Zankyou no Terror (Terror in Resonance): Season 1/ Episode 9 "Highs & Lows" – Overview/ Review (with Spoilers)

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Overview

As Nine (Kokonoe) rushes to finish the final attack and Twelve (Hisami) tries to save Lisa from Five, Shibazaki gives us almost all the information you could want about the Athena Plan.

Review (with Spoilers)

Assuming Zankyou no Terror goes on for 12 episodes, I think we seriously need one episode dedicated to the numbered characters’ lives in The Settlement, as well as what they did between The Settlement and us meeting them. If just because that is the remaining piece of the puzzle which would allow us to fully see, and understand, these people. For, as of now, it feels like we have been given enough to come up with theories as to why everyone acts the way they do, but nothing concrete. So hopefully between episodes 10 through, assumingly, 12, we may get the last bit of information needed before the series likely ends.

Topic 1: I Will Save You – Hisami and Lisa

With Lisa’s involvement came a way for Five to not only gain an upper hand but split the dynamic duo of Hisami and Kokonoe who abandoned her long ago. So every moment she watches Hisami sweat over trying to disarm a bomb vest put on Lisa, you can see she is far too excited. Almost to the point, she has to be reminded, once more, that whatever game she is playing isn’t part of the mission. The US government is involved because Kokonoe has not a bit of plutonium, but an atomic bomb. So while Clarence may not like Five’s methods, if strapping a bomb to a sort-of innocent civilian can lead to the information they need, he will allow it only for now.

Though, for a good period of time, as Lisa taunts Hisami, you are lead to believe he’d rather let him and Lisa die than betray Kokonoe. For, after all, Kokonoe has been his partner in crime, and a brother to him, since they were in The Settlement together. So for a girl, one he just met, to break them apart, and it being because of Five’s crazy behind, it is a hard decision but with Hisami done with bombs, people possibly getting hurt, and all this nonsense he accepted in his life likely to make Kokonoe happy, he decides to reveal the location of the bomb: The school where this all started.

Topic 2: The Settlement – Shibazaki, Hamura, and Aoki

When it comes to Five, Nine, and Twelve’s past, we have been given bits and pieces, starved for an episode or two, and then a few more bits and pieces. In this episode, though, we are provided a full meal as most of the information you could desire is given. To sum it all up: The Rising Peace Academy was a government and Pharmaceutical partnership which came about due to a drug company finding a way to possibly replicate what is known as Savant Syndrome in mentally healthy people. Thus leading to the Athena Plan in which 26 kids were taken from orphanages, assigned a number, and then tested on within a place called “The Settlement.” There top researchers tested on children through drug use, training, and testing, to the point where, around the time the US intervened, only three children of the 26 were still alive, or still some sense of the word normal. However, with Twelve and Nine setting The Settlement on fire, and disabling security systems, they disappeared for around 8 years. As for Five, when the US intervened they took her from the custody of The Rising Peace Academy members.

Leading to perhaps why they have so much power over the current investigation, among other things. For, as seen while Shibazaki and Hamura do their investigation, the whole topic of the Athena Plan is very taboo. In fact, Dr. Mamiya, the man who Shibazaki was investigating the death of, died due to him being one of the heads of Project Athena and with the possibility of the information getting out, death became an answer to the problem. And the way Aoki speaks about all he tells us, he feels that everything he tells Shibazaki and Hamura will mean a target on all three of their heads. Now whether or not that is true isn’t seen in the episode, but with 3 more to go anything can happen.

Topic 3: The Rebel with an Unknown Cause – Kokonoe & Five

With Hisami abandoning him and then snitching on him, Kokonoe is on his own when it comes to planting his atomic bomb, making some type of video, and hopefully conveying some sort of message so we can, without any doubt, fully know the point of all these bombings. For while likely these bombings are all about trying to lead, crumb by crumb, to Shibazaki, or some other talented detective, to discovering what Sphinx has been through, that is only a theory.

One which, due to Five’s introduction, hasn’t gotten substantiated much since Kokonoe has been distracted by Five’s games. All of which continue to seem like they were solely done due to her being upset about something. Be it her not being included in Kokonoe’s games with Hisami; being abandoned, or not included, when it came to busting out of “The Settlement”; her being mad about them never trying to find her; or who knows what else? For, again, while we are being given a lot of the where, what, and maybe the how? There are almost no “whys?” being answered. That is, besides the Athena Plan likely being done to give Japan some sort of upper hand, like making this secret atomic bomb Kokonoe still has at the end of the episode.

One last thing worth noting: As crazy as Five seems, a part of me wonders if the Americans may still have her on that savant drug. For with the way she acts, and her fainting in the episode, it makes it seem something is wrong physically, and not just mentally.

Collected Quote(s)

“That’s right, I’m not human. I am just one of many pawns.”

—           “Highs and Lows.” Zankyou no Terror (Terror in Resonance)