Netflix's Terminator Zero anime arrives this summer and features a twist on the Terminator timeline

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If there is one film series that feels ripe for an anime adaptation, it is Terminator. Now, Netflix is bringing exactly that to us with Terminator Zero, and has announced when the rise of the machines is taking place when the series starts later this year.

If you’re hoping for a continuation of Sarah Connor’s struggle to avert the end of the world, though, we have some bad news for you. Terminator Zero will focus on entirely new characters and a new plotline when it launches on Netflix on August 29, 2024. Instead of trying to stop the birth of the savior of humanity, the machines send their assassins back to 1997 to kill Malcolm Lee, a scientist who is set to launch an AI system designed to stop Skynet’s attack on humanity. A new soldier is sent from the future to stop the assassination.

This new Kyle Reese stand-in comes from the far-off year of… 2022, which means that we’ve already survived the inevitable apocalypse, apparently. Setting the war against the machines, which had always been the focal point of the Terminator franchise, in what is our past is certainly a choice. So much of what makes the original film so tense is that it took place in our terrifying future rather than our boring, old past.

Timeline quibbles aside, Terminator Zero still promises to be a fun, time-bending romp through one of the most enduring franchises in sci-fi history. The anime series, which is directed by Bleach’s Masashi Kudo, is set to arrive on Netflix on August 29, 2024.

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