Television · Branch C
Terminator Zero
An anime set in 1997 Tokyo, on a separate track from every film.
Availability changes by country and by week, so this searches JustWatch rather than guessing.
Can you skip Terminator Zero?
Yes, on a first watch. It is self-contained, and nothing in the main Terminator story depends on it. Come back to it later if you want more. In chronological order, reaching it takes about 6h 12m of essential viewing across 3 titles. Show only the Terminator essentials.
Optional, and genuinely separate. Eight episodes, animated by Production I.G, set in Tokyo in the days before Judgment Day, with no film character in it and no connection to any branch above. You can watch it having seen only the 1984 original, or having seen nothing.
The setup is the familiar one: a soldier sent back from the war, a machine sent back to kill, a target who does not believe either of them. What it does with it is not familiar. The target is a scientist who has built a rival artificial intelligence and intends to set it against Skynet, and much of the series is the two of them talking. An AI that has been raised rather than deployed, arguing with the man who made it about whether it owes humanity anything, is a thread the films have never had the patience for.
Animation also solves the budget problem that shaped the live-action entries. The future war can be as large as the story needs, and the series spends it on scale that Salvation could not afford to imply, let alone show.
It is tonally much colder than the films and considerably more violent, and the time-travel logic is deliberately knotty in a way that rewards attention. Nothing on this site depends on it. Watch it if you want the ideas the films kept gesturing at and dropping.
Terminator guides
Where it sits in the Terminator order
- Release order
- #8 of 8
- Chronological order
- #8 of 8
- Released
- 29 August 2024
- In-universe era
- Other Branches
What to watch next
In release order
Last in this order
In chronological order
Last in this order