This Week in Anime

How ZENSHU Is Breaking the Isekai Mold

Steve
Lucas, don't get me wrong, I'm excited to talk up ZENSHU. But after kicking the year off by cowriting columns about incest, every winter isekai, and jiggle physics, I'm mostly just glad to contribute to a topic that won't make me look like a complete degenerate.

ZENSHU is still isekai, but it's a good isekai.

We hardly ever see an anime protagonist modeled after Cousin Itt from The Addams Family, but Natsuko is here to right that wrong. I think that single aspect—a compelling character design—speaks to one of ZENSHU's main strengths over its isekai competitors: a creative vision. Most of these shows get lost in the seasonal churn of forgettably familiar slop. On the other hand, I was excited as soon as I saw ZENSHU was a collaboration between Mitsue Yamazaki and Kimiko Ueno. They're artists. They're veterans. They know their stuff. And that pedigree informs Natsuko's character.

This is where Natsuko's occupation as an anime director plays an important part. Not to keep harping on points I already made in our isekai column, but a lot of those shows make their main characters' backstories either generic or non-applicable. Here, Natsuko has to be a director and animator for this narrative to work and unfold. It wouldn't be as interesting if she were just a fan of this movie, exploiting her encyclopedic knowledge of it. The combination of her being a fan and a creator creates conflict and dialogue.

That's a huge chunk of the creative process right there. You examine other works of art that are important to you by picking them apart and thinking about what you like and don't like about them. You mold those constituent components into your art. That's what Natsuko's been doing, albeit a tad flashier.

Mitsue Yamazaki is a talented director! Pretty much everyone I know loves the Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun anime (as they should), but she has an impressive CV overall, including work under Kunihiko Ikuhara. Obviously, she can wrangle together a show that looks and feels great under the correct conditions. We've previously covered MAPPA's foibles, but no studio is a monolith. It all depends on the people you can enable from production to production. And clearly, they've been pulling the right strings behind the scenes of ZENSHU. How else do you get Ichirō Itano himself to draw an Itano Circus for you?

I started howling as soon as I heard the first syllable come out of Mamoru Miyano's mouth. Any anime nerd can write a scenario where a God Warrior zaps the enemy into oblivion, but it takes a true genius to use UtaPri to solve your conflict of the week.

The cosmopolitan spread of ZENSHU's references also dilutes its potential obnoxiousness. The show doesn't draw on any single period, genre, or scene. It's an exuberant hodgepodge, although it skews older. How else do you get a Unico-looking unicorn named Unio who has a dapper little Princess Knight outfit? Still, drawing on the classics feels appropriate for the story it's telling.

I also like its skewed way of tackling genre conventions. Take Destiny, for instance, who slots neatly into a bumbling damsel role. One funny thing that ZENSHU does is explain her ridiculously revealing outfit by giving her dad an even more ridiculously revealing one. It runs in the family.

More compellingly, Natsuko's interference with the story also inspires Destiny to shake off the shackles of her archetype and become something much cooler: a luchador.

At the same time, Natsuko openly loves the film, and that's important too. It speaks to the fact that art isn't math proof you can throw a QED at the end of. Something can be trite, dumb, and universally panned, and it can still speak to you.

That's also why, despite the isekai conceit, ZENSHU is best understood in conversation with other series about making anime and the creative process in general. I'm not just saying that because I didn't know it was an isekai going into it.

From my "Most Anticipated" entry for this winter, you can tell that I only watched the trailer from back when MAPPA was being coy about the whole isekai thing. I thought this was going to be a more Shirobako-esque romp. And while story-wise, it isn't, thematically, I've circled back to believing it has a lot more in common with Shirobako than its nearest isekai neighbors.

The more meta stuff in ZENSHU is also some of its funniest material. This bit is great, especially because it comes right before the show repeats the magical girl/animator stock footage in every episode so far.

I want that show to be real so badly.

It is difficult to come up with another anime that matches ZENSHU's approach and vibes. For instance, it's kinda like an inverse RE:Creators, where instead of fictional characters coming to the real world, it's a real director going to a fictional world. But RE:Creators has a much different feeling. It's more prosaic and severe about its metatextuality.

On the other hand, ZENSHU has been a nonstop romp. It takes its focus on animation and translates that into a colorful spectacle that can be equal parts reverent and irreverent to its influences—but always and palpably joyful in doing so.

True! I love, too, that while the fourth episode is the darkest one yet, its vision of "darkness" is still pretty goofy. I cracked up at the bluntness of the song the cult was chanting.


The musical resolution is similarly silly, but that makes it even more poignant. Memmeln's nihilism was rather childish and reactionary. It makes sense for her to be saved by something equally ridiculous. Except I'd never argue that. I know for a fact that fangirling is the purest, most powerful force in the universe.

I'm expecting the show will probably soon grow thornier and more contemplative as well. Natsuko hasn't encountered that much friction yet, all things considered. But considering how much this bird looks like the director of the film, I'm curious to see what she thinks of Natsuko meddling with her story.

I love the fanfiction energy Natsuko has been bringing to the table, but she needs a Drosselmeyer-like figure to wield the inexorability of the canon against her.

Drosselmeyer's eyes kinda look like the director's too...I might be cooking here.

If it does go down that route, that conclusion would align with the series' messaging so far. It could even wrap around and solve Natsuko's creative block on her new movie (if she survives her corrupted clam coma). Instead of concerning herself with what a rom-com should be, it would be better and more freeing for her to focus on the kind of rom-com only she can make.

That, or she can just ask Luke to storyboard it for her. The dude has talent to spare.