ZENSHU.

Episodes 8-9

QJ, nooooooo! He's just a little guy!! IT WAS HIS BIRTHDAY!!

You can tell I'm emotionally compromised by an episode when I'm starting by paraphrasing a meme. Still, it's worth noting that I'm not kidding when I say it was QJ's birthday – his canonical birthday is March third, and ZENSHU's timeslot in Japan straddles the date change, meaning it started on 3/2 and ended on 3/3. We can only hope that his sacrifice is not in vain.

Struggling against preordained fate is a major element of these two episodes. Kametaro Tsuruyama, the director of A Tale of Perishing finally makes her presence fully known, taunting Natsuko about the pointlessness of trying to intervene and save the characters. She insists that the ending is written in stone, and all Natsuko is doing is adding extra scenes that increase the runtime. This leaves Natsuko rattled for a few reasons: that she's pissing off the creator of the movie that changed her as a person, that her creativity has been called into question, and that in the end, she still won't be able to save Luke.

Tsuruyama's snarky response to Natsuko's alterations brings to mind an age-old debate: how much ownership can a creator claim once a piece of art is out in the world? Some artists are violently against transformative fandom like fanfiction; Ursula Le Guin expressed discomfort with it, and Anne Rice quite literally threatened legal action against those who would seek to use her characters. Some artists see it as an act of disrespect as if people think they can do better. But as Natsuko says, most fan creators see it as an act of deep love. After all, you're left thinking about the work enough to be interested in further exploring the characters and world, expressing your unique relationship to their creativity. Tsuruyama talks about how she wept as she was forced to cut scenes, presumably for time. But that's irrelevant. No matter how much a parent struggles to give birth, their child is its own entity once it's out; such is the case for living things, and such is the case for creative works.

Luckily, Luke wasn't around to hear about his imminent demise, because he's drinking with Unio, trying to unpack his feelings for Natsuko. After some encouragement from Naomi, the fox bartender, he decides to confess. When Natsuko doesn't respond, he does it again. And again. All the while, Natsuko wrestles with a contradiction: this is a character created by a human and drawn on paper in pencil, but he also walks and talks and cooks food for her. As someone who has plenty of 2D crushes, I'm sympathetic to her; outside of the problems it could cause with my marriage, I'd be confused if Kotetsu Kaburagi showed up at my doorstep and handed me a dish of fried rice. He was supposed to be fantasy, safe, and distant, and now he's real?

When he takes her on a date to the hot spring, it's not hearing his feelings or seeing his penis that convinces her he's real; it's seeing his scars. Likewise, it's not seeing his penis that makes her realize her feelings for him, but watching him leap from her hand-animated Gundam clad only in a towel– a vanishingly rare skill in the era of CG models! – and slice a Void in an explosion of paper, fighting in concert with her work.

One thing I came to appreciate about ZENSHU with these episodes is how beautifully paced it is. Rather than introducing several plot threads throughout the series and then tying them up together at the end, sources of tension are introduced in each episode and resolved at different rates. Unio worrying about Luke not fully confiding in him only takes one episode, while the root of Natsuko's creative block will probably take the full series. We get bits of foreshadowing about the bigger questions from time to time, such as the question of whether Natsuko is alive or dead – Tsuruyama was transmogrified into a bird because she “died and gained wings,” but dismisses Natsuko's peg bar as her gaining nothing and tells her to go back to reality. The question isn't exactly answered, but the writing appears to be hinting at Natsuko still being alive.

The montage of Luke falling in love with Natsuko was likely added at least in part to stretch out the episode to allow it to end on QJ's sacrifice, but it was effective. It captured the feeling of falling in love beautifully: not necessarily the “reasons,” but the sense of wanting to know the other person more, of wanting to do things for them, of missing them when you're apart. It's adorable.

The others may not have thought much of Natsuko's conversation with Tsuruyama, but the ever-perceptive QJ notices one phrase in particular: “Luke's demise.” After a few pointed questions, he convinces Natsuko to finally describe the plot of A Tale of Perishing. Most of it we already know: Unio dies, Luke kills Memmeln, and he falls into a depression. Destiny heals his heart, but she marries Gary Oldman to help the city's orphans. The two try to run away together, but she's killed by a Void. Luke succumbs to despair, hurling his sword at the Soul Future, breaking it and destroying the world. QJ is the only survivor. QJ comforts Natsuko, assuring her of a “100% chance of a happy ending.”

And with that, he sealed his fate, because boy is that a death flag if I've ever seen one. So when Voids clearly inspired by Natsuko's previous cuts appear, she struggles to come up with a counter, searching for something “only [she] can draw,” discarding scribbles that come alive until a missile hits her animation desk. It seems like Tsuruyama's grim ending will win out in the end… until QJ realizes something. If the guy who was supposed to make it to the end sacrifices himself, the timeline will be irrevocably altered. Surviving characters can always be killed later, but there's no reviving the dead.

So he does it. He changes the timeline.

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