Studios should pay more attention to the three episode rule. I don’t want to wait until episode four to tell you that a series is, in fact, truly great. Oh, I haven’t immediately forgiven the first three episodes for dragging their feet, and this episode wasn’t perfect, but if you hadn’t been enjoying Zankyou no Terror‘s first three episodes, I’d still recommend you watch the fourth.
The biggest improvement is that Lisa decided, sometime between last week and this one, that she wanted to be a character. First, she decided to run away from home, which is nice. It shows that she feels she doesn’t have anything in her current life, and so, in her mind, starving on the streets might be preferable. Then 12 shows up, and she does what she should have done an episode or two ago.
Certainly, there’s something about this decision that makes the viewers happy. Lisa does lead a shit life, and if she had any agency in the first three episodes, it was in her decision to not do anything about it. By breaking this cycle, we can by happy that Lisa’s moving forward. The directors are certainly pushing for us to feel this way. The tone when Lisa was riding on the motorcycle with 12 felt similar to when, say, the hero and the heroine get together in a Studio Ghibli movie.
On the other hand, 12 is a terrorist. It works to the series’ benefit that he is well-characterized terrorist. We could not be happy for Lisa if she was running off with a heartless sociopath. But terrorism is terrorism. You can sugarcoat it as much as you want, but it’s still wrong. At this point, we still don’t know what Sphinx’s motivation is. Near the end, 9 ominously tells 12 that they’re running out of time. Running out of time to do what? With the information we have, Lisa’s choice doesn’t feel much different than if she joined a street gang.
The end result is that the viewer is conflicted. Is Lisa’s choice the right one? Is it good for her but bad for society? It’s something to think about, at the very least.
Shibazaki got to be more of a character than he did in previous episodes as well. In a stroke of genius, the newest riddle required Shibazaki to reflect on himself rather than recite his knowledge of mythology. Because this was a moment of characterization, it didn’t matter if you had fun trying to solve the riddle or not.
My main problem with this episode is how it starts. We basically got an info dump about how sphinx managed to acquire the bomb without being caught. Hey, you know you spent the entire third episode establishing that Shibazaki is a badass? Well, here’s how you should have started this episode: Have Shibazaki sit at his desk, and think: “Damn. These terrorists sure do know what they’re doing. They even managed to avoid appearing on security cameras when they ordered supplies.” Because Shibazaki’s such a badass, we’ll believe that sphinx hasn’t left any important clues behind. And that’ll probably take about 15 seconds.
But this is me complaining about time wasted. It only feels like a problem because the rest of the episode was so good. Had there not been something to like about this episode, I doubt I would have cared.
Oh, and here’s one more thing this episode gave me to think about:
Mo[r]e Anime 