ZENSHU.

Episodes 11-12

One of the treats of watching an original anime like ZENSHU is that you never truly know where it's going. You can make predictions and educated guesses based on the trajectory of the characters' arcs and analyze every frame for foreshadowing. Still, by the time the final credits roll, everyone is more or less equal in their knowledge of what is to come. Watching ZENSHU has been a wonderful avenue for community conversation, discussing the story as it unfolded and how we thought it would go.

One prediction I encountered, especially from my husband, was that the world would find its way to Tsuruyama's ending regardless of the changes, and Natsuko would be forced to watch as it started over again, with versions of the Nine Soldiers that had never met her. A Destiny who hadn't figured out she loves being strong; a Unio with whom she didn't share an antagonistic relationship; and a Luke who had yet to fall in love with her, just as she figured out that she loved him all along. It would have been no less a painful ending for Natsuko than the movie's.

And for a while, that's what seemed like would come to pass. What do you call the opposite of parallelism? Instead of putting characters into situations with notable similarities, what they're going through is deliberately opposed to one another. Perpendicularism? Is that a thing? If it's not, can we make it? Or maybe you'd call it dramatic irony. Whatever the name, ZENSHU's penultimate episode makes excellent use of this literary device as Luke and Natsuko lose and rediscover hope, setting up for a potentially powerful conclusion to an incredible series.

With Natsuko swallowed by the Void, the cultists and ordinary citizens rejoice, whether it's because they believe this will help bring about the end of the world or because they believe the threat she represents has been eliminated. Regardless of which side they fall on, the Void mows through the crowd; finding a scapegoat to blame and worshipping the threat is equally useless. Both are excuses for inaction.

Luke, on the other hand, isn't doing so hot. Already feeling beaten down by his sense of obligation as the destined hero, losing Natsuko and Unio in a single instant has left him unable to even cope with the reality of the situation. He trudges through the streets, clinging to Natsuko's bloody peg bar and mumbling plans to himself about preparations for the next battle. He can't accept this reality, where he's lost the two people he cares about most in the world. His eyes clouded over, he was numb even to the suffering and terror of the people around him, whom he was sworn to protect.

Then Natsuko's pegbar disintegrates, and he can no longer deny reality. As he falls to his knees, the shadow of Tsuruyama flies over him. The original creator's intent prevails in the end.

Natsuko's half of the episode sees her in the Void, trapped in an anxiety nightmare where her movie fails so badly that not only does the studio shut down, but every person who she inspired on her journey as an artist retrospectively despises her all the way down to Midori, her friend in elementary school. Nothing in these scenes should be a surprise to viewers, eventually spelling out the subtext and making it into text: her artist's block came not just from her inability to collaborate and her lack of experience in love, but also from her fear of failure. If this movie fails, not only will it destroy her career and bankrupt her studio, but it will retroactively taint every memory of her journey to becoming an artist.

Weirdly, I'm a little disappointed that Natsuko went and stated all this outright; I liked that ZENSHU generally had enough faith in its audience to let the visual storytelling speak for itself, rather than spelling it all out. There's a clunkiness to her verbalizing her anxieties in response to seeing a fantasy of her failure, when she's a visual person. While there's a chance some audience members wouldn't be able to piece together what Natsuko's nightmare was saying, would it not be true to the themes for ZENSHU to leave a few viewers scratching their heads?

Much more satisfying is the reveal that the voice that has whispered for Natsuko to draw isn't the magic peg bar, but her child self. The version of Natsuko whose world was changed by Tale of Perishing, who became inspired to draw and draw and draw, who fell in love with Luke. Natsuko, before anxiety and fear swallowed her whole, before she had learned to animate, when all she had was passion and love.

She and Unio stand to leave, but it's too late. Luke destroys the Soul Future, becoming the Ultimate Void.

Much of the final episode can be summed up thusly: Natsuko draws Luke after Luke, sending them after the Ultimate Void only for them to be hit with one of the countless swords their target produces and burst in an explosion of paper. The remaining characters try to keep hope alive, but the Void ooze rolls through the streets, disintegrating everyone it touches. Eventually, there's nothing left except for a half-shattered Natsuko, holding a pencil at her desk, facing down a figure who resembles nothing so much as Chernobog from Fantasia.

Cheered on by QJ, pieced together by Memmeln's compatriots, she finds it in her to produce one final drawing: Luke on the day they went to the hot springs, wrapped in a towel and brandishing a blazing sword. This choice beautifully sums up the second half of Natsuko's journey: this is Luke as only she has seen him. This isn't from a scene in the original movie, but a moment they shared. It came from their collaboration, his sword channeling the energy from her giant robot. This is Luke as he was the moment she fell in love with him, when he became not a fictional character to her but a fully realized person. This is the Luke that only she can draw. This is her Luke, and nobody else's.

She cries out, “I love you!” as her Luke launches himself at the Ultimate Void, which explodes, restoring the world and its people to what it once was. It's a tidy end to Natsuko's arc; she has found the love that only she can draw and overcome the anxious voice. However, as thematically satisfying as it was, I found myself wanting more narratively. In the space of just five minutes, Natsuko and Luke affirm their love, the world is restored, and Natsuko returns home to make a successful movie and improve her relationships with her coworkers. It was coherent and tied up all the threads, but it happened too fast for the full impact to hit. I'd love to see, say, how Natsuko felt when she woke up and realized that she wouldn't see Luke again, or how her coworkers responded to her waking up a better-rounded person who was much easier to work with.

I can hear some people saying, “But Caitlin, even if it's a bit compressed at 12 episodes, surely 24 episodes would be too long!” To that, I, a person who grew up in the Fushigi Yuugi and Magic Knight Rayearth Mines, say, “You are weak and would not survive the winter,” and by winter I mean 90's anime pacing. Fate/Unlimited Blade Works, for all the issues I took with it, spent an entire beautiful episode on its denouement. One of the best episodes of Appare Ranman is the one where the characters all take a break and hang out. We could have had episodes about the secondary cast, flashbacks to the Nine Soldiers before most of them were defeated, about Tsuruyama both before and after her death, and what drove her. There's a wealth of material if you're willing to take your time.

But still, I'm glad for what we got. Even with its shortcomings, ZENSHU. was one of the best anime of the season and a delightful throwback to the isekai of my youth: a story of growth and overcoming hardship instead of bitter revenge or stagnation in the guise of relaxation. I'll keep thinking about Natsuko and Luke for a long time.

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