I don't know much about anime, but I do know a thing or two about the Terminator films (and one short-lived TV show). When Netflix decided to pair the two for a new chapter in the Terminator oeuvre, I wondered could this be 'two great tastes that go great together'? That's an 80's TV commercial reference, but like all these reboots and sequels that take a movie or a beloved cinema character from the 1980s and offer us another installment, why can't I get in on the game for a review?

Let's take the anime half of this pairing first. As I said, I know precious little about it. It's Japanese animation, yes. It's known for the potential to cause seizures due to, oftentimes, bright, flashing lights and highly kinetic cuts and movement. Perhaps too, anime is recognizable for its melodramatic characters, keening and caterwauling through a story.

What qualifies as anime and what not? Is it like Champagne or Bourbon Whiskey? If the sparkling wine is not from the Champagne region of France or the whiskey not from Bourbon County Kentucky, then neither drink can adopt the home base moniker. Are there such copyright protections for anime?

I ask because the setting of Terminator Zero seems to be Japan. There are Japanese street signs and the general look of the background appears more Tokyo than Los Angeles (setting for most of the previous Terminator movies), but the majority of main characters in Terminator Zero appear Caucasian or African-American.

Terminator Zero is a co-production between Netflix and Japanese animators, so perhaps it's less an anime copyright issue and more an aim to please both eastern and western markets. But sometimes the wider an audience you reach for, the more diluted your product becomes.

If the setting and the characters' race were the only points of confusion, I might look past those, but, more glaringly, the storyline is nearly impossible to follow.

And that brings us to the second half of the duo. Anime is the style, but the story is all Terminator, and broadly speaking, it hues to the traditional Terminator set up: machines, in the future, are losing a war against humanity, and in a final attempt to turn the tables send a Terminator back in time to kill the leaders of the eventual resistance. If the plan succeeds, then no resistance will ever form and the machines will wipe humanity from the face of the Earth.

Equally as faithful to the Terminator franchise is the lone human warrior sent back in time to stop the machines from carrying out the assassination, thereby saving mankind.

If you don't know what a Terminator is you have been under a rock since the 1980s, but I'll be charitable by explaining a Terminator is a cyborg who passes for human and is programmed to hunt down unceasingly its target.

Terminator Zero sticks to this part of the script, which made the first two feature films (and the only good ones for my money), legends. But Terminator Zero is not a feature film; it's an eight episode series, with each episode's run time about 25 minutes. So there is more to play with than simple mano a machine combat.

And that's where the series goes wrong. Terminator Zero has so much time it veers too wildly from the traditional paradigm that made the previous films work. Terminator Zero replaces the smart, sci-fi action of the original installments with the aspirations of a think piece, resulting in a boring talk fest.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a hot button issue at the moment, and Terminator Zero probably spends almost two episodes in run time navel gazing about the perils of AI (and mankind). Remaining with the action would have been preferrable. Love-bitten, warrior Kyle Reese of the original The Terminator had more depth than inventor-philosopher Malcolm Lee (one of the protagonists) of Terminator Zero.

If I can't explain what all the talk adds up to, I'm going to be equally incapable of explaining the plot of Terminator Zero. Beyond the reliable set up of all the other Terminator variations, everything about the series is half-baked. The action. The deep conversational dives. The relationships. The coherence of the story.

What made the first two movies so successful was succinctness. There was unrelenting action with a dollop of introspection. Terminator Zero deviates from a showdown between human warrior and pitiless cyborg to the aforementioned Malcolm Lee debating his AI creation in what could very well be an ethics 101 discussion at a liberal arts college.

The choice to combine the enduring Terminator franchise with anime is an interesting and unexpected one, but it doesn't work out too well. That's not because of the animation itself but key decisions about story, plot, character, and dialogue.

Terminator machines, as fans know, cannot self-terminate, and it does not seem studio executives and producers will cease to churn out more movies and tv series as long as there is money to be made -- no matter how lackluster the product. Terminator Zero is not a complete bust, but it fails to clear a middling bar.

BLAST RATING: 2 OUT OF 4 STARS