With just a few days to go until the premiere of Terminator Zero, the staff behind the upcoming anime series have shared some insight into the work that went into the show's creation. In the video below, we hear from director Masashi Kudo, showrunner and executive producer Mattson Tomlin, and other members of the show's staff as they break down the creation of the opening two minutes of the series.
"I wanted to start with a scene that depicts the cruelty of the Terminator," explained director Masashi Kudo. "In the beginning, the concept was to make it similar to Terminator 1 and give it a horror flavor."
Mattson Tomlin added that the show's setting in Japan — a country in which no one but police or the military may purchase a handgun or a rifle — meant they had to come up with other ways for the Terminator to arm itself. The end result of a "fun and collaborative conversation" was to give the Terminator a mini-gun in his hand. According to Kudo, this is the same mini-gun that appeared in the Terminator 2 movie.
Elsewhere in the video, we hear from endoskeleton designer Atsushi Takeuchi as he discusses the movement of the Terminator as well as coloring and textures.
"It is the first time the Terminator has been expressed in the anime style," noted Masashi Kudo. "And I think we have managed to present a new form of the Terminator."
Terminator Zero is a collaboration between Skydance and Japanese animation studio Production I.G. Creator Mattson Tomlin who previously wrote Project Power and is currently writing The Batman II, serves as the showrunner and writer for the series In addition to the behind-the-scenes video above, Netflix also previously released a sneak peek at another somewhat early scene from the series as Skynet utilizes time travel to send a deadly assassin back in time.
Terminator Zero in the same universe as the Terminator film franchise but shifts the action to Japan where we follow the story of Malcolm Lee, a genius computer programmer and father of three who is responsible for creating a secret artificial intelligence that he believes will be humanity's last hope. The series synopsis reads:
2022: A future war has raged for decades between the few human survivors and an endless army of machines. 1997: The AI known as Skynet gained self-awareness and began its war against humanity.
Caught between the future and this past is a soldier sent back in time to change the fate of humanity. She arrives in 1997 to protect a scientist named Malcolm Lee who works to launch a new AI system designed to compete with Skynet’s impending attack on humanity. As Malcolm navigates the moral complexities of his creation, he’s hunted by an unrelenting assassin from the future, which forever alters the fate of his three children.
Terminator Zero is set to debut on Netflix on August 29 — Judgment Day.