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MAPPA has excelled at manga adaptations lately.Jujutsu Kaisen,Chainsaw Man, the reboot ofRanma 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,Zenshupromises to be a heartwarming peak in the anime industry with thetrademark gorgeous MAPPA visualsand 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 theZenshuofficial trailer, we can guess this one is already rearing up to be the slice of life take over of next anime season.
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’stasked 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 ofA 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, andchange her fatewithin her childhood anime’s fictional world.
Who Is Working On It?
Same Director asMonthly Girl’s Nozaki-KunAnd 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 hitMonthly Girls Nozaki-Kun,an anime produced by Square Enix back in 2014 about manga production. Other anime she’s directed includeThe Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle, and she has also been an episode director and in charge of storyboard for various episodes ofAttack on Titan, Noragami,andBleach,among over 20 other anime to date.Surely, by this point,she has plenty of experiencein the subject matter of her new anime project, Zenshu.
Additionally, the scriptwriters have an incredibly stacked background in their craft. The main scriptwriter forZenshuis Kimiko Ueno, who has written the script for the recent hitDungeon Meshi,the dystopian musical animeCarole 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 inSummer Time Rendering, Harley Quinn inSuicide Squad Anime). Other characters from the anime includethe protagonist in her childhood animeLuke Braveheart, voiced by Kazai Ura (Yoichi Isagi inBlue Lock). Other voice acting talent forZenshuincludes Rie Kugimiya (Alphonse Elric inFullmetal Alchemist), Romi Park (Edward Elric inFullmetal Alchemist, Temari inNaruto), and Manaka Iwami (Torhu Honda inFruits 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, andKakushigotohave shone a light on the anime and manga industries in the past,sharing some of the strugglescreators of our favorite medium tend to face. But while many of them tend to take a lighthearted approach to these topics,Zenshufocuses 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 strokesdue 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.Zenshustill 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 takeon 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.
