Summary
- Zenshu, an original anime by MAPPA, explores darker themes of anime production, focusing on physical and mental health consequences.
- The show revolves around Natsuko, who is reincarnated into her favorite childhood anime, A Tale of Perishing, to rewrite the script and change her fate.
- With a unique premise and solid team including director Mitsue Yamazaki, Zenshu offers a fresh take on the isekai genre, worth checking out.
MAPPA has excelled at manga adaptations lately. Jujutsu Kaisen, Chainsaw Man, the reboot of Ranma 1/2, and dozens of others are recent hits for the studio, practically guaranteeing more success to come. Manga or visual novel adaptations tend to take over the industry in general, and very little anime each season are actual original works. This model has worked exceptionally well for them over the years. While some original anime have come out lately that have been well received, few have received any form of popularity or lasting power over the past few years.
But something new is on the horizon; an entirely original anime about… well, anime production. As a sharp pivot from their usual shōnen affair, Zenshu promises to be a heartwarming peak in the anime industry with the trademark gorgeous MAPPA visuals and character design. While only time will tell if this 12-episode show will do well, but with a trailer already amassing 800k+ views and most other trailers on Crunchyroll having a tenth or less the views as the Zenshu official trailer, we can guess this one is already rearing up to be the slice of life take over of next anime season.
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What Is Zenshu About?
An Anime Director Struggles With Writing About This Topic
Zenshu, a title based on the Japanese word meaning “to redo everything”, tells the story of Natsuko, who breaks headfirst into the anime industry after high school. Her debut anime became a smash hit, which was a relief after the hard and grueling work it took for Natsuko to get the anime finished. The problem arises when she’s tasked to direct an anime about a first love, which is something she’s never experienced before. She struggles to find inspiration for this project with no personal experiences to draw from, and hits a major writer’s block and deadlines running close behind. She frantically stresses over what to do, and begins to deteriorate due to stress.
“My first anime became a massive hit, sparking a social phenomenon and earning me recognition as an up-and-coming genius director.”
Natsuko tragically overworks herself to the point of death… in the real world, anyway. She wakes up in the fictional world of A Tale of Perishing, her favorite anime from her childhood that led to her becoming an animator in the first place. While she is first in shock at experiencing the plot of the anime firsthand, she discovers she has the ability to rewrite the script, reanimate the world, and change her fate within her childhood anime’s fictional world.
Who Is Working On It?
Same Director as Monthly Girl’s Nozaki-Kun And Others
The staff working on this anime are no laughing matter. The director is Mitsue Yamazaki, best known as the director for the 1-season slice-of-life hit Monthly Girls Nozaki-Kun, an anime produced by Square Enix back in 2014 about manga production. Other anime she’s directed include The Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle, and she has also been an episode director and in charge of storyboard for various episodes of Attack on Titan, Noragami, and Bleach, among over 20 other anime to date. Surely, by this point, she has plenty of experience in the subject matter of her new anime project, Zenshu.
Additionally, the scriptwriters have an incredibly stacked background in their craft. The main scriptwriter for Zenshu is Kimiko Ueno, who has written the script for the recent hit Dungeon Meshi, the dystopian musical anime Carole and Tuesday, and scriptwriting and series composition work for the series The Royal Tutor. She also has over 20 anime credits under her name.
The character of Natsuko is voiced by Anna Nagase (Ushio Kifone in Summer Time Rendering, Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad Anime). Other characters from the anime include the protagonist in her childhood anime Luke Braveheart, voiced by Kazai Ura (Yoichi Isagi in Blue Lock). Other voice acting talent for Zenshu includes Rie Kugimiya (Alphonse Elric in Fullmetal Alchemist), Romi Park (Edward Elric in Fullmetal Alchemist, Temari in Naruto), and Manaka Iwami (Torhu Honda in Fruits Basket).
How Is It Different From Other Anime About Anime?
We’ve Seen This Before… Right? (Wrong)
We’ve seen plenty of anime in the past about making anime. Shirobako, Keep Your Hands Off The Eizouken, and Kakushigoto have shone a light on the anime and manga industries in the past, sharing some of the struggles creators of our favorite medium tend to face. But while many of them tend to take a lighthearted approach to these topics, Zenshu focuses on the darker side of things; this anime blatantly talks about the often ignored, but very real, concept of physical health taking it’s toll due to working in the industry.
Karoshi (過労死, かろうし) is a Japanese word that translates to “overwork death”. It is such an epidemic in the Japanese work culture as a whole, but especially in non-unionized sectors like the anime and manga industries, that it has garnered its own word. The most common form of this is heart attacks and strokes due to stress from being overworked. It is estimated around 10,000 people die each year due to conditions being worsened or completely created by being overworked within the Japanese workforce. Zenshu still takes a lighter approach to this. After all, Natsuko is reincarnated into her favorite childhood anime. But her death in the real world appears very real and traumatic, and can serve as a reminder to everyone to stop and smell the sunshine for a bit.
While this is an original anime with no source material to reference, making it hard to predict the success of, MAPPA’s trailers are giving us plenty of information to go off of. The biggest piece? That this anime is a unique take on the isekai genre that’s worth checking out, even if you’re also sick of copy-and-paste isekai fodder that’s dominated the screen lately. This is a tale about an anime director first and foremost, and the very piece of media that led her to that career, and because of that premise, we are excited to give this one a shot.
Zenshu will premiere January 5th, 2025, on Crunchyroll.
