To say the Terminator franchise has struggled post its original hay day, is an understatement but not unique. Those entries into sci fi horror and action had many great entries, Alien, Predator, Robo Cop. And all struggled after a short time in media. They had many a comic or video game entry but when it came to movies….. that’s a long story.

Terminator was no different. The first film was a tense horror, the second an over the top action but then the 3rd film that came out a decade later…. 4th one was ok and an interesting point to go forward but instead the 5th decided to commit a cardinal sin. Rebooting away a good movie… then the 6th film seeing that 5th was was so universally hated decided to ignore it and set just after the 2nd film… and made a whole bunch of mistakes that I don’t have time to complain about in detail to make sure people don’t get the wrong idea about what I’m complaining about.

So anyway it’s been along time since a good Terminator entry outside of comic books has appeared (they met the Transformers, and Megatron was used to make Skynet) so let’s see how an anime would do it.

Watching Terminator Zero with friends after the model show, I was more positive to it than they were, but not blind to some issues, though ultimately I say it is in the better side of Terminator media than the bad.

It has the violent action, especially in the scenes in the “future” but its main focus is much more on the question “is man worth saving?” As one of our leads Malcolm Lee discuses with an AI he has made Kokoro with the full intent of stopping Judgment Day  and saving man from Skynet. This AI unlike Skynet was made with full free will rather than the more methodical and computer like thinking of Skynet.

But I did mention scenes in the future meaning time travel is involved, and explained in a more interesting way. The part I very much enjoyed about this series is that it explains that traveling back in time will not change the present, it will only make an alternative one. Skynet and the resistance have done this over and over thus explaining the multitudes of reboots and retcons of the last few decades. Skynet sends a Terminator to kill some resistance leader and the resistance sends a hero, even if Skynet succeeds, an new resistance leader will appear in that new timeline often thanks to the hero sent back. We can infer though that the start to this loop was the original film since time travel ultimately caused Skynet’s existence… assuming I have information from the 3rd film right… but I don’t want to have to rewatch that one.

A plot point is that the main action happens in a Japan a day before Judgment Day so the clock is almost at midnight with Malcolm and even Kokoro unsure if she will stop it, she can but should she? Throw in a Terminator targeting Malcolm’s children, a Hero Eiko who also doesn’t want Kokoro activated, and Malcolm’s children’s guardian Misaki in a location where you cant just easily buy guns, and you have a somewhat different story to the usual killer robot on the loose with many plot twists and reveals that help explain some of the major questions that were irking my friends, such as why if this is set in 1997 Tokyo, do they have so many helper robots?

Episode 7 is the best episode by far, not only explaining A LOT of backstory for the reveals but also all those inconsistencies but I just say it handles certain core aspects of the Terminator franchise WAAAAY better than everything that happened after the 2nd movie.

That said it can get up its own arse a wee bit on its philosophical debates and some people won’t like the way the action is handled plus one last minute reveal I felt was a little much and unnecessary outside of being a  surprise. Can I say a Terminator fan will like it though… hard to say, my friends didn’t really so much but we did watch all of it, plus the direction and decisions going with it are vastly less enraging than what 5 and 6 did. I would still call it a step in the right direction and want to see where this timeline goes rather than it becomes just another abandoned Terminator timeline.

Rating: 👍👍👍