For the hundredth time, we get a new entry in the Terminator series where a Terminator and a human go back in time to screw with the past.
It's kind of hard to understand what makes studios think it's such a good idea to rehash to the same plot elements over and over. The second movie was the only one that twisted the formula successfully, perhaps because you can only do it twice before it starts getting old. Terminator 3 is proof of that.
Despite its flaws, and it had quite a few, Terminator 3 freed the series from repeating the same plot line over and over again. It said, "Hey, guys, this whole 'change the past' thing isn't going to work. Time to try something different."
Early on in Zero, we're teased with scenes from the future. You're tempted to think that maybe this time it will be different and have its own plot, one that isn't a rehash of the first film. The characters look different, and nobody is talking about John Connor, Kyle Reese, etc. Maybe this Japanese entry, freed from the burdens of American movies, will be its own thing and not rehash T1 and T2.
The first few scenes are full of gore and action, but it quickly tuns into a situation where the perfect killing machine reverts into an incompetent dumbass when faced with a named character. I was willing to forgive this idiocy because the art was pretty good, but it just kept on repeating. This terminator is about as imposing and scary as my elderly cat. It can't shoot straight, it can't engage in hand-to-hand combat, and it can't outrun or outplan children.
Then, the terminator and a resistance fighter are sent to the past. Again? Really? But, as usual, there are a bunch of twists, much like Genisys, the fifth movie. I really don't think Genisys is a good template for your Terminator anime, but this follows quite a few of the same beats, including directly plagiarizing iconic scenes from T1 and T2 while putting a minor spin on them.
As if that weren't bad enough, Zero introduced some of the most annoying children ever seen in any Terminator entry. Forget about John Connor as a 10 year old, these kids are infinitely worse, and there's no reason for them to exist except that this is anime, and all anime needs to have annoying kids.
Like Genisys, there are a bunch of plot twists at the end. Surprisingly, Zero kind of pulls them off, even if the twists are obvious. It's a nice blend of worldbuilding and halfway intelligent dialogue that was constantly missing from previous episodes. Once you get past all the filler, boring soliloquies and monologues, the children arguing, and their nanny chasing after them, you get some reasonably good episodes.
I sat through it all, so you can, too. The art is pretty good, but the plot and English dialogue are both disappointing until later. It's also full of filler involving annoying children, and the Terminator is a dumbass easily outsmarted by children, and he can't shoot straight. If you can sit through all that, though, you'll be rewarded with a couple episodes that almost make it worthwhile and add a bit of interesting lore to the Terminator franchise.
