So after last week’s comedy of a plot, Zankyou no Terror tries its best to avoid veering off the rails into the City of Stupidburg. In Episode 2, it succeeds…barely. As far as I can tell, the crazy train has stopped only about a kilometer or two out from the city and is hanging out until the engineer-writers can fix its brakes so they never function again. We start off the episode with some dry, yet intelligent scenes about the aftermath of last week’s bombing. It turns out that, somehow, nobody died. Only 28 were injured by this explosion. Mildly. In downtown Tokyo. Population density: 6029/square kilometer. Uh huh. Yeah. Bullshit. I can kinda suspend my disbelief and accept nobody in the building died, but you can’t get me to accept the notion that somehow no passers-by were seriously hurt by the falling debris at the very least. Even if we accept all that lunacy for the sake of argument, that can only be attributed to sheer dumb luck, not wizard-hacker planning on the part of these teenagers. But of course, that’s what the plot implies. Nope. Not buying it.

Anyway, the writers go through explaining how these terrorists were able to make some basic thermite bombs and predict the chemical reactions that would occur if water were to fall on it. Yes, these supergeniuses flex their intellectual muscle because they paid attention in the high-school chemistry classes they never attend or because they found easily available material on the Internet. Magnificent. I’m pretty sure the issue with bombmaking is less about the basic chemistry involved and more about building reliable devices that actually work. Whatever, I’m sure they were trained in Unit 731’s backup facility that they grew up in. An aside: VoN probably stands for something like “Voice of N,” where N is some inappropriate English noun. Not that it really matters.

All right, so here we go with their next evil plan: these two terrorists post another video on Definitely-Not-Youtube in which they don’t bother to disguise their voices or appearance. Way to give the police some pretty crucial information on you: they now know your numbers, general age, appearance, basic psychological profiles, and that you like to make weird puzzles about obscure versions of Oedipus. The episode tries to then make this seem like a pretty deep plot with the supergeniuses stringing along the dumb adults for the whole ride, but again, fails to get me to care. Aizen Sousuke the Younger goes off to a police station, making himself look like a delivery guy so he can plant his bomb without suspicion. ‘Cause that’s exactly what police stations do: let delivery guys wander off into the station unaccompanied instead of just taking the food right then and there. You know, like normal people. Nor do police officers ask themselves questions like “who is this person walking around in the back of the station without an escort or any form of identification? What is he doing with this large metal canister that doesn’t smell like food? Aren’t we all supposed to be on high alert after a major government building was just bombed a few days ago?” Of course not. I stand by what I said last week: if there is no risk or sense of danger to the protagonists whatsoever, I do not give a shit about anything they do whatsoever.

Meanwhile, the plot’s setting up this Shibazaki guy as a reluctant hero. Don’t care either. He just did some basic detective work based on a riddle billions of people already know off the top of their heads because they read things. What makes him so qualified? Is it because he has a surname? Meanwhile, Hazuki Nagisa the Insane talks to Lisa about being an accomplice and killing her if she makes a move right in the middle of a crowd of teenagers. Oh, and he just happens to look and sound like the guy on the video the terrorists posted on the Internet, a place teenagers tend to frequent. I guess he used blood magic to make sure nobody saw him. That’s as reasonable as any other explanation.

God, this anime is a piece of crap. But at least it gives me something to write about.

PS: Lisa has family problems. Now be sad.