Back on the terror train! Last episode was definitely a stunner – it started off with its usual slow-boiling, atmosphere-heavy thriller antics, but ended in a triumphant flight from the cops, from the city, from the world altogether. This is a show about abandoned people – people who’ve been given up because they either don’t fit into or are unwanted by a fairly rigid social system. In response to this assault on identity by the world they inhabit, Zankyou seems to spend equal time exploring both Fight and Flight. Lisa initially tries to run from her world, to get “somewhere outside it” – and episode four’s conclusion was a gorgeous articulation of this instinct. But you can’t really escape the world – no matter where you run, you’re still living within it. And so Nine and Twelve seem to have their own plan – either destroy the world that has abandoned them, or at least make some kind of statement against it. And against both these choices, there is constantly dangled the desire for human connection – apparent in Lisa’s story, but also evident in the increasingly personal games our young terrorists are playing with Shibazaki. That may ultimately point to a way out that doesn’t require destroying the world altogether.

Incidentally, one of my favorite details from last episode was the offhand mention of “fake IDs from Russia or China” that allowed the terrorists to gather the resources for their plot. This is generally a very tightly focused story, and the scale is “our young terrorists, Lisa, and Shibazaki versus the inescapable system they are facing in Japan.” However, that one throwaway line gestured at the exact same problem on a much larger scale – the Japanese system of justice and peace versus a world community that is unwilling to play by the same rules. It seems that even if you play within the rules of this story’s general system, you’re still a victim of a larger truth – even Japan itself can’t dictate the terms of how its society truly functions.

I’ll avoid going further on that thread for now unless the show actually engages with it, but I’m excited to see whichever direction this story chooses to go. Let’s get back to it.

Continue reading →

Oh shit what’s this a timestamp breakdown of something that isn’t Sword Art Online?!? I know, crazy. The reasoning’s pretty simple – unlike with Ping Pong, my thoughts on this show seem to take the form of tiny “oh, nice” moments throughout, and not larger thematic/character thoughts on the episode as a whole. Meaning it seems appropriate to get out the blackboard and slide ruler once again, and sift my way through an episode of this shiny new thing Watanabe has given us. Let’s blow up some city monuments!

Continue reading →

Hoo boy. This was another crime procedural episode, but that didn’t matter at all because holy crap was this episode thematically focused. The very first comments of the young police officer set the tone of this one, establishing a clear parallel between Shibazaki and Nine/Twelve. As someone consigned to archives until he retires, Shibazaki is also someone abandoned by the world, someone no longer “useful to society.” Like them, he doesn’t fit into the system anymore. People in this position are generally expected to take it, to be quiet and accept their loss of a role – but Nine and Twelve clearly aren’t willing to do that. And just like in Psycho-Pass, it turns out a system that tries to simply ignore its outsiders isn’t really equipped to deal with them – it has to bring in someone like Shibazaki, and acknowledge those it has deemed worthless in order to deal with other leftovers.

Continue reading →