stupid.
The thing is that isn’t not so much about suspension of disbelief as it is whether or not it overpowers other parts of the story. Depending on the way you view the story, there’s a legitimate argument to be made that even if some things were stretching the lengths of reality before, it wasn’t anywhere near the level that this week’s episode hit, which could be grounds for complaints.
I’m personally on the fence about it myself, but I feel like it’s important to bringing up the topic because I can see where some may not like how this series developed here compared to before, while others may not feel similarly. Hence while the divergence in views discussion.
A Takahashi Daisuke is listed as voicing Agent Clarence. His spoken English must be quite good to land that role.
In fact the credits list an entirely Japanese cast.
THAT was one intense episode
now a few questions here , if I may
#1 : what advantage would synesthesia provide for TWELVE ???
#2 : why would the police trust their superiors when the ” don’t act , a special force team has been dispatched to the location ” thing comes up again ?? now that both times the bomb exploded .
#3 : why is not logical for SPHINX to kick FIVE’S butt ?? especially why do people underestimate TWELVE ???
#4 : WHY THE HELL can’t japanese people speak english like normal people do ??
“WHY THE HELL can’t Japanese people speak English like normal people do??”
Hey. Have some respect. At least capitalize the letters J and E.
Anyway, calm down.
The Japanese are just not used to speak words with letter L or words that have a consecutive consonant letters.
Though, there are some Japanese people who studied English yet they still can’t pronounce properly.
From what I’ve read, six years of English is a Japanese school requirement, but it’s directed more at grammar and vocabulary. They enunciate fairly well (not as much Engrish), but the one thing that I really notice here is the cadence is all wrong for an English speaker. Very slow and staccato. The show isn’t geared towards an English language audience so that might be so that Japanese viewers who understand some English can follow without subtitles?
As a person whose native language isn’t English, I can tell you why anyone (not just Japanese) can’t speak English like “normal” people do. For one, he/she/they may not be used to it because of his/her/their environment. I don’t speak English at home, and I will surely not speak English back in my home country unless it’s necessary. For two, if one is in a non-native-English-speaking country learning English from non-native-English speakers, pronunciations are often faulty. And it doesn’t matter, as long as you’re understood usually when you speak.
As to why Japanese people often speak English like Five, I think it’s also got to do with how they tend to flesh out words from English to Japanese. As their sort of “alphabet” are mostly syllabaries rather than one-letter stuff, perhaps it’s unavoidable for them to add extra sounds like u (e.g. love=rabu). There’s also the case that there’s no L in their language. In short, English may be spoken often in katakana fashion and not usually in the real English pronunciation. And I think they’re just ok with that?
Five does speak slowly though, and I get how galling it can be that she sounds like she’s eating her words. But well…it’s ok…Her seiyuu tried and would keep trying. Unless she’s meant to be a non-native English speaker. Who knows with her character. She can be a researcher from another country only tasked to help the FBI.
So, Urahara, how fluent ist your Japanese then, huh?
The main reason for the Engrish is that Five’s VA is likely not familiar with English as some have pointed out. When learning a new language the learner often uses their native language’s phonology (i.e. speaking patterns, stresses, and pronunciations) for the new language, leading to the example here. Cannot blame the VA, she is simply doing the best job she can as she likely lacks any long term English immersion.
Why the Japanese have such strange ways of speaking English comes down to differences in stress. Japanese uses what could be termed a phonetic alphabet, with the letters replaced with specific sounds (i.e. hiragana and katakana). Each of these sounds is stressed equally to one another unlike in English where we often place stress on specific parts of words. Much of this cannot be directly transcribed into Japanese because of the phonetic differences, leading to the infamous Engrish meme where words like love and kill suddenly become rabu and kiru; it’s not incorrect, it’s simply been converted into Japanese-friendly speech. The lack of stress (in general, there are a few exceptions) causes the jarring, breaking nature in native Japanese spoken English as they are unaccustomed to the phonetic differences.
@witchhuntress
The lack of an L is actually false, Japanese does have an L sound, it’s just rolled up into one with the R sound. Basically whenever you pronounce an R in Japanese you position and “flick” your tongue as though you’re pronouncing an L. It’s where you get the rolled R’s more associated with High German heard from some VA’s.
Thanks for the clarification~
Idk about the flick of tongue thing when pronouncing the R in Japanese…o.o But pronouncing L…usually takes a tonguetip touch on the roof of the mouth. Perhaps that’s a little uncommon?
I think the standard Hepburn Romaji is where part of the R/L issue comes from. Franky, when I hear ら(ra)、り(ri)、る(ru)、れ(re)、ろ(ro) they sound more like the “l” sound than an english “r”, but maybe that’s my lack of a language “ear”.
What I find surprising is that we’er not talking about the man in the street, but people that make their living with their voices. When you have Australians and English actors who can mimic American accents to a point that I don’t know that they’re not native American speakers until I hear them out of character using their own speech patterns, I would think there would be some seiyus out there that can do English that isn’t stilted.
@witchhunter
You’re right which is why I placed flick in quotations, when speaking fast the tongue doesn’t stay in position long enough to really be considered anything else 😛
@Bear
Not all that strange to hear the L considering how the sound is formed, it’s why the whole R/L thing exists in the first place. As an aside I personally find it funny how the split causes me no end of grief as German lessons tempt me into rolling the damn sound when verbally practicing kanji readings.
Regarding the Engrish the reason for the lack of VA “skill” might just boil down to it not being needed for the vast majority of their work. Why practice something that isn’t going to be used all that often or seriously impact the main audience (Japanese viewers) when poorly done? I’d imagine Japanese dialects are a greater importance to Japanese VAs and something likely not picked up by us English speakers.
To properly answer your musing though yes those VAs do exist, the guy voicing Clarence here is native Japanese from the credits and probably the best spoken out of all the VAs speaking English in Zankyou so far. Really wonder if he is a professional VA or someone they chose just for his English.
Pancakes is right. If i would speak English. I would give it a German touch. our “T,R” and “Z” are unique, and easy to discover our German roots
Our mother-language blend always in our try to speak foreign. Well, that is the part where our Brain stores the letters
Ups, me again to hit Enter to soon…
Well to avoid this part, try to “sing the foreign” Language. Yes music, try to sing Japanese song. If you need to pronounce the letter right, just try to remember the part of this song, how it sounds
Singer’s here or Idols, have of course a bonus
Example:
Speak a Little French (Or how i can speak a little Bit “Highway” French)
I try to remember a line of a song inside in my Brain. and then i try to sing it, not build it together with my German Letters. I use the song. Thats it
the main characters should have been named Nine and Eleven. Because, you know, Nine Ele… Wait? Too soon?
Apparently Lisa was the most badass. Throwing smokes and jumping from an airplane, while the others were like only running the whole time.
This episode reminded me too much of the pseudointellectual anime that was No Game No Life. I really hope this is the fall before the rise and not the fall before the… further falling?
No~ sadly, it’s clear at this point that the show isn’t as good as we thought it was.
The great directing, visuals and music had us fooled in the first 4 episodes into ignoring the writing’s fallacies.
Once 5 showed up (in ep 5) i started worrying myself. Now it’s clear that ZnT always was just another sophomoric mind game between “special” individuals that used the grander themes of terrorism and child experimentation to set up this not-as-well-thought-out-as-they-want-you-to-believe game.
Counter-Terrorism 101
1.act smug
2.attempted murder
3.blow up a jet
4.???
5.get sphinxed
This episode is really making me unsatisfied with where the series is going. Absolutely nothing was accomplished here besides stopping the bomb. The story is still at a stand still since they have to continue dealing with 5. Now I’m not saying 9 should have shot her when he had the chance (that would be a bit much to ask from him) but he could have taken her hostage or done SOMETHING besides just standing there chatting it up while the police came to attack him. He of all people should have seen that coming.
Either way they have a complete visual on him now. There shouldn’t be any problems for them to find Sphinx now. Hell I STILL think it’s BS that they weren’t caught during this silly episode considering their movements were being tracked almost the entire time. It’s absurd how the FBI is just letting her play these stupid games when they can just catch the guys with ease now. Yeah we might have a bunch of people who are going to be killed but at as long as this girl has fun and gets her way none of that matters! Look how corrupt and smart our government is! Any fallout from this situation surely will have NO repercussions!
It doesn’t help that Lisa continues to do nothing useful. This is turning into one of the most disappointing shows of this season. It would be fine if the show didn’t take itself seriously but given how in depth they went with the investigations early on (something you really don’t see in anime these days) now that they want us to accept that our hero terrorists can unrealistically escape this impossible situation because the FBI is just letting some psycho girl play games with peoples lives even though they could easily capture these suspects is just completely retarded. I’ll have to turn my brain off at this rate =/.
I can get where you are coming from, but there are a few things I disagree with.
Firstly, I think the ‘silly games’ are the point, in a way. Five isn’t normal, and neither are Sphinx. Their abilities are definitely ‘special’, which in itself is an indicator that things wouldn’t play out how one would expect it with ‘typical’ terrorists. Whatever it is Sphinx wants to reveal, Five wants to hide. And presumably, so do those officials. So not only is letting Five do whatever the hell she wants beneficial to them , it is, in a way, the best way to apprehend them. Their methods aren’t fully conventional, so their capture shouldn’t be either.
Secondly, even if not on this scale, you do get corrupt people. So to assume that the forces behind Five aren’t above civilian deaths to get what they need isn’t to far out there.
Thirdly, Lisa isn’t that useless. Sure, she’s bad at cooking, and clumsy, and has no clue as to the things Sphinx does, such as creating explosions, but that makes her human. Surely it is a bit much to expect her to instantly be able to understand their way of life? And her clumsiness is consistent with her character. Not all the characters can be massively talented and OP (for lack of a better term). And I think, her presence in Sphinx’s lives makes them seem more human, gives them something to fight for, gives an interesting perspective into them for us as viewers, and she could even be a form of redemption for them. In summary, her purpose is more beneath the surface than anything.
Of course, this is all just a matter of opinion, and you are entitled to your own too.
That seems just too convenient to me. I mean there are times in this episode where 9 clearly could have been caught (when he holds a gun at 5) yet 5 tells them “NO! WE NEED THIS MAIN CHARACTER AROUND SO I CAN KEEP PLAYING!”. It just continues to break the surrealism of the series. Letting this girl have all this power over these people makes no damn sense to me. THEY should be the ones controlling her not the other way around. And it’s not like 5 made no attempts to catch them either. She even tells one of the guys to apprehend 12. Why try to catch him then? Why not send people after them as soon as you saw them? It doesn’t make sense. It wouldn’t be that hard. Clearly she wants them caught but makes no attempts to do so when the chance arises. It simply comes off as a cruddy plot convenience that they were still able to win this round because 5 was incompetent when it came to ACTUALLY CATCHING THEM.
As for Lisa you seem to be missing the point. Everybody in this setting has a special skill. Our terrorists are super geniuses. Their enemies are super agents. The detective is “L” level in terms of deduction. And Lisa……….is some poor soul who got mixed up into it. See where the contrast is a bit jarring?
Initially I thought it was a good setup. This is how some people are converted into to terrorists. Because their lives are already crappy and they have nothing to lose. I thought the idea was nice. But they haven’t used Lisa properly at all ever since she joined. They used her to try to insert a weird comedic tone with the “omg she can’t cook!” trope or “ah she’s so clumsy!” trope. Yet they still have yet to tackle the matter of her properly converting. 9 just goes “oh fine!” when 12 wants her to join them as if he never accounted for the fact she would be a burden (gee look what happened?). It would be cool if Lisa went anyway on her own and made the distraction after psyching herself up to do it or something. But it just feels like she’s brought along in this story for………”reasons”. Yet i still don’t know why.
Lisa never asked 9 or 12 why they are doing what they are doing. She never really thinks about what she is going to get into. And the focus of the show is hardly EVER on her even though she is a main character. There is simply no connection for the viewer to have with her outside her weird clumsy girl trying to learn to blow things up antics. There is nothing to give us an inside look into her head really allowing us to feel her pain. Yes we know she had a crappy life. What freaking character doesn’t these days? That’s not enough to make me care about them. As I’ve always argued inner monologues should be mandatory for characters like this. Trust me I argue all the time about how emotional characters are better because they are more relateable than characters like Inaho or god forbid “Tatsuya”. But you can’t JUST use their horrible past to make us feel for them. There has to be more depth to them than that. Yet Lisa has nothing. The story hardly changes with her gone. She’s just……….there. I liked the idea behind her character but the execution has been absouletly atrocious. Yes I know it’s asking a lot for a girl to suddenly be cool with committing acts of terror. But just dragging her along for the ride without giving her character depth simply makes her an annoyance and nothing more.
Personally I find all the characters to be poorly developed so far but with Lisa you’d expect for there to be so much more to her character given we are already halfway through the series. Yet i STILL can’t stand her presence because her character had so much potential that has been thoroughly ruined.
Well, you are right, in that there are gaps in the reasoning behind their actions. At least, what I assume are their reasons. I am still inclined to think that there is a relation to their pasts in all this. I hope this gets explored in later episodes…then that way the nonsense may be justified.
As for Lisa, again I get your point, but I still think that her impact is meant to be subtle, barely noticed while she is there and felt when she goes, if she goes. I don’t know. Maybe I just have a soft spot for her. There’s just something about her, past notwithstanding.
A character like Lisa could be there for a number of reasons. She could be a stand-in for the viewer since I doubt few of us are super geniuses, she could be the fatal weakness that bring down Nine and Twelve, she could be their “wild card” like she was in this episode, or she could even be the character that sacrifices herself to accomplish whatever it is that those two are trying to do. Obviously, Five is going to attempt to use Lisa to get to Nine and Twelve, but her actual role here hasn’t been shown yet and may not be until the climax.
Couldn’t agree more on the FIVE thing mate
here is what I think , them letting FIVE play her games is ABSOLUTELY stupid , if they want to cover something and they know that only FIVE can get to them , that is ok , but that was accomplished day one of FIVE’S arrival . it is a simple case of ” you point them out , we take them down ” now what would be a better way to hide what ever it is they are hiding than actually capturing SPHINX ??? once they have visual contact of them , FIVE’S role should be over and she should no longer be in a position of power thus no sense in letting her play her damn games , sure they do not care about human life if it is necessary but here is the thing , IT IS NOT NECESSARY IN THIS CASE
To a point , I liked the show better before FIVE jumped in
seriously why can’t we have a show where there is no real antagonist ??? why is the police detective not enough for the show ?? why does it have to be ” some psycho of the same age having a lot of common ground and is the embodiment of evil ” thing ??
bring us back the SPHINX and police dilemma
this is my favorite show of the season , but the way things are going tokyo ghoul is catching up fast
I think what the show is suffering from right now is a lack of background. The actions of the characters might be better understood if informed with some sort of knowledge regarding their background and motivation beyond “muh mssed up childhood”. And why? Why so much build up? What’s the point of keeping quiet about their background? When it’s finally revealed that they were raised in Kinderheim 511 or whatever it’s gonna be another disappointment and cliche #56 in this show we THOUGHT was gonna be somewhat original.
Regarding Lisa,I agree with you, I think the point of her character is supposed to be the outsider of the group that gives us insight into Nine and Twelve through cliche scenes where they explain their shitty childhood when Lisa questions their actions.
But instead she’s just a useless moeblob that doesn’t even care about what they’re doing.
Five to Shibazaki: “I’m going to make you regret this.” Yes, you’re going to regret not allowing me to plow a jet loaded with C4 into a populated airport terminal. You bastard.
I can’t say I’m loving the introduction of Five. I was a lot more interested in seeing Sphinx vs Shibazaki in a game of cat-and-mouse with Lisa as an unknown factor.
With the introduction of Five it’s becoming a genius vs genius “just as planned” show, where Sphinx is now on the constant defensive. The world seems a lot smaller now that they are in this ‘cage’ with Five chasing them – it felt a lot more epic when the entire city was the canvas for their revenge and both sides were able to ‘breathe’.
Ok. This is now officially my favorite show of the season. Shinichiro Watanabe is a genius.
im giving this a rest and pickign it back on when I can marathon it, For some reason I end each episode much more annoyed than when I started watching. probably has something to do with Lisa and her extreeme plot induced uselessness. . .
I don’t really feel like Sphinx needed a challenging enemy to go against. To that point, I haven’t cared for Five’s part in the story. The show is still a fun watch every week, but the focus from the first few episodes seems to be weakening.
Reminds me of Samurai Flamenco. It’s still entertaining, but I wished there wasn’t so much need for suspension of belief.
I think 12 can easily dodge those camera base on how well he rides those snowmobile and motorbike. That means he has a very good body coordination, good awareness of his surrounding and extraordinanry reflexes.
Also the fact that they already marked the airport as a target means 12 has already familiarized himself with the lay out which include CCTV blind spots and access point for hacking.
i dont think the characters reflect the movement of the chess piece as it is use to pin point the location of the bomb.
oh wait.. you mean the actual chess pieces..
I’ll say it as many times as I like. This anime turned to shit the moment they introduced Five. Seriously, what Shounen Jump manga did they pluck her character from?
I hate 5. I hate her character. I hate that the show is jumping through hoops to make her logic hold water but, most of all, I’m just directing my hate at her for the show having made me hope that it wouldn’t be just another “anime”. This could’ve been something special maaan~
An organization that claims to be from the FBI is actually endangering civilians on Japanese soil and there is proof of this yet the Japanese authorities just give them a free pass to do it? WTF? Five is a greater danger than the Sphinxes and this show is getting annoying thanks to Five.
Just a heads up, there will be no episode (8) of Zankyou this week. Broadcast will resume the following week.
Thanks for the heads up. But that is somewhat disappointing, especially as this is my favorite of the season and the show that gets me through every week . Do you happen to know why that is happening? I read some stuff on the Internet but it was all too vague.
There’s been no official statement why the show has been delayed (at least from what I’ve seen), but the musings going about is so that episode 9 falls on September 11. Strange either way, usually some excuse is given especially when two other shows (Psycho-Pass and Barakamon) are also delayed.