What They Say:
As Lisa recuperates at Nine and Twelve’s place, Sphinx sets another bomb and posts another riddle, but things don’t go as planned this time.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
As this episode was airing, I was making my way to my first Otakon. A guest that comes every year is Masao Maruyama, founder of both the illustrious studio Madhouse and the young MAPPA, the studio notably responsible for getting Shinichiro Watanabe to do some real directing (on a more direct level than with Space Dandy) in the past decade. In his Q&A panel for the studio, he was asked about the risks of portraying such risky themes as terrorism and nuclear weaponry such as Terror in Resonance does on Japanese television, to which he replied that he’s perpetually prepared for episodes to not make it to air but that he and Watanabe feel that it’s important to portray these matters deeply and openly. As the series reaches the first explosion to potentially do the kind of damage that stations may not want to show, I can only say that I commend their integrity and hope that nothing stops this train… so to speak.
Because as much as I’ve been loving the back-and-forth between Sphinx and the detectives trying to stop them, I’ve been noting that Sphinx’s plans have been going too perfectly, as unusual as it seems for that to mean that their terrorist plots are always foiled. So the one thing the series really needed is something to really shake up the status quo, unsettling as it may already be in some ways. That arrives in the only kind of person capable of properly matching up to geniuses who were brought up in an inhumane facility that helped to facilitate their brilliance while warping their minds: one of their own. The face from the past that we’ve been waiting to see has shown up and it forces Nine and Twelve to not only be on the receiving end of a clever plot this time but to really show their true colors. They don’t just intend for their attacks to not kill people; they’ll risk their mission and even their lives to stop their own weapons from actually serving what would seem to be their purpose. Indeed Sphinx has suddenly found itself on the defensive, and where things will go from here is less certain than ever.
With the way the previous episode ended, I had expected that the most immediate answer to my hopes of someone coming from the outside to compromise Sphinx’s perfect plans would be the girl falling onto their doorstep, Lisa. But while a decent portion of the episode is dedicated to Lisa, she doesn’t seem to amount to much just yet, although she does come very close to becoming a bigger problem than I even would’ve expected, nearly causing an explosion right at home. As the one normal civilian in all of this and someone with nothing to look forward to in life, she remains a bundle of potential, and if this episode was more of the same as the last few (which is horribly discrediting to the depth of those episodes, I admit), I might take some issue with her being treated as a bit of a prop for brief comic relief in this episode. But with Five’s thrilling contribution to the game, we have plenty on our plate already, and I can find little reason to complain.
In Summary:
Terror in Resonance has been very good since the beginning and only continuing to improve with each episode, but I’d say that nothing has really changed the landscape of the plot on the level of Five’s arrival. It’s just what the series needed to reach that next step, and it’s turned it into something really great with plenty more room to keep improving less than halfway through its run. Watanabe and the crew at MAPPA have a powerful vision for this series, and I’m glad to watch it.
Grade: A-
Streamed By: FUNimation
Review Equipment:
Custom-Built PC, Sceptre X425BV-FHD 42″ Class LCD HDTV.
