Forum - View topicThis Week in Anime - How ZENSHU Is Breaking the Isekai Mold
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FishLion
 Posts: 333 |
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I've been really enjoying the series so far, especially the meta side of things! Thinking of characters as living entities capable of change that can be altered by creativity is such a neat approach to take. I hadn't connected the dots to Princess Tutu, but that is a perfect comparison for how the MC is fighting the canon. We will have to see if the canon fights back.
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pi8you
 Posts: 219 Location: Minneapolis |
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I'm glad I'm not the only one getting Drosselmeyer vibes from the bird/director, curious to see how they play into the story
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Dumas1
Posts: 91 |
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So far, this is one of my favourite shows this season. The bird somehow made me think of the owl from The Secret of NIMH, though I haven't seen that movie in ages. The Drosselmeyer angle hadn't occurred to, but I can see the parallels.
But it is written, "At evening should the day be praised... the ale when it is drunk." I've seen enough promising shows peter out into (at best) messy endings not to say too much before the final credits roll. |
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fathomlessblue
 Posts: 400 Location: Manchester, UK |
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I wish I could share the same enthusiasm, but so far I’m just not really feeling it. It looks great & there are some delightfully absurd moments- plus Natsuko carries much of the same obnoxiously shameless fangirl energy as Re:Zero’s Subaru. However, beyond a surface level, I don’t think it does enough to separate itself from other modern isekai’s.
To me it’s the same nerd-pandering fiction draped over a fantasy setting, it’s just that here the big idea has been to cater to 70/80’s anime fans, rather than 90’s Dragon Quest/JRPG players. They’ve just replaced the menu & stat screens with storyboard henshin sequences, and top tier magic spells and limit breaks with what are essentially a series of cameo summons. A visual improvement to be sure, but it still feels like putting brand new wallpaper over the exact same dimensions of a room. As a result, despite the distinct old school fantasy template, it’s self-referential and pandering qualities feel far closer to modern fantasy trends than the classics it’s aping from. I personally find that pretty underwhelming, as despite some fairly surface level stuff about Natsuko’s relationship to her passion in terms of both fandom and career, it’s more often winking and not-so-subtle references seeing the show through. It's a little disappointing, given the constant stream of them on screen. I’d much rather learn what these shows actually meant to Natsuko, rather than just going “I know that! I’ve watched that! I've heard of that!” Bringing up Shirobako was always going to be unavoidable, but I do find it a good point of comparison, given that the episode where Miyamori meets pseudo-Anno after struggling to find available animators has the exact same Nausicaa parody as Zenshu’s premier. Only in this case it’s in service of a serious conversation about rekindling your love of the process, where the reference is a more direct metaphor of an emotional breakthrough. In Zenshu it’s mostly there to look nice. It’s also telling that the episode about Ande’s Chucky felt like it did more to capture the sense of someone’s passion for outdated or underappreciated media than Zenshu has so far actually living in one. Of course, these shows have entirely different priorities, and it’s not like the latter isn’t incredibly fun or inventive when it wants to be. I really like how the show is treating Destiny so far, for example. But I also don’t see it as being all that thoughtful beyond extremely broad strokes about artistic passions, nor do I think its approach to isekai all that unique beyond the table clearing. I’d still take another 12 Kingdoms or Escaflowne journey of entirely sincere experiences and personal growth any day over Zenshu's slightly remixed form of genre-savvy winking of the one thing the staff collectively know. It’s fun & frothy but little else to me. |
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