Director: Mattson Tomlin
Two timelines collide over a scientist racing to build a rival to Skynet before his own creation gets the chance to destroy him.
What is Terminator: Zero about?
Decades into a war between machines and the last human survivors, a soldier is thrown back to 1997 with one mission: keep a scientist named Malcolm Lee alive long enough to finish an artificial intelligence meant to counter Skynet before it can seize control. Skynet has only just gained self-awareness and already turned its full force against humanity, and Malcolm's work is one of the few remaining chances to change how that future unfolds. A relentless assassin sent from the same future closes in on the household, forcing Malcolm to weigh the ethics of what he's building against the immediate danger it puts his three children in. The series moves between the ruined future and the tense present of 1990s Tokyo, treating the countdown to Skynet's attack as inseparable from the more personal question of what Malcolm is willing to risk to stop it.
Cast & crew
Yuuya Uchida voices Malcolm Lee, carrying the show's moral weight as a man caught between ambition and consequence, while Hiro Shimono and Saori Hayami give voice to key figures caught in the crossfire between past and future. Toa Yukinari and Atsumi Tanezaki round out a cast built for an anime production rather than a live-action one, letting the animation lean into scale and speed that a traditional Terminator entry couldn't easily attempt.
Context & significance
Directed by Mattson Tomlin and released in 2024, this is the franchise's first anime installment, produced through a Japan-United States collaboration rather than the usual American production pipeline. Moving the story into animation gives it room to depict Skynet's future war and the mechanics of time travel with a visual freedom the live-action films never fully explored, while still keeping the franchise's core tension between human choice and machine inevitability intact.
Where & how to watch
Terminator: Zero streams on K-Time with Farsi dubbing and subtitles, so the fast-moving action and time-travel dialogue both come through clearly in Persian. Browsing this page needs no account at all, and starting the series only takes a free K-Time login.