ZENSHU – Episode 1

What’s it about? Hirose Natsuko became an animator right out of high school, and her TV directorial debut was a massive success. Now she’s working on her hugely anticipated follow-up, but she can’t even seem to finish the storyboards. Struck by a horrible case of food poisoning, Natsuko wakes to find herself in her favorite film: the strange, depressing flop called A Tale of Perishing. Why is she here, and can she change the grim events to come?

What have we here? An anime original featuring the glorious return of brilliant comedic genius Yamazaki Mitsue, best known for Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun? With series composition by Ueno Kimiko, of Delicious in Dungeon? And it’s art about the process of making art? I think I might be the one who’s dreaming.  

But you don’t need to be a nerd for production credits to get swept up in this premiere. It’s absolutely gorgeous, to start, full of attention to detail whether it’s the interestingly varied character designs or the different style of gag reactions in the modern day versus the clearly ‘90s style film Natsuko finds herself in. The scenes sell the strangulating atmosphere of working with a temperamental genius as well as the awe of a massive battle, recognizing that mashing up genres isn’t just about different aesthetics but different visual language altogether. It’s plain good craft.

Then there’s Natsuko, who’s already getting flack for being too unlikable as a female lead. She’s marvelous. By which I mean she’s kind of an asshole, and the show manages to convey a full snapshot of why in less than five minutes. She threw herself into the life-eating world of anime right out of high school and has seemingly done nothing else; she rose to director at a young age, but she’s not actually skilled at the crucial and overlooked part of the job that is delegating and coalescing a collaborative work; moreover, she’s got justified pride in her skills that’s bubbled over into arrogance, but she’s also quickly hitting a wall and feeling the weight of indescribable pressure to top herself; she’s transitioning from doing a bombastic magical girl title to a grounded contemporary romance; and she no idea how to fail or learn from failure.

The final blow is the news that the woman who made her favorite film not only died but died young and under mysterious circumstances, and her body had to be discovered (they don’t say cats were eating her eyes, but it feels implied). It’s not hard to imagine this artist Natsuko so respects as simultaneously a specter of the cost of failure. How often have we seen women in media fumble a production and vanish, where a male colleague might recover and keep working?

A lot of this is subtext, but it also feels just below the surface of the carefully chosen sketch we’re given, all before the plot sets up its “there and back again” ‘90s-style isekai. This script packs so many threads in to explore later that I’m kind of in awe. Will Natsuko fall in love with fictional (doomed) hero Luke, giving her life experience she lacks? Can she change the outcome of the film, and is that a good thing? How did the original film end anyway? How does Natsuko get back? And most tertiary but of most interest to me: why did this deceased director create this extremely weird film? What did it mean to her?

Yes, it’s beautiful and there’s an incredible magical girl transformation sequence where you’d least expect it, but the thing that leaves me drooling about this premiere is its potential as a character study. I want to watch the next episode yesterday, and I look forward to be enraptured every week. Ambitious anime originals created by two successful women aren’t things we get every day, and I intend to savor this one.