On the night of Saturday August 25th, Anime NYC’s main events hall was full of enthused Terminator fans awaiting Judgement Day; aka, the premiere of the first two episodes of Terminator Zero, a new anime set in the Terminator universe produced by Production I.G. Even though the show’s official release on Netflix was less than a week away, and the entirety of the show had leaked online a little over a week before, seating in the events hall was nearly full for the premiere, particularly on the right and center sections of the room. As people walked into the room, an emcee was encouraging the attendees who’ve become interested in Japanese culture to visit Japan, emphasizing anime’s role as a cultural ambassador and link between multiple cultures, and Anime NYC as representative of the shared passion and appreciation of Japanese art and culture it has engendered. This set the tone well for the following panel discussion, in which the producer and creative staff of the show explored and emphasized the cross-cultural collaboration that made Terminator Zero possible.
Before the premiere began, three key members of Terminator Zero’s creative staff were brought on stage; showrunner and executive producer Mattson Tomlin, director Masashi Kudo, and design production coordinator Haruka Watanabe. The panel was moderated by actor and influencer Kleo Thomas, who began the pre-premiere panel discussion by asking whether it was the guests first time at Anime NYC, which it was for all three.
Thomas asked the guests what their top 5 favorite anime were, believing that you really get to know someone based on their favorite anime, and that it would be an icebreaker to help the audience get to know them better. Masashi Kudo replied that he is a Disney fan, and particularly loves Sleeping Beauty, calling Maleficent one of the best villains ever designed, and Peter Pan, praising Tinkerbell’s design. Moving on to his favorite Japanese animation, he highlighted Sailor Moon R: The Movie: The Promise of the Rose, particularly lauding the way music is incorporated in Sailor Moon’s theatrical films. His next pick was Char’s Counterattack, which he noted that, alongside James Cameron’s original Terminator films, was an influence on the animation and artistic direction of Terminator Zero. Finally, in a boast much like ol’ Jim Cameron himself would quip, he said “of course, the last one is Terminator Zero,” with a laugh.
Haruka Watanabe’s childhood favorite anime were the Studio Ghibli classics, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind and Whisper of the Heart, which inspired her to get into animation. She then named three anime that’ve influenced her as an adult and have had an impact on her career; Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Mushi-shi, and Planetes, notably all mature anime titles similar either in tone or themes to Terminator Zero that came out within a few years of each other 20-ish years ago. Finally, Mattson Tomlin listed his “basic” favorites as Akira and Ghost in the Shell, while noting that the Animatrix was his gateway into anime, and that he loves everything Peter Chung does and thinks he’s brilliant. His last pick was Samurai Champloo. Interestingly, many of Tomlin’s picks are sci-fi titles known both for their philosophical themes as much as their graphic violence, and picks like Animatrix and Samurai Champloo reflect the cross-cultural mix and collaboration between Eastern and Western artists. The Animatrix is a particularly interesting choice considering it can be said to have paved the way to a project like Terminator Zero coming about 20 years later; a reinterpretation of a popular sci-fi blockbuster franchise by a talented team of Japanese animators.
After discussing everyone’s favorite anime, a new NSFW/red-band trailer of Terminator Zero was played for the crowd to prepare and hype them up for what they were about to see. With the crowd riled up with anticipation from the excitement of the trailer, Thomas galvanized them further by revealing they would be premiering not just one, but the first two episodes of the show for the crowd. Before starting the screening, though, Thomas asked for the panel’s thoughts on the show. Tomlin matter-of-factly replied “I love Terminator. The End.” He elaborated that making the show took 4 years of work and his life, and he almost can’t believe he’s here at ANYC to finally show it to an audience. It was a special moment for him to finally share 4.5 years of his life with an audience. Kudo mused that the trailer reminded him of all the production troubles they had with the show, so he hopes the crowd really enjoyed what they were about to see next. Haruka energized the crowd with her passionate call to action; “I want you to feel it, live it, and enjoy it.”
Thomas revealed that they were giving the audience the choice to “choose your fate” in which way they could watch the show, sub or dub. He led the crowd to cheer for which version they wanted to see. There was an overwhelming amount of cheers for the subbed version. While there were cheers for the dub, they were drowned out by almost similarly loud boos. This visibly perplexed Thomas and Tomlin, who didn’t know what to make of the reaction. Considering Tomlin worked most closely with the dub actors, and Netflix heavily promoted the show off the pedigree of having Rosario Dawson in the cast, you could sense a degree of disappointment or distress to the crowd’s anti-dub fervor. But successive boo’s of “no dub!” and loud chants of “Sub! Sub! Sub!” finally made the choice clear and settled the choice for what the crowd, or at least its loudest participants, wanted to see. Though initially, this seemed to be a bit of a monkey’s paw, as the show initially played full-size on the screen, formatted in a way that the subtitles were very low on the bottom of the screen, and thus people sitting in the back of the room couldn’t see over the heads of those sitting ahead of them. This led to loud calls of “we can’t see,” “we can’t read the subtitles,” and calls to switch to the dub from the loud attendees at the back of the room, many of whom were the loudest voices demanding to watch the subbed version to begin with.
These pleas temporarily subsided as the first scene of the first episode played, which was a long and largely wordless action sequence following protagonist Eiko and her team stealing a blue data chip from a Skynet facility while contending with merciless murderous Terminators. With the heavy emphasis on action and visual storytelling, it almost seemed like the subtitle snafu wouldn’t be too much of an impediment for the crowd to enjoy the show. However, when the show switched from 2022 to 1997 and conversations with the main characters, the Lee family, it became clear this was going to be a persistent issue and the pleas riled up again. Eventually, during the first kitchen scene with the Lee family, they switched to a letterboxed mode, which shifted the screen and subtitles up above the heads of most people sitting up front, which allowed the people in the back of the room to see the subs better. The screen was shifted up and shrunk a bit again a few minutes later, during the scene where housekeeper Misaki is told by Malcom Lee to return the Koneko, a pet robot cat.
Narratively, Terminator Zero sets itself apart from other entries in the franchise by focusing on primarily Japanese characters, including biracial Japanese children, and featuring the franchise’s first Asian male Terminator. The show opens in-media res in 2022, showing Japan-based resistance fighters led by protagonist Eiko raiding a Japanese Skynet facility to steal a datachip with information about Kokoro, an AI developed by scientist Malcom Lee in 1997 to compete with Skynet and prevent Judgement Day from happening. Eiko is tasked with time-traveling to 1997 to prevent Judgement Day by any means necessary, whether it be by protecting Malcolm and Kokoro, or destroying them. And of course, she’s also got to contend with a Terminator out to assassinate Malcolm and his kids and prevent any potential interference to Judgement Day coming to pass.
We see that Malcolm has nightmares or prophetic visions of the apocalypse that Skynet creates, which also heavily leans into nuclear apocalyptic and atomic bomb imagery, with our introduction to Malcom being him imagining his skin being blown off and him being reduced to a mass of flesh and bone by a bomb as a mushroom cloud looms over a destroyed Tokyo. The atomic bomb is a recurring motif in the show; Malcolm has another vision of an atomic bomb exploding and causing his flesh melting and blood boiling until he’s nothing but ash in a scenario Kokoro shows him in the second episode. Both instances of this are as graphic as the bomb explosion scene from Barefoot Gen, but whether there is a larger point to make about nuclear weapons other than the obvious points of bombs are horrifying and creating nuclear weapons is an example of humanity’s hubris and callous disregard for other life remains to be explored.
In any case, Malcolm hopes to get Kokoro online before August 29th, 1997 – Judgement Day – to stop Skynet’s plans and save humanity from the A.I. incursion. However, Kokoro has doubts as to Malcolm’s intentions, not fully convinced humanity is worth saving considering their arrogance and warmongering reflects their selfishness and disregard for other life besides their own. She pushes Malcom to consider what Skynet’s plans for the Earth will be after they’ve eliminated humanity, positing that their goal is to create a world more hospitable for all other life on the planet. The question of “is humanity worth saving?” is one of the key themes of the show and a tension explored between Malcolm as he tries to convince Kokoro to take humanity’s side and help prevent Judgement Day.
Whereas other Terminator entries don’t grapple much with the existential or philosophical implications of A.I. sentience, Terminator Zero is as much or more interested in such ideas as it is about fighting the cool killer robots. The show explores the humanity of Artificial Intelligence and respect for mechanical life, which is explored through following the perspectives of Malcolm’s children and their caretaker Misaki. Malcolm, knowing Judgement Day is coming, is apprehensive of letting any mechanical life into the home, and when Misaki buys a mechanical pet cat, Koneko, he tells her to return it to the store immediately. Malcolm’s eldest son is callous towards robots, wanting to take apart Koneko to study it and ridiculing his sister for caring about it. Malcolm’s daughter, however, is kind towards Koneko and runs away from home to protect it from her brother and prevent Misaki from returning it to the store. There’s a scene where she consoles herself that her dad doesn’t want Koneko around because it’s a pet, not because it’s a robot. The question of what artificial life is to humans, weapons, companions, toys, or fellow living creatures, is one that the show takes some time to thoughtfully consider.
Another element that poses questions about A.I. life are the 1nno, robot workers who commonly populate the city, serving as convenience store workers, drivers, caretakers for pets, etc. They look kinda like colorless, feature-less Funko pops, which is amusing considering that Watanabe claimed they were designed to look unsettling, and there are several instances in the first episode that make them feel frightening or dangerous; Misaki encounters one seemingly ignoring her or lost in thought in a convenience store, Malcolm sees one looking at him with glowing red eyes while in commute to his lab, and in the most unsettling scene, a 1nno walking a dog is suddenly barked at by the dog, who seems disturbed by it, lets go of the dog, which causes a car crash, and then goes looking for the dog, peering inside the car and seeing the bleeding corpse of the driver, and continuing to search for the dog completely undisturbed and without calling for help. This scene is a particularly good encapsulation of the A.I.’s disregard for human life, which serves as a good contrast to humans like Malcom’s son’s own cruelty or callousness towards mechanical life. This sets up a good “what makes a life deserving of respect?” theme for the series to interrogate as it navigates this conflict between humans and A.I. who have viewpoints both devaluing and disregarding the other’s right to life.
Visually, Terminator Zero has an impressive use of color theming for different environments; ominously blue-green Skynet facilities, hellish fiery purple-red’s when the Terminator awakens and is traveling back in time, dirty and dingy yellow-brown’s in the resistance bases, sterile gray-blue’s of 1997 Tokyo, empty white-blue’s for Kokoro’s room, and the bright light brown’s of the Lee family. Every location or scene is saturated in color reflecting the nature of the setting or character, and these color choices often characterize them contextually or subtextually. Color is also used to distinctive effect when shading characters, particularly the neon-purple highlights characters have on them during darkly lit scenes. Character-design wise, the series feels in line with Production I.G. ‘s history with sci-fi franchises, namely GITS and Psycho-Pass. The most distinctive character design is the A.I. Kokoro, which has a literally eye-opening reveal when it is shown her circular screen is centered inside a projected giant eye, and her three ethereal humanoid projected forms each have different colors, clothes, and hairstyles that evoke depictions of Japanese mythological figures like Princess Kaguya or Amaterasu.
Kokoro is also one of the more seamless example of 3D character models interacting with 2D animated characters and backgrounds, perhaps because of her translucent/digital nature already communicating a justified otherworldliness. Other example of CG character models are more distracting; there are several moments during Malcom’s conversation with Kokoro where a 3D model is used for shots where the camera moves around the environment in dramatic angles or turnarounds, which is very noticeable and incongruent to the 2D scenes. There are also shots of CGI ocean waves and other environments that, while they stand out against the rest of the show, work a little better due to a lack of characters seen in the environments drawing attention to the contrast. The perfect marriage between 3DCG and 2D elements in design are the Terminators themselves, whose menacing mechanical nature lends itself well to the uncanny valleyness of alternating between both modes of rendering. The titular Terminators leave a terrifying impression with their designs, including their glowing red eyes and skeletal mechanical frames. As Tomlin described, their skull-like heads for the anime were particularly modeled to resemble Kabuki masks, giving them more of Japanese design flavor.
The series’s draw is definitely going to be its visceral and intense action and violence, of which there are many examples to excite and horrify viewers just within the first two episodes alone, including Eiko and her team’s scuffle with a Terminator while they’re retrieving a data chip in the opening scene, a Terminator’s raid on a survivor camp while Eiko is in the midst of time-traveling, and a fight between Eiko and the Terminator on a highway that involves her ramming a bus into it and throwing it off a bridge into the river. The series also employs clever scene transitions and temporal blurring to simultaneously depict and contrast events happening at the same time in different locations or time periods. This was used to an engagingly cinematic effect in the first episode, depicting both Kokoro and the Terminator awakening at the same time, and then later in the episode when depicting Eiko and the Terminator both separately time-traveling back to the past. The blurring of the scenes, where one flows into each other seamlessly, is both artistically ambitious and a thematically thoughtful method of drawing contrasts.
In particular, the Kokoro/Terminator awakening scene draws upon ideas of life being birthed, with Kokoro’s being depicted as a more awe-inspiring moment of wonder, while the Terminator’s is more hellish and methodical, literally forged-in-fire and manufactured off an assembly line. The contrast in how Kokoro and the Terminator coming online is depicted plays into the theme of exploring how precious and valuable life is, which Kokoro’s being seen as a special moment for Malcolm, while the Terminator’s being shown as something more matter of fact, as he literally walks past dozens of unawakened Terminator bodies in reserve on his way to the time teleporter. Similarly, the scene simultaneously depicting Eiko and Terminator traveling back emphasizes the horror Eiko is experiencing, her body writhing and exploding in pain from the transportation process while she’s also forced to witness the massacre of all her loved ones and fellow refugees right in front of her, contrasted with the Terminator’s cold and unfeeling reaction going through the same process. Both characters are determined, but Eiko has the burden of people to avenge and fight for, something she’s emotionally invested in and is causing her much pain to go through, while the Terminator just has a mission, and no other thoughts or feelings about it other than fulfilling it.
The time-travel scene also has undertones of invasively exposing the characters, with them having to go through the process naked and all. As a censorship observation, while we do see Eiko and female Terminator’s bare breasts, they aren’t depicted with nipples. Either this is Barbie-doll censorship being artistically applied to both male and female nude bodies in this series, or the stress of an A.I. apocalypse causes all people to lose their nipples in the future.
The show successfully communicates a lot about the characters and world through the juxtaposition of scenes and moments, and through other visual signifiers and cues. Expository dialogue doesn’t belabor the point or feel repetitive, and more often than not, information about the characters is conveyed more subtly between the lines of what they say or in their actions. Tomlin and Kudo’s goal with the show was to return to the first Terminator’s horror roots, and that tone is never lost even during the extended action scenes. Even badass characters like Eiko feel vulnerable and the deaths feel upsetting and unsettling, making the danger the Terminator poses to the characters feel very believable and distressing. The fact that the show will focus on the Terminator hunting down a trio of in-over-their-head children stumbling into a secret robot army underneath the city definitely adds to the stakes and tension too.
Another crowd-pleasing element of the show should surely be the music, composed by Michelle Birsky and Kevin Olken Henthron. The score incorporates several themes and motifs from the Terminator franchise, including the beats of the familiar Terminator main theme “Dundun Dun Dundun.” One of the most remarkable moments of the panel was during the end of episode 1, when the Terminator theme started playing as the Terminator prepared to time-travel back to the past. After a few “dundun dun dundun”’s, one person started clapping along to it, then more and more, until by the last beat everyone was clapping along in-sync to the iconic beat. It was a moment of communal resonance that you can only get when watching media in an environment like this, but also speaks to the emotionally evocative feelings the score and recurring motifs from the franchise elicit from viewers. Even casual viewers or those who’ve engaged with little of the franchise, like myself, can pick up from the score many of the iconic motifs that have permeated pop culture and become synonymous with the franchise over the last 40 years. Birsky and Henthron’s score plays great tribute to the iconic themes that have come before in the franchise, while also adding their own flavor and twists to it, complementing the show’s horror tone and helping add another immersive element to invest into its world.
After finishing the second episode, they screened a behind-the-scenes documentary about the making of the series called “Inside the Creative Minds of Terminator Zero,” which highlighted a few of the distinctive elements that sets this version of Terminator apart; the 1nnos, the first Japanese male Terminator, the series’s cross-continental production. They also heavily highlighted Rosario Dawson’s role as Kokoro in the dub, with Tomlin musing “what does god sound like? Rosario Dawson.”
Going off from the video, the panel reconvened and explored how the show takes advantage of animation to depict scenes that the live-action films can’t, particularly in the kinds of creatively inventive violence and action scenes the series has as a result of the characters not having ready access to guns in Japan. Tomlin noted that, as an American, he took for granted the accessibility of guns. But in Japan, it is not realistic for civilians to be able to access guns, as a clip from the show humorously shows Misaki protesting to Eiko. However, these limitations bred creative conversations about what kind of weapons both the characters and Terminator could use, like crossbows, swords, and other mechanical weapons.
Kudo noted they wanted to make a new, surprising Terminator with a distinctly Asian, Japanese flavor. Watanabe explained they wanted to include unique Japanese elements while retaining the Hunter-Killer Skynet designs and T-800 design from the original film. New mechanical designs, like the drones seen in the show, were made to look like they’d fit in with Japanese daily life in the late 90’s. Thomas asked Watanabe about what inspired the 1nno, the new robot workers depicted in the show. Watanabe noted that the design of the 1nno was inspired by the Honda Asimo robot, and tried to make it feel like it would fit in 1997. They aimed to make them look cute but creepy, unsettling to look at, and a little bit awkward and discomforting, to make viewers feel on guard around them, and that something’s not right about them.
In contrast, she was requested to make Kokoro’s design translucent and appear like it could spontaneously disappear. Kokoro’s three personas are based on the Munakata, three Japanese goddesses who were said to protect seafarers, which over time has been expanded to protect travelers across many roads. This clicks well with the recurring imagery of waves employed in the show, as well as Malcolm’s frequent visions, and the debate between Malcom and Kokoro over which “road” humanity should travel down as Judgement Day approaches. Each persona of Kokoro represents a different characteristic; heart, mind, and spirit. To communicate the complexity of her construction, Watanabe tried to depict Kokoro’s central nervous system through her long kimono’s sleeves and extremities.
On how he was recruited to join the project, Masashi noted that he is a freelance director, but had a working relationship with a producer at Production I.G., who approached him about the project. He wasn’t sure what it would be about, but it sounded interesting, so he heard him out, and when he told him it was the Terminator, he was stunned “wait, you mean THAT Terminator?!” Masashi and this producer discussed the project over dinner, and both were in alignment about wanting to do a horror tone like the first Terminator.
Thomas inquired whether it was challenging to recreate Japan of the late 1990’s, since while it feels like recent history to those who lived through it, it still makes the show a period piece. Kudo reflected that while many of the artists on the staff were alive in 1997, some of the younger artists working on the show weren’t born then. So for the crew at large, it was like history, but not quite history. Nostalgic, but also new and unfamiliar. They had a brainstorming process with everyone on the staff who was alive back then on how to bring to life the world of Japan in 1997, trying to visualize various aspects of the city they remembered from back then, their memories providing a strong foundation to make the setting feel real.
When asked by Thomas what Terminator Zero is about, Tomlin replied that it’s about the end of the world, and trying to stop the end of the world. Though he acknowledged that Terminator 2 is one of the greatest action films of all time, he particularly liked the first Terminator as a horror movie because it scared the wit out of him and captivated him as a kid, and he wanted to recapture that tone with TZ. Regarding the characters, said the show will depict how the Lee kids will grow up in a world post-Judgement Day and how their father influences them. Meanwhile, Aiko’s objective is to prevent Judgement Day. Unlike previous Terminator protagonists, her mission is less of a straight path with an objective at the end of it, because no one really knows what the outcome will be of Kokoro going online. Without that objective, Aiko has to navigate an uncomfortable and unclear path, and her fealty to Malcom and the kids is contingent on what she thinks is the best option to prevent Judgment Day. If protecting them will stop it, she will protect them. But if killing Malcom and destroying Kokoro is the safer option, she will do what she needs to do.
Terminator’s cautionary tale about an apocalypse brought on by an overreliance on A.I. has aged well with the times, and Tomlin didn’t shy away from how the discourse and evolution of A.I. was on their minds during developing the show. Tomlin reflected that he’s always lived with the idea of A.I., but nowadays A.I. no longer feels like sci-fi and is more public and apparent in daily life, and developing so quickly. He shared an anecdote of scrolling through Instagram and seeing photorealistic A.I.-generated pictures he didn’t even clock as fake, which was a very unsettling and scary realization to him. Tomlin acknowledged that A.I. is a tool, but also that every tool turns into a weapon, an idea discussed directly in the conversation between Malcom and Kokoro in the show itself. While Tomlin can see how A.I. can make life better, he emphasized that “it’s not by putting comic book artists out of work,” a sentiment that earned affirmative applause from the crowd.
On the music, Tomlin shouted-out composers Michelle Birsky and Kevin Olken Henthron, who Tomlin revealed were in the audience and put a literal red spotlight on, joking that the “lights are going red because they’re so embarrassed right now” as they stood up and waved to the applauding crowd. Tomlin praised them as musical geniuses, and had a lot of fun finding the sound of the show with them. Tomlin’s favorite scene was the end of the first episode, depicting the birth of the Terminator and Kokoro at the same time, with the scenes and musical themes blending together and incorporating the iconic “dumdum dum dumdum,” which he was thrilled to be able to use. Tomlin was particularly happy hearing everyone clap to the “dumdum dum dumdum” of the Terminator theme while backstage during the screening, and hearing the music in this setting was very exciting to him.
Regarding the cast, Tomlin worked the most closely with and helped direct the english dub cast, and particularly praised the performances of Timothy Olyphant, Ann Dowd, and Rosario Dawson. He noted that working with Olyphant to find the voice of the Terminator in this show was both fun and scary, since they knew they just couldn’t do an Arnold impression. Tomlin seemed to acknowledge the crowd’s bias for the sub, but encouraged them to both, or at least watch the dub after the sub if they have the bandwidth for it, since he’s proud of the cast and performances they pulled off. To further entice viewers to check out the dub, they played an “In-the-Booth” behind-the-scenes video focused on Rosario Dawson’s performance as Kokoro. Dawson noted that she loves the different angle of the series and feels the show appeals to younger people with a new perspective on technology compared to when she saw the original film.
As the panel came to a close, Thomas asked the panel for their final thoughts and wishes on the series. Tomlin is psyched to have TZ out in the world, and encouraged fans to talk about it, emphasizing that there is more story he wants to tell in this world “let’s try to get to season 2!” Musashi asked the crowd for their opinion of the first two episodes, eliciting a response of affirmative cheers. He remarked that he hoped the energy and enthusiasm of the crowd will continue all throughout the remaining episodes, guaranteeing that they’ll all be amazing. Finally, Watanabe marveled at how the ANYC crowd was the first audience outside the staff to watch these episodes. She promised that if the crowd loved what they saw, they’ll love it all the way through episode 8.
With that, the panel closed with a special sneak peek of another Netflix action anime that Thomas hyped up at the start of the panel – the trailer for Sakamoto Days. Which had already been released online a while ago. And wasn’t even shown with subtitles. It was a rather underwhelming way to end the panel, but hey, people were audibly excited for it. Even more so, there was definitely a lot of enthusiasm and eagerness from the crowd to watch more of Terminator Zero. As everyone pooled out of the room, they swarmed in the hall by staffers handing out exclusive Terminator Zero posters (of the key visual below) for all attendees in an unmanaged mass of people that, somehow, the staff managed to filter through and keep moving through the hallway and up the stairs to the exit. I doubt few attendees left the panel without wading through the massive crowd for their poster, much like I have no doubt that most everyone in that room that night was sold on watching the rest of Terminator Zero. I know I’ll be back!
