Zenshu Episode 1 Review: Unlike its truck-load of anime adaptations such as Jujutsu Kaisen, Chainsaw Man and Attack on Titan: The Final Season, Studio MAPPA’s latest endeavour brings alive an original storyline that does not fall back on a source manga or light novel source text. Taking a daring plunge into the world of originals, the acclaimed animation studio instead jumps into the familiar territory of Isekai on its own terms.
Zenshu Episode 1 Review
Directed by Mitsue Yamazaki and written by Kimiko Ueno, Zenshu’s fatally uncanny familiarity drives its protagonist, Natsuko Hirose, so far to the edge that she literally dies of exhaustion. Hirose, voiced by the beloved Anna Nagase, who’s lent her talents to characters like Nagisa Funami in Blue Box and Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad ISEKAI, ultimately becomes a victim of her first standout success.
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Having set the bar too high with her directorial debut as an animator, she’s buried under pressure to re-create the record-shattering achievement with her follow-up project. Taking on the onus of perfecting every aspect of her forthcoming project on her own, neither is she able to put sparkling results to paper nor does she want anyone else’s assistance in the matter. Natsuko ultimately closes her world up within the boundaries of her professional cubicle, setting goals so far out of reach that it starts reflecting in her unruly exterior, which sadly mirrors her innate desolation.
Like many of us failing to strike a work-life balance, allowing either/or to consume us, Natsuko, too, falls victim. And her fall portrays a bleak reality most of us have closely encountered in the contemporary modern world. In real life, we tend to claw our way to comfort through channels that shape into an escapist outlet. In anime, that’s Isekai.
From picking up a ground reality widely encountered by many in the professional world, Zenshu Episode 1, “First Stroke,” taps into the core of unsettling human emotions most of us have often pledged to dissociate ourselves from for our own betterment but rarely achieved to do so. Transporting that human foundation to the anime universe, the brand-new original MAPPA project electrifies it with visuals out of this world.
Reworking how Isekai generally falls into place, the genre revives its sensibility with a meta touch. Irony blasts onto our screens not only because the anime is about making an anime but even more so because its own visual frames capture the industry’s toxic addiction to tirelessly keep pedalling hard even when creatives have run out of fumes.
The title “Zenshu” echoes louder than ever in the opening scenes when Natsuko buries herself into work to the extent that nothing makes sense, and she’s left with no option but to harness the meaning of the Japanese word, pushing her to “fix everything” and “start over.”
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The mundane cyclicity of her job plays over and over in a loop. The only way to break out of it is through escapism, which she finds in the cult-classic film ‘A Tale of Perishing’ – a fictional outlet that has for long had a hold on her heart that it even inspired her to get professionally entangled with this line. The visual jump from her boxed-up professional reality to a fantasy land with no bounds is an immensely visually striking spectacle that leaves one wide-eyed, akin to how it revives Natsuko’s life with colour, jerking her out of her protracted burnout.
What matters the most
The first episode scratches the surface of her inner turmoil by jumping forth into the Isekai transition. It remains to be seen if that aspect of the anime genre will end up consuming the entire storyline or if it will genuinely find a way to extend a connecting bridge to the real world metaphorically. The Zenshu premiere serves its purpose as a visually stimulating jump-point into Natsuko’s journey, which should likely be an inward one more than a fantasy escapade that becomes about numerous other characters we don’t want to care about.
The following episodes now have to fulfil the challenging task of tying those ends by dealing with her slump in a way that has real-world implications. At the end of it all, the fantasy extension should be a part of her, not the other way around. In an attempt to fit in her connection with the fictional outlet, the first episode bombards the viewer with a bag full of introductions. All in all, the show will find its way to success it so desperately longs for as long as it remembers Natsuko is the one we care about, and not the bazillionth character introduced in the Isekai world.
Zenshu Episode 1 starts streaming on Crunchyroll on January 5, 2025. New episodes will be released every Sunday.