Recap

Nine and Twelve continue their airport battle against a seemingly invincible Five. When Shibazaki and co. arrive at the scene and Lisa gets captured, Sphinx find themselves having to work together with their sworn enemy.

Aqua’s Thoughts

Now that Terror in Resonance has seemingly let go of its aspirations to be the best thing since sliced bread and is settling with being merely a highly entertaining anime, episode 7 trades in the menacing atmosphere and character work for an action-packed pay-off as Nine, Twelve and Lisa run around the airport Bourne-style and attempt to outwit Five. It’s a tense, thrilling episode full of set pieces, twists and turns, but amidst all the cinematic action, it’s sadly also the first time Shinichiro Watanabe fails to live up to his prowess as the best director in televised anime. Before revealing its big twist, the episode clearly shows Twelve fiddling with the feed, minutes before Nine announces his winning move and Lisa creates a diversion, after which the feed glitches. Why couldn’t they have shown that happening synchronously, and most of all, how did no one notice the feed repeating the events from 5 minutes ago, despite Lisa’s diversion? Combined with the rather oblique presentation of the game itself, the first showdown between Sphinx and Five didn’t turn out to be what it had hoped. It’s an ambitious, compelling idea that ended up a bit too rough around the edges for its own good due to some sloppy execution, yet for a medium with a relatively short development cycle that is virtually guaranteed to bite complex, ambitious shows in the back at one point or another, Terror in Resonance seems to be pulling through well enough.

Luckily, the second half, an unapologetically action-packed blockbuster with exactly the right amount of over-the-top excess you’d expect from — I restate once again — a show about heroic teenage terrorists, doesn’t disappoint. As I predicted, Lisa gets captured and locked into the plane housing the bomb, so the dynamic duo is forced to call on Shibazaki for help. Five’s blissful unawareness of his presence helps Shibazaki get his job done, while Nine and Twelve finally show their affection for Lisa with an heroic rescue operation. Credit where it’s due — she may have gotten kidnapped, but at least Lisa’s rescue was focused mostly around her saving herself rather than being completely useless, let alone the fact that she was effectively indispensable in Nine’s ploy. Small steps lead to great accomplishments, as they say. The same goes for Shibazaki, who seems to have recovered from last week’s low point by catching Five in the act of endangering thousands of lives for some petty game. Sadly enough, he has no evidence to prove her involvement and in spite of her defeat, Five still has all the aces in hand. Sphinx may have stopped the bomb, but expended their sole trump card in the process, which will probably constitute the seed of Lisa’s importance in the story as a whole. Hopefully, with the conclusion of Five’s introduction arc, the show’s attention will revert to earlier episode’s strong characterization and vibe, as I’ve seen several people who haven’t been as on board with the show’s turn towards anime tradition. I’d love to see Terror in Resonance pick up the dramatic threat it seemingly dropped once Five entered the fray, delving back into the mythological symbolism, Lisa’s crippling mental state or Shibazaki’s experiences growing up in Hiroshima rather than two pretty boy anti-heroes fighting their rather comically psychopathic villain. If it doesn’t, it will have to settle with being merely good, rather than excellent.

Random Observations

• Okay, where the heck did Nine learn to fire a gun like that?
• As far as predictable future twists go, “The FBI — if they even are the FBI — were the ones behind the facility Five, Nine and Twelve grew up in” can pretty much go join “Lisa is Shibazaki’s daughter’ at this point.
• Megumi Han’s hilariously terrible Engrish continues its reign of, err, terror. Come on, even people who don’t know English should be able to hear her intonation just makes no sense, no?
• Terror in Resonance really seems to be developing into the umpteenth example of an ambitious project getting screwed over by anime’s short production span and rigidly fixed episode count. If Terror in Resonance had been given a few more episodes, or a 40-minute runtime like the recut of Psycho-Pass it has to share the noitaminA timeslot with, many of the issues I perceived could have been easily resolved, from the confusing mind game in this episode to Lisa’s lack of screen time and Five’s rather one-dimensional characterization.