First Look: Zenshu

Written by Dawfydd Kelly on 10 Jan 2025

After graduating from high school, Natsuko Hirose starts her career as an animator. Her talent quickly flourishes, and she makes her debut as a director in no time. Her first anime becomes a massive hit, sparking a social phenomenon and earning her recognition as an up-and-coming genius director. Her next project is set to be a romantic comedy movie themed around first love! However, having never been in love herself, Natsuko struggles to understand the concept of first love, and as a result, she’s unable to create the storyboard, causing the movie production to come to a standstill. One day, she passes out while working on her storyboard and wakes up in the world of her favorite childhood anime movie "A Tale of Perishing".

This seems like it could be a lot of fun. ZENSHU does a lot of work in this first episode establishing that Natuske is an animation wunderkind with a workaholic/perfectionist streak alongside some personality tics that I find worryingly familiar (look, I’m just saying that at time of this writing my beard is now approaching full-Gandalf…), with colleagues who come across as both supportive, intimidated by her talent, and maybe a smidgen oblivious to the massive case of writers block she is dealing with. Honestly I could almost just watch this as a workplace comedy/drama as MAPPA do a bang up job of making the real world feel compelling. Hopefully we’ll be returning to spend time here in future episodes…..

But then what appears to be some bad sushi knocks her out and she awakes in the world of Perishing, the setting of the movie she’s loved since childhood, saved from a monster by the legendary band of heroes that are the film's protagonists. And this becomes kind fascinating as Natsuke knows this film inside out, to the point of being able to pre-emptively recite speeches and know how the plot pans out. The sequence where she discovers she can use her ability as an animator to affect the world and change the story is quite excellently done, with a wonderful magical-girl-style sequence as she manifests her workspace.

I’ll certainly be following this one to see how it goes, but if i had one concern is I worry that MAPPA may not be able to maintain the quality of this episode as the animation is top-tier throughout. But we shall see…

Zenshu is streaming now on Crunchyroll.

Trailer: