Zenshu review: Original anime comes alive in one key moment

When the real world gets too tough, anime can help us escape like no other medium, regardless of what form it might take. But what happens when anime itself is the thing you need to escape from? That's the problem an acclaimed animator faces in Zenshu, the latest series from MAPPA Studio.

With the success of her first anime creation — a not-so-subtle homage to the aforementioned Sailor Moon — Natsuko Hirose instantly hit the big time, marking her out as a prodigy who can do no wrong. Except, Natsuko is now struggling with her follow-up movie, First Love, because she's not exactly the most sociable person and love has never been a priority before.

With so much riding on this project, a "masterpiece" already if the hype is to be believed, Natsuko quickly chows down on some clams for lunch while racing to meet a deadline.

The problem is that she's too busy to take notice of the food's expiration date. Cue a remarkably sudden "death" scene where Natsuko collapses to the floor, poisoned by rotten seafood.

The anime wunderkind doesn't perish though. Instead, Natsuko wakes up in the fantasy world of her own favourite anime, A Tale of Perishing, where she encounters characters she's known since she was a kid. These include a swordsman named Luke Braveheart who our hero knows will soon fall into despair when his bestie, a unicorn named Unio, will die protecting this world from a dark threat known as The Void.

If character names like "Luke Braveheart" sound a bit basic, that's because they are. Each hero Natsuko encounters isn't particularly memorable at this point, aside from Unio, but that's a very deliberate move on the part of writer Kimiko Ueno.

Famed for her work on Carole & Tuesday, Space Dandy, and last year's Delicious in Dungeon, Ueno is clearly playing with anime tropes in her latest, an anime ostensibly about what it means to create anime.

Natsuko practically says as much when she first "dies", only to point out that "this isn't technically an isekai." Because yes, countless isekai shows hinge on this kind of rebirth in a new fantasy realm, but Zenshu has a very different take on the genre, as seen towards the end of episode one when Natsuko discovers that she can re-animate scenes to change the trajectory of her favourite childhood story.

A Tale of Perishing is said to be "super depressing", and that's why Natsuko used to love it so much, but her stance on that quickly changes once she appears in the actual story itself.

This hopeful slant sets Zenshu apart from other recent MAPPA success stories such as Chainsaw Man and Jujutsu Kaisen, although the studio has also been known for more heartwarming fare in the past, including Yuri on Ice, another original creation just like this one.

Without there being any source material to research or scope out, it's hard to definitively judge certain aspects of Zenshu at this early stage. Presumably, stereotypical characters will be fleshed out more in the future, building on and subverting anime tropes to say something new.

But as it stands, the work of notable Japanese voice actors including Anna Nagase (Blue Box, Suicide Squad ISEKAI) and Rie Kugimiya (Happy in Fairy Tail) is vital in bringing the likes of Natsuko and Unio to life at this early stage.

That's especially important for Natsuko because we don't even get to see her face until the end of the first episode, an intriguing choice that speaks to the work of character designer Yoshiteru Tsujino who mostly hides Natsuko away behind a mop of disheveled hair.

Director Mitsue Yamasaki fares less well with the initial action scenes, despite his previous experience helming Attack on Titan: The Final Season. While these battles aren't necessarily the point of Zenshu, Frieren: Beyond Journey's End proved that even shows where fighting isn't the main focus could and should pull off extraordinary action when it's called for in the story. What little we've seen of this in Zenshu isn't bad, per se, but it's nothing to write home about either.

At least the animation in general is decent enough, if not quite at the level we're used to seeing from MAPPA. That is, until Natsuko discovers her gift at the end of episode one. Cue a magical girl transformation you've never seen before that speaks to the literal magic of drawing and creating.

In this moment, Zenshu truly comes alive, and so does Natsuko herself now she's suddenly emboldened to do what she loves most again. This sequence is the clear standout of the pilot, as it should be, because it sets the tone for everything that's to come in Zenshu moving forward.

Like Look Back, Kiyotaka Oshiyama's movie masterpiece from last year, Natsuko's journey is an anime about the love of anime and the love that pours into creating anime especially. That's not to say it's easy. Neither story shies away from the sacrifices that animators make in their relentless pursuit of perfection. Even the name "Zenshu" speaks to this as the word actually means "redo everything" in the show's native Japanese.

This sets the show apart as far more than your standard isekai, just like Natsuko herself implies when she first wakes up in this strange new world. Because here, the protagonist's gift isn't magic in a traditional sense. It's a newfound love of the magic that comes with creating and why that's more impactful than any mere weapon. The pen is mightier than the sword, after all, even if it's actually a stylus in this case.

What we do know is that there's real potential here for something special, even if Zenshu is yet to reach the heights of previous shows that made you fall in love with anime in the first place.

Zenshu will begin on Crunchyroll on 5th January.

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