Shinichiro Watanabe directing a bombing thriller with a Yoko Kanno score, in which the terrorists are teenagers, the riddles are Norse mythology, and the real subject is a state that would rather bury a scandal than answer for it.
What the story actually is
Two boys calling themselves Nine and Twelve steal plutonium from a Japanese nuclear facility and begin a campaign of bombings in Tokyo, each preceded by a video riddle posted online. Nobody dies in the early attacks. They are demanding attention rather than casualties.
Lisa Mishima, a bullied student with a difficult home, is caught at one of the sites and pulled into their orbit. Detective Kenjiro Shibazaki, sidelined years earlier for investigating something inconvenient, is the one who starts reading the riddles correctly. The story that emerges concerns an institution and what was done to children inside it.
Watanabe and Kanno
This is the Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo director working in a colder register, and the collaboration with composer Yoko Kanno is again the defining feature. The score is sparse, Icelandic-influenced, and frequently the only thing carrying a scene, with several sequences built entirely around a track.
The direction favours emptiness. Long shots of Tokyo infrastructure, silence where a thriller would put tension music, and a colour palette that drains as the series proceeds. MAPPA's background work is excellent and the show is composed with unusual care.
The parts that do not hold
Terror in Resonance is eleven episodes covering a plot that needed more room. The introduction of a rival antagonist in the second half accelerates the pacing and pulls focus from the institutional material that is the show's most compelling thread.
Lisa is also underserved. She is positioned as a third lead and given relatively little to do, which is a recurring criticism. The series is stronger as mood, direction and score than as tightly constructed plot.
Who should watch it
Watch it if you want atmosphere, a genuinely excellent soundtrack, and a thriller with political weight. The first half in particular is superb, and Shibazaki is a well-written adult investigator.
Skip it if plot rigour matters more to you than tone. The show has real structural problems in its back half and does not entirely earn its ending.
