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This Week in Anime
How ZENSHU Is Breaking the Isekai Mold

by Lucas DeRuyter & Steve Jones,

Steve and Lucas discuss what makes ZENSHU. stand out from the isekai herd as one of the breakout titles of the winter anime season.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the participants in this chatlog are not the views of Anime News Network.
Spoiler Warning for discussion of the series ahead.

ZENSHU is available to stream on Re:CREATORS is currently not available to stream in the States

@RiderStrike @BWProwl @LucasDeRuyter @vestenet

Lucas
Steve, as our TWIA cohorts demonstrated earlier this week, it's good to dive into cozy and comforting media from time to time. However, there's nothing quite as fun and surprising as when a seemingly by-the-books popcorn show subverts all your expectations and ends up being one of the most interesting titles of this season.
lucas_01

I am, of course, talking about ZENSHU! MAPPA's original isekai that's quickly become the breakout hit of the Winter 2025 season!
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.
steve01

ZENSHU is still isekai, but it's a good isekai.
steve02
It's isekai that's VERY aware of the modern isekai landscape. Rather than being a presumed power fantasy for a young, male audience, ZENSHU is using the genre to explore themes like an artist's relationship to their craft and how to get the most out of the art you engage with.
lucas_02

The most obvious difference between ZENSHU and a lot of the isekai field is its protagonist, Natsuko Hirose. Instead of being a same-face gamer dude, she's a rising animator about to make her theatrical directorial debut. She also sucks in a way that is that's equal parts honest and refreshing to see in any anime, let alone an 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 Kimiko Ueno. They're artists. They're veterans. They know their stuff. And that pedigree informs Natsuko's character.
steve03
Natsuko is certainly a front-runner for my favorite character of 2025, despite finding her to be grating in the first few episodes! Her turbo-nerding her way through most of the problems she encountered in the world of the fake A Tale of Perishing anime movie reminded me of some of the most toxic elements of nerdier fandoms.
lucas_03

Episode 4 established that Natsuko will have to start engaging with the themes of her favorite movie rather than just the plot and trivia she's memorized. I'm completely hooked on her and the rest of the show!
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.
steve04

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.
steve05
Is this where we transition into talking about ZENSHU's art and animation? As someone who's found a lot of MAPPA's more recent output to be a bit over-produced and same-y, I dig what they've accomplished here. The ZENSHU team has beautifully translated the simpler character designs found in older anime into a modern style without anyone or anything looking boring.
lucas_04

The action sequences are all unique delights, with Natsuko summoning overt references to other animated works to fight the bug monster or monsters of the week. I was not expecting a Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind reference, but I loved it and love that this show can make its action sequences so distinct from episode to episode.
Mitsue Yamazaki is a talented director! Pretty much everyone I know loves the Ichirō Itano himself to draw an Itano Circus for you?
steve06
They keep delivering on the spectacle week after week, and in ways I never expected!
lucas_05
I started howling as soon as I heard the first syllable come out of UtaPri to solve your conflict of the week.
steve07
steve08
The reference game in ZENSHU is top tier, even when it's not built into the show's setup. Why is a The Fifth Element reference just casually inserted into the 3rd episode? Who on staff was like, "Hey, let's make this one side character look like that bad guy from The Fifth Element!"??
lucas_06

Whoever that person was, I want them to know that I see you and that I hope you get a raise!
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 Princess Knight outfit? Still, drawing on the classics feels appropriate for the story it's telling.
steve09

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.
steve10
steve11

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.
steve12
It is a well-known fact that everyone would be cooler if they were a luchador! You've also touched upon one of my low-key favorite parts of ZENSHU, which is that the anime Natsuko is sucked into, A Tale of Perishing, is kind of bad.
lucas_07

In the normal course of events in the fake movie, a character named Destiny Heartwarming is introduced crotch-first and then covered in beer and is the main romantic interest of a generic fantasy hero named Luke Braveheart. That's painfully trite writing, and I love that ZENSHU is using this backdrop as a means to explore Natsuko's growth as an artist and her relationship to her inspirations.
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.
steve13
steve14

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.
I couldn't agree more on both s! I wouldn't be doing this column right now with you if I hadn't been unduly impacted by a bunch of different media that's far from high art. ZENSHU gets that having an eclectic media diet is important for both creatives and people alike. You never know what's going to resonate with you.
lucas_08

I also went into this anime without knowing that it was an isekai! Not to heap too much praise on it too soon, but ZENSHU is now in contention as my favorite entry in the genre. It manages to use isekai iconography to deftly explore its themes around creative struggles and motivations, and I can only think of a few other isekai that manage to bridge their mechanical and thematic storytelling so well.
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 can't blame MAPPA for the misdirection in the trailers since ZENSHU is a lovable oddball that it's hard to boil down to an elevator pitch. There's some Shirobako in there, but the use of supernatural elements to explore artistic fatigue also reminds me of Paranoia Agent.
lucas_09

How have we made it this far into a ZENSHU chat, and we're only now bringing up the subtle and overt magical girl musings!!?
lucas_10
I want that show to be real so badly.
And I want more anime like ZENSHU to exist! Original anime are already pretty rare, and ZENSHU's isekai status makes it feel even more unique amidst a sea of growingly similar competitors in the space. There's just so much new and fun stuff happening in this show that I'd be impressed by it even if it weren't already super impressive on a technical level.
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.
steve19

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.
steve20
steve21
There's a casualness to ZENSHU's story that makes it almost feel like a slice-of-life series, where fighting entropic monsters once a week is a part of the characters' weekly routine. The world-ending stakes in the show's backdrop should add tension to each episode, but Natsuko is so lackadaisical about that part of her isekai experience, that her more subtle growth as an artist keeps me interested week to week. Which is very Evangelion now that I think about it, lol.
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.
steve26
Uh, excuse me, her name is Mem Meln!
lucas_11

Episode four juxtaposing this bit of nerdy trivia-flexing with Natsuko having to engage deeper with the motivations of the characters in her favorite movie to save the day is what made me realize that ZENSHU is going to be something special. Bringing her animations to life is pretty cool, but by the show's end, I'm confident that media literacy will be Natsuko's real superpower!
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.
steve27
steve28
Everyone who dies of food poisoning being revived in the same cult-classic anime movie would be a pretty fun afterlife! An older, and perhaps further unmoored, director would give Natsuko a much-needed foil. Especially since it seems like the show is rapidly approaching where the movie would normally conclude, this is set to be an exciting shake-up.
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.
steve29

Drosselmeyer's eyes kinda look like the director's too...I might be cooking here.
You're always cookin' up a storm, Steve! I'd also love it if ZENSHU is about to have a whole arc dedicated to teaching Natsuko and the audience that they shouldn't treat the canon of a work as sacred text that's meant to be memorized and can only be interpreted one way.
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.
steve30
steve31

That, or she can just ask Luke to storyboard it for her. The dude has talent to spare.
steve32
Only time will tell what direction ZENSHU will head in before the season is out, but if we're lucky, it'll keep being an incredibly earnest and thoughtful exploration of rekindling creative ions and finding new ways to engage with the art that inspires you. If we're REALLY lucky, Luke will have plenty more chances to flex his artistic talents as the show goes on!
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