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September 25, 2014

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Zankyou no Terror – 11

It’s settled: this sSILLY.FUCK-YOUeries is a complete piece of shit. Not even Yoko Kanno’s music could save it.

Nothing paid off. There were no answers. No resolutions. Zilch. Jackshit nada. Nine and Twelve just fucking die, and that was the best part of the episode: these two crazed, psychopathic, murderous fucks finally bit the bullet (in Twelve’s case, literally) and got what they fucking deserved. Meanwhile, they detonate a nuclear bomb in the stratosphere under impossible conditions (did you know a simple hot-air balloon can outclimb a fucking F-16 or its weapons components?), scattering radiation all throughout the earth’s atmosphere, destroying dozens if not hundreds of satellites, blinding tens of thousands if not millions of people, horrifically damaging Japan’s geopolitical position and social stability, and destroying the country’s entire electronic infrastructure, thereby sending the whole country plunging into a massive economic depression and wreaking untold suffering and havoc on over one hundred and twenty million innocent people for years. WHAT FABULOUS HEROES. WHAT PARAGONS OF VIRTUE. HUMANITY APPLAUDS YOU.

Oh, but “Von” means “hope” in Icelandic. That all makes up for it, right? That was the payoff we were all waiting for, right? I forgot that Shibazaki somehow represented Oedipus. To which I answer: HOW? HOW THE FUCK DOES SHIBAZAKI REPRESENT OEDIPUS? HIS CHARACTER AND ROLE HAD NO RESEMBLANCE TO HIM WHATSOEVER. DID YOU EVEN READ THE GODDAMN PLAY, YOU FUCKWITS? OEDIPUS IS A COSMIC TRAGEDY. THIS IS A FUCKING COMEDY OF STUPID.

This inane statement by Nine totally fits with Sphinx’s whole MO of incompetent terrorism that ultimately had no rhyme or reason behind it. It was just a childish tantrum of revenge against Japanese society for crimes a handful of politicians inflicted on them in secret. I was happy when Twelve got shot. I really was, even though there was no reason for the Americans to shoot him over the guy holding the detonator. Why not just shoot Nine instead? Oh, wait. They had to kill off Twelve first so that everything would be tied up in a neat little bow and seem poignant to idiots watching this show. This is not how you make an anime. This is never how you should make an anime. No one must ever make an anime this insultingly pretentious and grossly ill-constructed ever again.

Yoko Kanno can do wrong. I’m sorry, but it’s true. No one’s perfect, and some people are going to hell, specifically all the people whose names flashed onscreen during the last three minutes. Excuse me, I have to go call Light Yagami and tell him to get on that shit.

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September 18, 2014

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Zankyou no Terror – 10

What a fantastiSILLY.LOST-THE-PLOTc penultimate episode, closing out some lingering plot lines and using characters to their fullest to create a dramatic connection with its viewers, all the while setting the stage for Le Finale Grande. I was truly impressed.

The above is a very bad joke.

Yeah, this episode sucked, probably because the series tried to pull out a climax out of characters it never bothered to develop past the outline stage, since it was so busy distracting the viewer with LOL WE READ OEDIPUS plots. Maybe I might have cared a bit about Five and her relationship with Nine had it actually existed. You know, had we seen it played out in some concrete fashion. Had we been shown why she was so obsessed with Nine, why they had a connection, what kind of past they had, etc. Maybe we might have cared about Twelve’s depression after “betraying” Nine had we seen any sort of friction between their characters before the ninth fucking episode. Maybe all of this might have worked had the writers of Zankyou no Terror gone back to school and learned the basic structure of a plot and the basic mechanics of character development.

But fuck that. Once again we have a plot that makes no sense, all of which would have been prevented had the fucking police had bulletproof glass in the van carrying Nine. This is a standard feature of police vehicles, I’m pretty sure. This would have stopped Five’s measly handgun from shooting out the driver and setting up the absurd situation in which the episode ended. In the space of about three minutes the characters die multiple times but continue living anyway because of plot inertia. And then finally Five kills herself in her last throes after kissing Nine (meaning what?) and shooting the leaking fuel with her gun. Okay. Was that supposed to carry any emotional weight whatsoever? Because it didn’t. Who fucking cares.

Our grand climax turns out to be another absurd scenario where Nine lets loose a fucking atomic bomb to float in a hot-air balloon above the streets of Tokyo. How is this supposed to be a problem for the authorities to resolve? Hey Joe, what’s with the hot air balloon floating smack dab in the middle of the city? That seems kinda odd. Maybe we should go check on it. And how does this make Nine anything but one of the most monstrous terrorists in the history of the world? Threatening the most populous metropolitan area in the world (40 million people and counting!) with a fucking atomic bomb. Oh Yay! I’m totally rooting for him now! Who the fuck is the main character in this series? Who is the protagonist? Who is the antagonist? What are they doing? Why are they doing it? What the fuck is going on? How about some fucking answers?

Let me guess: Nine’s gonna teach the people of Japan a lesson about their terrible government and blah blah blah blah blah blah. Fuck you. You don’t have to whine whatever sobstory about how the government mistreated you or preach some forced geopolitical mantra by threatening forty million innocent people with nuclear annihilation. Fuck you, Nine. Fuck you, Zankyou no Terror. Fuck your shitty writing team and its hack, undergraduate prose. Fuck this pretentious bullshit.

I’m gonna go do something fun and wait for next’s week batshittery.

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September 11, 2014

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Zankyou no Terror – 9

Had every episode SRS.TRAGEDY-COULD-HAVE-BEEN of Zankyou no Terror been like this, it would have been a great series. There was tension, drama, cinematography, compelling choices, solid exposition, and real character development. In particular, I highly enjoyed the slow, careful pace the episode took with the bomb sequence, adding weight to it while simultaneously allowing both the viewer and characters to step back and consider what was going on among Nine, Lisa, and Five. Instead of turning this into some mind-numbing, last-minute-disarm-the-bomb action trope, we got to see some character development finally deliver on its promise, with each player, even Five to some degree, revealing new things about themselves. At last, the series sets itself up for its finale and throws the characters into their final confrontation.

Amazing how it failed to do this effectively for the past nine episodes, wasting all that time to accomplish so little. You might as well watch the first episode, maybe the fifth, and this one, and you’d end up at the same point as if you’d watched all the others in sequence. We just found out that Japan might have been developing a nuclear weapon, a shocking thing to say the least, given the country’s geopolitical position, popular sentiments, and the Japanese constitution that forswears the right to wage offensive war ever again. This single idea carries more substance than everything else that’s happened in the entire series, especially the cliched Unit 731 shit about savant children that was telegraphed into the ground. Why didn’t it just capitalize on this concept? Seriously, does anybody still remember those stupid Oedipus plots? Or the references to the Apocrypha? Or the fucking airport sequence? Anybody still care about those elaborate plots to blow up buildings? Nope.

I don’t think you could have asked for a better lesson on the importance of execution. Zankyou no Terror had all the trappings and foundations of a good series, but missed the forest for the trees. Characterization and drama are more about potentially small, yet deep moments between characters that you set up over time, rather than flashy sequences to get the adrenaline flowing and the brain shut off. Moments like what happened between Nine and Lisa here make a series memorable, not clever nods at obscure texts to make things seem revelatory to the dull-edged mind. The framing, the pacing, the simple-yet-impossible challenge presented to Nine, Lisa overcoming her insecurities somewhat, and Five revealing she cares way more about driving a wedge between her two rivals, the only two people in the world she has any connection to, than the legitimate concerns of the American government–all of that was light-years ahead in quality compared to Clarence the Henchman locking Lisa away on an airplane in some cockamamie scheme. And we didn’t even need Five grinning and painting her nails to make it serious and threatening.

God, kids, maybe this series might have a decent conclusion. It’ll still be a disaster, but we might be able to salvage something out of this trainwreck. No putting the breaks on the Crazy Train now. Only two more stops.

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September 4, 2014

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Zankyou no Terror – 8

SILLY.BORED

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORED.

If I want to entertain myself by watching people talk for half an hour, I’ll go rewatch Stand Alone Complex. This is not that. There was nothing redeeming about this episode whatsoever. It dithered about trying to be pensive, foreboding, and tense, but didn’t get close to any one of them. To make matters worse, despite all the nominal “exposition” we got in this episode, none of it amounted to anything that we didn’t already know. Shibazaki gets fired and blackmails some Cliche Corrupt Japanese Politician, whose face looks like they copy-pasted some old Japanese dude’s Facebook profile, to find out that the Japanese government did some Unit 731-type sociological experimentation on orphans. Man, what a scoop! If only this episode had given some real details about anything about the backstory of this setting. If only.

So Hazuki Nagisa the Insane and Aizen Sousuke the Younger finally have some interpersonal conflict that feels incredibly forced and stupid. Why exactly does Twelve care so much about Lisa? This would work had this anime actually spent time developing the relationship between these characters, but it hasn’t. So now, once again, we’re told he cares about her and we’re supposed to accept that. We’re also supposed to be afraid of Gasai Yuno the Evil’s kidnapping of Lisa. How did she know where the terrorists lived? Lisa ran away from home and didn’t tell anyone where she was going. Can you say “plot hole”? Because I can. I can say it a lot. This anime has three episodes left and I can just barely be arsed to keep watching thanks to the sunk cost fallacy.

Ugh, way to waste a two-week hiatus, Zankyou no Terror, not that you were worth much of anything to begin with.

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August 22, 2014

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Zankyou no Terror – 7

It took 16 FUSILLY.EVACUATECKING minutes into this episode for them to figure out that evacuating one of the busiest airports in the world might have been a good idea, i.e., the one thing that would have singlehandedly derailed all of Gasai Yuno the Evil’s convoluted plans.  Of course, they don’t actually do that, thus putting tens of thousands of innocent people at risk.

In fact, there were tons of ways both sides could have done things smarter. Let’s start with our genius terrorists:

  • Contact Shibazaki before the very last second and coordinate with him more so you have a better chance of succeeding.
  • Set off mass panic in the airport, forcing an evacuation that the local authorities, including the evil police working for the evil Americans, would have no way to resist and would have no choice but to ensure proceeded in an orderly manner, thus taxing their resources and allowing our genius terrorists to move more freely throughout the airport. Think that facial recognition software is going to work when thousands of people are running through the hallways?
  • Predict that Gasai Yuno the Evil wasn’t going to play by her demented little rules in the first place and consider where she might end up actually placing the bomb in order to create the most destruction possible. This is called “reading your opponent.” Maybe you didn’t pay attention in that class at Unit 731’s School for Gifted Psychopaths.
  • Tell Lisa to stay in hiding once her part in the plan was done. Since they switched the surveillance camera footage, all she had to do was remain out of sight of the cameras so that Clarence the Henchman wouldn’t know where to find her. Instead, Clarence the Henchman finds her in like two seconds and puts on her a plane in five seconds without anyone noticing. How did they get onto an empty plane with no one noticing?
  • Lisa, have you ever flown on a plane before? Use the emergency exits. I’m pretty sure Clarence the Henchman had neither the time nor the tools or expertise to disable all the emergency exits on an international airliner that are expressly designed to require no knowledge to use and be almost impossible to disable or impede? I was laughing the whole time. Why was she in any danger in the first place? Why was this supposed to be a tense scene? All she had to do was use her brain for three seconds and take a sled ride outside of the aircraft. Woop dee doo.
  • Hey, idiots: you can memorize detailed floor layouts of huge skyscrapers and play chess-games in your head in an international airport while running as fast as your legs can carry you. (This is biologically impossible, by the way. Your higher brain functions shut down whenever you push yourself past your aerobic comfort zone, so to speak.) Why don’t you just instruct Lisa on how to stop the plane? Remote auto-pilot can be overriden by the manual controls in the aircraft because simple engineering. How come you conveniently don’t know the controls for an airliner when you need to? You have for the other six episodes.
  • How do you even know there’s just one bomb? What if Gasai Yuno the Evil put, like, five more bombs around the airport just to be a dick? Or as a pretty basic backup plan? What would you do then? It’s almost like everyone just read the script in advance.

With that in mind, let’s talk, Five:

  • Why not carry your gun with you to the control tower just in case someone makes it up there? You know, the gun you had with you in the previous scene? Where did it go? Did it run off on its own two legs? What, did you just leave it with your Token Black Henchman down in the Surveillance Van for some inexplicable reason? Why didn’t you have your gun? That would have prevented Shibazaki from stopping you. What the hell?
  • On that note: where was Clarence the Henchman after he dropped Lisa off on the plane? Where did he go? Why didn’t you just tell him to meet you at the control tower?
  • Place more than one bomb at the airport as a backup plan and make no indication of where they are. If it really bothers your addled brain so much, just use Aizen Sousuke the Younger’s self-serving logic and say he was cheating by having a third member he didn’t announce. You win no matter what they do. That’s what I would call “checkmate.” If you know your opponent is going to make a billion stupid assumptions about your mindset and plans, use that to your advantage.
  • Why put Lisa on a plane unattended where she could easily get off had she had functional grey matter? Why not just capture her and use her as a hostage? Or kill her to make her an example and blame it on Sphinx? Say she found one of those other bombs by accident and foolishly tried to disable it in a naive act of heroism, thus painting Sphinx as the brutal terrorists they almost are anyway. Seriously, this is Subterfuge 101, here. Did you skip that class too?
  • Predict that your foes, being skilled in electronic warfare, might think about infiltrating the server room and secure it before they ever get the chance. Derp.
  • Notice with your insane genius brain the security footage was changed instantly, as opposed to five minutes later for some reason we call “Shitty Writing.”
  • Capture your foes right after they leave the airport when you know exactly where they are.

Shibazaki, you’re not guiltless here either:

  • Call in an anonymous bomb threat to the local authorities, thus forcing an evacuation of the airport. This bypasses any political strings the Evil Americans can pull and drastically reduces the gravity of the situation.
  • If that doesn’t work, point out the strange messages being flashed on screen–which would unnerve everyone in the airport anyway–and get your fellows to set off mass panic.
  • When you figure out the terrorists or whoever are planning to ram a bomb-laden airplane into the terminal, get one of your people to set off mass panic so people leave. I’m pretty sure people will catch on that the plane heading straight for the terminal with no guidance is bad and should be avoided.
  • If you have a visual on one of the terrorists on a particular vehicle at a particular geographical location, call it in via the control tower and tell people to secure that vehicle and to lockdown the airport–which would be happening automatically after a plane exploded on the goddamn runway. Then you can apprehend them and put an end to the whole mess.

My only explanation is that everyone in this show is addicted to stupid pills.

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August 15, 2014

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Zankyou no Terror – 6

BADDO ENGURISHU, LOSILLY.ENGRISHL.

It’s actually funny, since the English itself was decently written. It’s just that Japanese studios still haven’t figured out how to hire English voice actors for more than one or two lines.
 
As usual, Zankyou no Terror fails to notice its internal contradictions and other bullshit. For the past five episodes, the genius terrorists have been setting off bombs in public buildings and areas. Let me say that again: they bombed the Tokyo Metropolitan Building, bombed an unevacuated police station, almost bombed a shrine, and now they just bombed a major metropolitan subway station. Despite this, multiple times in this episode they remark on how they’re really NOT mass murderers who aren’t playing a game. I lost count of how many times I remarked “you mean just like you’re doing?” when they condemned Five’s antics. Her actions and the terrorists’s actions are more or less indistinguishable; the only difference is that she doesn’t possess the aegis of the writers who have written off all their poorly-conceived bombings as somehow death-free, which automatically makes them “good” in their mind. Even this last one where they set a bomb in one of the busiest subway stations in the country in one of the most densely populated areas of the world results in only a few dozen injuries. No deaths. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.
 
Do you *still* think this is a good anime? Because it’s far from it. This show fails in every literary facet. Last week’s scenario was somewhat exciting and tense because it was a change of pace from the one-sided puzzles that failed to establish our protagonists’ motivations or reasons despite having a third of a normal anime season to do so. Now they’ve just revealed a villain who is only a villain because of writer fiat. So this episode crumbles into boredom. To wit, I don’t know why these protagonist genius terrorists are supposed to be “good”; I don’t know why Five is supposed to be bad. Is it because she giggles? Is it because she’s American? It is because she’s playing chess with an airport bombing scenario–you know, just like our terrorist duo have done four times in a row on national television? Hey, idiots: if you’re worried about your actions being misinterpreted and hijacked to cause mass murder, it’s probably not a good idea to take actions that lead directly to mass murder. Like bombing public institutions. Why should I care about this conflict if the main enemy is doing something only slightly different from what these protagonists have been? The question “what if something goes wrong?” rears its screaming head without ceasing. Lo! Something goes wrong and the protagonists are fucked. Pardon me while I muster up some tears.
 
So it’s episode 6 out of 11 and I still don’t know what’s going on. What is Aizen Sousuke the Younger after? Why did they steal nuclear material and get America involved? Why is America even involved in such a capacity? In a more practical scenario, you might have some American experts working alongside their Japanese counterparts in an advisory capacity; they would not be heading up a secret team of American operatives with EXTREMELY TOPICAL MASS SURVEILLANCE EQUIPMENT operating inside a foreign country unless the Japanese government expressly requested their direct aid. And this is what I hate about this series the most: it doesn’t take much thought to devise a similar scenario that’s far more plausible. Have the Japanese government innocently request American help, then have just Five and her handler come in and subtly manipulate the Japanese team. Do you really have to insult both Japan and America by acting like the Japanese Cabinet just swallows orders from America without question or protest?
 
It’s really sad to see Yoko Kanno working her magic on such a useless series. In quaint irony, I was just listening to some Cowboy Bebop songs the other day. What I really miss in anime is that mature ring of majesty it used to hold its head high with. There’s none of that here. No Ballad of Fallen Angels, no Real Folk Blues. Just dull, somber, trite commentary trying oh so hard to be relevant. It’s the perfect example of putting the cart before the horse. No amount of social commentary can make Aizen Sousuke the Younger interesting; no amount of badly Engrish’d hacking scenes can make Five a compelling foe. If you hit upon a creative spark and forge a cast of memorable characters that we care about, everything else tends to fall into place on its own. Zankyou no Terror tastes like ash, with all its tropes, easy choices, and unremarkable characters. Anime has such incredible potential to ponder things in a way no other medium can. It’s always a crying shame to see it wasted so carelessly.
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August 7, 2014

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Zankyou no Terror – 5

BioShock-Infinite-18HA HA HA HA HA. I CAN’T BELIEVE IT. THE EVIL AMERICANS. BBBTTHHA HA HA HA.  THE EVIL AMERICANS HAVE ARRIVED. HA HA HA HA HA HA HA.

Oh my god, I laughed so hard when I saw the “United States Line” on the plane and the big American flag plastered on the tail fin just to ensure the viewer couldn’t possibly miss the message. Ain’t nothing gonna stop that anvil now, not even the very hills!

This was one of the worst and hands-down the best episode of Zankyou no Terror so far. Funny how that works. It was terrible because the plot was so ridiculous and the tropes legion beyond count; it was good simply because the writers finally figured out that protagonists need obstacles to make a story interesting. I had a reason to care about what was going on, as shallow and retarded as it was! There was a sense of risk! The genius terrorists might actually fail! They’ve met their match! After four dry-as-bone episodes setting up these bland cardboard stereotypes, something exciting happened!

Of course, the writers couldn’t craft something remotely cogent to do this. They had to backtrack and make the genius terrorists complete idiots this time, as opposed to mostly idiots. They set up a bomb on the fucking Shinjuku Line in downtown Tokyo, one of the most crowded places in the world, set it to go off at 8pm automatically, and just let it ride around the city while they wait for the police to fall for their trap. Seriously? At 8pm? When everyone’s out and about? With no backup plan? Like, WTF, kids? I thought you were supposed to be ten steps ahead of everyone. What was your whole plan? Hope the police disarm the bomb? What if they didn’t know jack shit about the Bible, let alone the Apocrypha? Did you know that maybe 1% of Japan is Christian? The average Japanese person probably couldn’t even name the first five books of the Bible. What if Shibazaki was sick that day and couldn’t be contacted? What would you do then? What if the incompetent police remained incompetent and failed to guess your riddle? If you didn’t intend for the bomb to go off and kill a bunch of innocent people (ignoring the scores you killed at that totally unevacuated police station in episode 2 that the writers hope you forgot about), thus ruining any sympathy you might have ever garnered from the general public, why the FUCK DID YOU GIVE THE BOMB A TIMER?  That’s exactly the opposite of what you should have done. Why not ensure your plan can’t fail with simple foresight? Just build it so it can only be detonated manually. HOLY SHIT.

Oh, right, because Little Evil Bitch shows up with her British-American counterpart projecting a 10km-radius field of idiocy around the Metropolis of Tokyo so your brains just shut down. Have I mistaken this series for a satiric comedy? Because seriously, this episode was so hilarious I couldn’t stand it. Ooh, I guess Five’s supposed to be creepy because she’s a WOMAN and she paints her nails WHILE SMILING. OOOOOOOOOH. I’M SCAAAARED. And why did Aizen Sousuke the Younger get a headache right at that time? And of course the Japanese police are craven and take orders from their real masters: the American Empire. Did you get that message too? Because we all know that random Americans can just show up at the Metropolitan Police Department and shut down the whole cellular network of Tokyo in an hour. America can do that sort of thing. It’s not like there’s this little factor called diplomacy in play that would never allow this to ever ever happen. Because Japan is a puppet of America. America calls the shots. American Empire. You get it?

By the way, Shibazaki got demoted to the archives because he gathered evidence on police corruption and that’s why everyone hates him and he doesn’t give a shit. There, I just figured out his backstory by paying attention to what they say. Lisa and Five are the last hope for this series, but I’m joking of course: there is no hope. Lisa’s just a bashful, repressed Japanese girl and Five’s a deranged psychopath, because no character in an anime–certainly not a woman–can ever not be a dehydrated cliche.

At least the terrorists finally fucked up and killed/hurt some innocent people. Maybe next week something even worse will happen to them. I hope all these twerps fucking die and the evil Americans win. All Hail Columbia.

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August 1, 2014

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Zankyou no Terror – 4

“We haven’t a sSRS.HACKINGingle clue about the perpetrators!”

Except the not-Youtube video clearly showing many of their physical features, unscrambled voices, and personalities. You know you are looking for at least two, unlikely more, young teenagers, one with black hair, one with brown hair, of X approximate height and weight. You have a fucking police sketch that people out in the sticks recognize, for God’s sake. Man, these police fucking suck. Oh, and apparently Bitcoin is a thing now even though the Japanese government doesn’t accept it. In fact, why would the Japanese government approve a request for gunpowder under such suspicious circumstances? Holy shit. Do these people not read what they’re writing? Meanwhile, downtown in Stupidburg, hacking is done through DOS and two teenagers with a fucking laptop can hack the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department with such ridiculous commands as “/attack” and shit. Also, I haven’t forgotten how the writers completely glossed over the many innocent deaths their bombing of the police station racked up. Other bloggers have done so, being so easily sucked in by this C-grade hack prose, but yeah, not a single word of that has been mentioned in any of the police department’s briefings. I know why, though: these two sociopaths have a real moral code, unlike all the adults out there who’ve forgotten what it is to be human, especially those responsible for their terrible childhood. Stop feeding us this high-school freshmen social criticism. Your plot is not deep, Zankyou no Terror. It is the exact opposite of deep. It is so shallow the water doesn’t even cover my pinky toe.

Blah blah blah, Hazuki Nagisa the Insane rescues Lisa as we knew he would. Man, I was so on the edge of my seat for that. I had no idea that’s how the plot would go. No, seriously. Took me completely by surprise! Gasp! Can we move on now? It’s been four fucking episodes; stop telegraphing this shit and get on with the plot. Oh, and Lisa finally gets the psychological release she’s been longing for because of her TERRIBLE FAMILY AND BULLYING JAPANESE SOCIETY AND BOO HOO HOO. Whaa. There, I cried. Done? Didn’t think so.

Blah blah blah, Shibazaki uses his head and solves the crime on his own, but the CORRUPT INCOMPETENT MINDLESS STUPID SOULLESS OLD UNINNOVATIVE STALE BOORISH (insert a thousand more scathing adjectives for good measure, since we can’t squeeze enough commentary into this show) police department can’t recognize an obvious trap and goes in guns blazing, resulting in their embarrassment in front of the public…instead of an actual bombing, which would make me care and give the terrorists some weight behind their words. After all, we can’t have the viewers thinking bad things about Aizen Sousuke the Younger, can we? We can’t let them realize these are just two terrorists putting the lives of untold people at risk with their antics? No, we’ll embarrass the police department instead of making them suffer real consequences for their stupidity. It’s more anvilicious that way!

I guess have to say this again: I DON’T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT THIS CONFLICT BETWEEN THE TERRORISTS AND THE POLICE. There’s been no sense of risk or danger to them. They’re just a thousand steps ahead of everyone because MAGICAL REASONS. They are two 17-something teenage boys. They do not have the logistical capabilities or expertise to take on the fucking Japanese government. Or any government. Or any semi-competent agency interested in doing its goddamned job.

It’s like the writers just keep throwing whole kitchen sinks at you labeled “COMMENTARY ON CONTEMPORARY JAPANESE SOCIETY” at the viewer and hoping you don’t think about it because YOU’RE TOO BUSY DODGING GODDAMN KITCHEN SINKS.

FUCK.

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July 25, 2014

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Zankyou no Terror – 3

ZSILLY.GRATZ-OBAMAankyou no Terror finishes its third episode without heading back into Stupidburg! Hooray! Nah, not really. This has been the least offensive episode so far though, I’ll admit. It was entertaining and didn’t take so many blatant liberties with logic and practicality that I didn’t absolutely hate it. 1 for 2 there, series. You really gotta do better than that. I did roll my eyes more times than I would care to count. Let’s do that now, in fact:

  • The police recount their general incompetence, thus reminding the reader how everything in this series could be stopped by the use of grey matter. Aizen Sousuke the Younger is also taking some huge risks, here. How could he ensure the cameras in the police station wouldn’t catch a clear glimpse of his face? Everything he’s done to this point is risking the viability of whatever Grand Plan he has. I also like how the writers just conveniently forget to mention how many scores of innocent people that bombing undoubtedly killed. Yep, just slides under the radar to create deliberate sympathy for these terrorists.
  • The terrorists managed to get a crane worker to cut the power by giving him money through dummy accounts. How do they know how to do this? Do they have someone on the inside able to manufacture fake accounts and make money transfers through them? Because that’s the only way you could do that. And if they did, the police could just, you know, trace the person who did. Follow the fucking trail, police. Do your goddamn jobs.
  • Aizen Sousuke the Younger somehow faked an identity in the government and worked at a nuclear waste facility for three months. …………no. Just no.
  • Aizen Sousuke the Younger is deliberately trying to draw people out. Probably someone from within the government who’s responsible for terrible, terrible things.
  • Aizen Sousuke the Younger has tinnitus and doesn’t want to tell anyone about it. Boooooooooooooring.
  • Yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup, the two terrorists really were raised in some Unit 731-type environment. My eyes took a vacation with my optic nerves when I heard “for those of you who have been abandoned, love does not exist.” Like, way to strap a bazooka to the anvil you’re brandishing and go to town, writers. Subtle.
  • Oh, the fat nerd helps solve the riddle conveniently with a timely video game reference. What if he had just been playing Candy Crush at the time? There goes another bomb. By the way, do you know how insulting this would be if it were on an American TV show? Yeah, it’s just as insulting here too. But no, the otaku won’t care. I’m sure of it. Because it’s anime, and anime always gets off scott-free.
  • Lisa has mother issues. WEEP. Hey, maybe you should devote some actual screentime to this main character of yours? I heard that’s something stories do, you know: develop their characters beyond cardboard tropes. We get it. Lisa’s life is fucked up. Her mother also likes to violently shake her. We don’t need another episode showing us this in anvilicious detail, okay? That’s what happened last episode.
  • Once again, we have an elaborate riddle that only Shibazaki can solve that’s again related to Oedipus. I really hope Oedipus is just a thing the writers have a boner for and it doesn’t play a part throughout the whole series. Like having Lisa being the offspring of incest or something. That would be dumb. They probably won’t do that, but given the scripts I’ve seen so far…
  • So yay, the terrorists lost this time. Too bad there was no consequence for them whatsoever. Like something that might lead back to them.  You know, a mistake? Something that might get the tension going? No? No. Okay. Yawn.

Some good points for this episode:

  • Shibazaki is a second-generation hibakusha, an atomic bombing survivor. That’s a nice touch to his character. By the way, I’ve been to Hiroshima: it’s not filled with old people. Looked like a normal town to me.

Yeah. Yeah, that’s it. This episode was bad; it just wasn’t as bad as the previous two. There are just so many things wrong with this series that I can’t possibly go into them all without killing many innocent virtual trees. This is the hellhole where serious anime go to die, kids. I can only commend the series for, as of yet, having no fanservice or other magical girl shit that just offends my soul in every way, but if this mess is the best “mature” anime can do now, I’m just going to cry in a corner. Even Death Note was better than this, and its plot made no sense either. It worked because the characters were interesting and the series really focused on them at heart; the plot was just a means to get Light and L to do crazy things and fight each other. There was tension and drama of some kind there, a conflict that at least tried to pull you in. On the other, lonely end of the spectrum, Zankyou no Terror has nothing. It’s so fucking boring and dull. It can’t even be pretentious like Death Note.

See you next boring time.

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July 18, 2014

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Annoyed, Nothing of Value, TV/Anime, Whatever, Zankyou no Terror

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Zankyou no Terror – 2

SILLY.AIZEN.JUST-AS-PLANNEDSo 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.