Terminator Zero: An Unfinished Future

Since it looks like Disney will never release that Aliens Vs. Predator anime series (Yes, it’s real! Look it up!) it’s up to the Terminator franchise to break in the nostalgia vault of 80s sci-fi movies and have it redone as an anime titled Terminator Zero. Mattson Tomlin who did uncredited writing on The Batman movie and worked on Netflix Animation’s The Sea Beast developed the series also for Netflix, and it was directed by Masashi Kudo who was an animation director on Bleach. This was animated by Studio IG that most Americans would be familiar with from its various incarnations of Ghost In The Shell, which is convenient as similar to the original movie version of that cyberpunk classic took the premise of a high-tech action tale and turned it into a cerebral exploration of humanity’s relationship with machines, the same is done here where normally huge cyborgs mowing people down with machine guns is replaced with slow-paced tone that brings a deeper philosophical approach to it. A total of 8 episodes were released in late 2024 completing the intended first season, however a year later Netflix announced it was cancelling the series leaving any fans of it hanging waiting for a resolution.

The story for this is completely free from the original Terminators movies showing how other parts of the world dealt with the rise of Skynet after it ends up nuking most of the world, so for once we’re not roaming around California. Starting out in Tokyo just before the prophesized Judgement Day in 1997, the brilliant Malcom Lee has spent the last few years developing a revolutionary AI named Kokoro with the hidden intent of competing with Skynet. Malcom is really from one of the numerous post-apocalyptic futures that travelled back in time to 1983 with his cybernetic partner Misaki, although his plan for creating a rival for Skynet instead of just plain trying to destroy it altogether is a little more convoluted. During his stay, Malcom fell in love and had three children, the eldest one Kenta is a prodigy sharing his father’s genius, and Misaki has been reprogrammed into being the children’s nanny. A Terminator from the future has been sent back to prevent Malcom’s efforts, but a female member of the remaining human resistance named Eiko is also sent to stop the Terminator plus her own mission involving Malcom. Kokoro stops Skynet from bombing Tokyo, even though the rest of the planet is decimated, plus she uses an army of early robots to take control of the panicked population while deciding to help the remaining humans with revelations of the Terminator and Eiko’s pasts from the future coming into focus. The series ends with Malcom getting killed from the Terminator with Eiko and Misaki along with all three kids exiting what’s left of Tokyo. How the story was to continue from here is up in the air, although the idea is that Kenta has a large part yet to played in a possible future.

Time travel takes a hard turn in this from most of the other Terminator outlets when here it gives its own explanation as to how the concept works, which ironically helps tie all the other movies together into a single universe, although broken off into multiple realities. There’s a scene where a prophet who leads the future human resistance explains to Eiko just before she goes back in time that whenever a Terminator or someone is sent into the past that they’re going into a completely different timeline, meaning for every time trip results in the birth of a whole different history being established, so the future the traveler originally came from is now inaccessible since their now in a totally separate history. This gives a lot of leeway to free itself from the Terminator movies to become its own story, plus it means that each of the sequel movies takes place in their own timeline like it’s a parallel universe, so you don’t have to worry about any continuity inconsistencies.

Terminator Zero borrows more from the first two Terminator flicks more than the other sequels or the cancelled Sarah Conner Chronicles. The anime doesn’t give into repeating the same lines that most Terminator tales have like “I’ll be back,” although there is the standard high-speed chase, slaughtering of a police station, and creepy moments where the victim is hiding from the mechanical murder machine. There’s also a decent amount of time spent in the dystopian future, especially in the very beginning when Eiko single handedly takes down a Terminator to get its CPU chip for her time trip. Unlike other Terminator sequels, this one does contain some serious plot twists involving time travel which haven’t really been used since the first movie. Its main advantage is having no strings attached to anything involving John Conner and the average American characters.

There is enough action in this, although there is a lot more philosophy added to the fire. A good portion of the 8-episodes has Malcom stuck in a Terminator-proof room conversing with his AI Kokoro who is split into three different goddess forms and spends most of the series listening to her creator monologuing about why Kokoro should help protect humanity and help them defeat Skynet. For all the good this is supposed to do, it doesn’t stop Skynet from bombing all but Tokyo around the globe, so the protagonist’s efforts don’t amount too much to protect the rest of the world as he was more concerned with the safety of his family.

Anime has adapted numerous other American properties like The Matrix, Highlander, Batman, Witchblade, Halo, and various Marvel Comics. Terminator Zero bucks the trend by setting its own course not tying itself too much to the original source material. Production IG did a fantastic job providing top notch animation and not resorting to having their secondary department handling the quality 2D production, even though there is impressive CGI incorporated into it. Viewing the entire series is like watching an entire 4-hour long movie as each episode leads right into the other and the main course of it takes place over the course of a few days just before and after the upcoming Judgement Day.

There is a lack of cohesion in the narrative, specifically during the first half of the series, like whenever they go to Malcom’s children walking around the mostly abandoned Tokyo trying to avoid killer robots. It’s possible that the first season of Terminator Zero was intended to be only 6-7 episodes, but having it stretched out to 8 meant a great deal of filler material had to be thrown in. This might have added to the show’s premiere not receiving the sort of ratings that would have prompted Netflix to do a second series. Even though the single season does reach an ending point, there was clearly room for more stories to tell and tighten up the uneven pace of the original.