Netflix's Terminator anime series gets some gorgeous first-look images – and they confirm Sarah Connor won't be back

(Image credit: Netflix)

Netflix has shared four new images from the forthcoming Terminator anime, Terminator Zero, which it'll be streaming from Judgement Day, aka August 29. And it's a very different Terminator show from the TV series and movies, not least because this time it's set in Japan.

Moving the show to Japan doesn't just mean a change of scene and new protagonists. It also means a very different kind of vibe. As writer Mattson Tomlin told Entertainment Weekly, he had to rethink his early scripts when his production partners pointed out that Japan doesn't have the gun culture or access to firearms that the US has, telling him that "if we needed a gun, we don't know where we would get it". Expect fewer bullets and a lot more swordplay.

Your first look at a new chapter in the Terminator saga. From Skydance, Production I.G. & Mattson Tomlin, TERMINATOR ZERO comes to Netflix this summer on "Judgment Day" August 29 pic.twitter.com/EMFB0BXvwqMay 15, 2024

This is not your parents' Terminator

While the show will treat the existing movies as canon and will be set on the cusp of Judgement Day in 1997, it's going to tell a very different story and feel very different to the films. "“There's also a definite Taxi Driver, Travis Bickle kind of vibe in there,” Tomlin says. "If I was going to fight a Terminator and I don't have guns, what are the weapons that I could concoct?".

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And it's not just the practicalities that will be different this time around. This Terminator show features a grand total of zero Connors: no Sarah, no John. "I think that it’s time to go into new characters and not burden myself with another John and Sarah Connor saga," Tomlin told EW. While there will be callbacks to the films to delight franchise fans, "I think that it’s time to go into new characters and not burden myself with another John and Sarah Connor saga".

It's not going to be a completely different deal, though. There's still Skynet, and time-traveling Terminators, and soldiers sent from the future to stop them. And according to Tomlin he's focused much more on the horror aspect of the original movie, a reading "where the Terminator is synonymous with Jason [Voorhees] and Freddy [Krueger], where he is this unrelenting serial killer. There's a little bit of Friday the 13th in here. There's a little bit of Michael Myers in here."

All of the episodes of Terminator Zero will be available to stream on Netflix from 3am ET / 12am PT on Thursday, August 29.

Contributor

Writer, broadcaster, musician and kitchen gadget obsessive Carrie Marshall has been writing about tech since 1998, contributing sage advice and odd opinions to all kinds of magazines and websites as well as writing more than a dozen books. Her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, is on sale now and her next book, about pop music, is out in 2025. She is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind.