The Spring 2025 Anime Preview Guide

Zatsu Tabi -That's Journey-

Chika Suzugamori is a college student who has been shopping some manga pitches around to publishers ever since she won a rookie manga award, but keeps getting rejected. Just as she was about to lose hope in ever breaking into the manga industry, she decides on a whim to go traveling without any particular goal.

Zatsu Tabi -That's Journey- is based on a manga by Kenta Ishizaka. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Mondays.

Joke's on you, Zatsu-Tabi—I've never had the burning desire to go on a journey! (At least, not in real life. Fiction's another matter entirely.) So much for your broad generalizations. Of course, that statement made in the episode isn't intended to be a value judgment or anything of the sort; it's instead a hook to grab the viewer because this show is nothing if not an attempt to promote tourism. The protagonist, Suzugamori, really needs some perspective on life, if not a bit more experience, and she gets it while watching a TV program where the bit is that they roll a die and assign a place to each face. Then the presenters visit the spot they've rolled. So Suzugamori does the social media equivalent: she launches a poll on her account and goes in the direction that gets the most votes.

Thus begins an extended tourism video for what is clearly a beautiful area, replete with forests, mountains, and hot springs. The episode takes pains to show us how gorgeous and new this whole thing is for her. Sparkles adorn mundane things like what seems to be a very basic hotel room and a very, very nice breakfast buffet (by American standards, anyway; it's not just an omelet station!). She marvels at electrical outlets on trains and local pastries. It's all very wholesome…and kind of dull.

Still, the beauty of the scenery is very well done. There's a photorealism to every background Suzugamori wanders through. While the juxtaposition of her very anime form and the highly detailed backgrounds don't hold a candle to Shigeru Mizuki's work (which is always my association with the style), it still works and is the draw of this episode. Most of it is just focused on her wandering around; she interacts with people online and with the editor she's trying to get to accept her manga for publication, but otherwise, this is mostly just Suzugamori talking to herself. That stands to change if the theme song (presumably destined to be the opening theme) is to be believed; the woman she sees overindulging in the hotel bar looks like she'll become a regular.

If you like slice-of-life and travelogues with a lazy pace, you'll almost certainly enjoy this. It's not my cup of tea, but there's a slow-paced charm to it, regardless.