Chatty AF 228: ZENSHU Retrospective (WITH TRANSCRIPT)

DEE: I feel like there is— First of all, I think it’s cool that Justice is an androgynous, pronounless dragon who is perceived—

CAITLIN: [crosstalk] Voiced by Romi Park, in—

DEE: In Japanese, yeah, which is a great choice, and then by an openly nonbinary actor in the English version, as we’ve mentioned. They just avoid pronouns in the sub, from what I could tell, and in the dub they use they/them, which I thought was nice that they did that. But Natsuko talks about finding Justice sexy. And Natsuko is definitely kind of in love with a lot of the Nine Soldiers. There’s a scene in that kind of teamwork arc where Memmeln also sits Natsuko down and is like, “Listen, you’re a part of this. You need to lean on us.” They have a conversation. And by the end of it, Natsuko is blushing furiously, like, “Oh, my God, I’ve never seen Memmeln look so sweet before, and supportive!” and wants to draw that, too.

[Introductory musical theme]

DEE: Hello and welcome to Chatty AF: The Anime Feminist Podcast. I’m Dee, former AniFem managing editor, current freelance reviewer at Anime News Network. You can find me posting cat pics and geekery on Bluesky @deescribe (that’s D-E-E scribe) and occasionally remembering I have a Tumblr @joseinextdoor. And I am joined today by fellow AniFem staffers Caitlin and Vrai, if y’all would like to introduce yourselves…

CAITLIN: Hi, I’m Caitlin. I am also a general layabout in the AniFem community—I guess I’m technically the community manager—and a freelance reviewer for Anime News Network, including doing the weekly reviews for Zenshu. And on Bluesky I am alltsunnodere, and on Tumblr I am all-tsun-and-no-dere, with dashes in between the words.

VRAI: Is it dashes or is it underscores? I thought it was underscores.

CAITLIN: It was underscores on Twitter.

DEE: It’s dashes on Tumblr.

VRAI: Gotcha. I was waving at the microphone. I don’t know why I did that.

CAITLIN: [Chuckles]

DEE: Vrai’s on c-c-c-cold meds today, folks! [Chuckles]

VRAI: Woohoo! Uh, hey, I’m Vrai. I’m the daily operations manager here at AniFem. I am also sometimes professionally sad about vampires. You can find me on Bluesky @writervrai.

CAITLIN: There are no vampires here.

VRAI: Sadly.

DEE: And today we’re talking about an early frontrunner for anime of the year, Zenshu. This podcast will be littered with spoilers for the entire series. But for those who either don’t care about spoilers or who have forgotten the premise, Zenshu is the story of Natsuko Hirose, a mega-talented animator and director hard at work on her first original film. And she’s way behind on her deadlines because she demands perfection and insists she can do the entire project on her own. But her worries all change when she eats some expired clams and wakes up in the world of A Tale of Perishing, the grimdark fantasy anime movie that she fell in love with as a child and it made her want to become an animator in the first place. Now, Natsuko is helping to save the world with the help of a magic peg bar that lets her drawings come to life, and she fights alongside the legendary Nine Heroes—or at least the four of them that are still fighting by the time she enters the movie. It is a grimdark fantasy, after all. And that’s the basic premise of that. This aired in winter 2025.

Caitlin, since you did cover this for Anime News Network, doing the reviews… I know you did some production history research. Would you like to give folks at home just a little summary of, you know, director, studio, all that jazz?

CAITLIN: Sure. So, Zenshu came from studio MAPPA, which I know is controversial. Disclaimer: if you don’t want to engage with MAPPA stuff, I understand. But it was created when the studio approached two of the most prominent female voices in the anime industry, Yamazaki Mitsue, who directed Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun, How Heavy Are the Dumbbells You Lift?—she worked on Penguindrum and many other projects—and the writer Ueno Kimiko, who has written a number of projects, most recently including the Ranma ½ remake, and asked them to make an isekai. But neither of them really watched isekai, so they decided to do their own thing, write what they know, draw from their own experiences, and create a story about an animator. And originally, apparently, the plan was for her to be reincarnated into a different world of a different story every episode after eating a rotten clam. [Chuckles] But that evolved into her being in this one world of a movie that completely altered her life trajectory when she saw it as a child. The title of Zenshu means “Everything must be redone,” and it was chosen to strike fear into the hearts of industry members who heard it.

[Chuckling]

CAITLIN: Apparently, also, a lot of work went into designing the world of Tale of Perishing, the movie within the show. They made an inspiration board where they all brought pictures of aesthetics they wanted to incorporate and decided on a Southern European kind of look. They made maps, flags, crests, tons of stuff that didn’t make it into the show. And apparently Natsuko’s summons were also decided through group decisions. And that’s a lot of the production information that I’ve gotten from interviews. Also, when you see the actual Tale of Perishing within the show, you can see it has, like, a ‘90s aesthetic that Yamazaki was apparently very particular about the animators creating. So that’s kind of the production information that I have off the top of my head from interviews that I’ve read.

DEE: That’s really cool. Thanks for sharing all that.

VRAI: [crosstalk] You can really tell.

DEE: Yeah, a lot of that I didn’t know.

VRAI: I do wonder why they didn’t translate the title with the localization. Did they think maybe something like “Rewrite” or “Redo” would be too generic? I don’t know.

DEE: [crosstalk] “Fix Fic.” No.

[Chuckling]

DEE: I mean, half the time that’s the studio makes a decision and the licensers go, “Okay.” Like, I mean, there’s a million reasons that they could have gone with “Zenshu.” It’s a snappy little sound to it, as well. But yeah, I mean, you don’t get the— When Natsuko starts using the word like in the last episode of the anime—which, we’ll get to that eventually—you lose that a little bit with the way they’ve decided to translate it. But eh, is what it is.

So, just kind of overall, I think all three of us watched— Obviously, Caitlin watched it week to week because you were reviewing it. I think we all watched it week to week. I actually did a binge watch before the pod, so I have now seen it twice in the last three months, and it’s still great and I still love it. General kind of overall impressions, personal experience with this one?

VRAI: Yeah, I mean, I mostly watched— So, I watched it week to week with my partner for, like, the first seven episodes, and then we let it build up and binged the last quarter, which was very enjoyable. No, I like this series a lot. There’s one or two things… The things that are disappoint— I don’t even know if “disappointing” is the word, right? But let’s go with it. The things that disappoint me about it are more about, like, the loss of the macro more than I think it failed at the thing it attempted to do, right? If that makes sense?

DEE: Yeah, we’ll talk more about what you mean by the macro that got lost. Yeah, we’ll get into that.

CAITLIN: I do think it needed to be twice as long.

DEE: I think it would have been. I think it is a— Having, again, rewatched it, I think it is a tightly paced story that knew what it wanted to do and did it. I think if it had been twice as long, we would have gotten to hang out with the characters more, and that would have been fantastic because you absolutely can tell that there is a lot more to them. Like, they’re very well written, but they don’t necessarily have a ton of time. So, yeah, I think if it had been twice as long, that would have been amazing, because then I would’ve gotten to spend more time here. [Chuckles]

CAITLIN: I think it is beautifully paced the way it is, in a lot of ways, because they do this really great job introducing new conflicts and new tensions, resolving some. They don’t save everything for the last episode. You know, they resolve some things along the way, but that introduces new stuff, and then it kind of comes together at the end, but it’s a journey with ups and downs. But I agree. I think the show really could have used some hangout episodes. I wanted to know what Memmeln’s relationship with Luke was like. You know? The example I always bring is “What’s the best episode of Appare-Ranman?”

DEE: The one where they just all hang out together?

CAITLIN: Yes! Right?

DEE: Yeah.

CAITLIN: You know? So maybe if it were twice as long… because it is a choice of “It can either be this length or it can be twice as long.” You know, we can’t say, “Well, it needed like three more episodes.”

DEE: 17 episodes on the dot, yeah.

CAITLIN: Yeah, exactly. You know, generally we don’t get that. And so, if given the choice, I would rather it be 24 episodes than 12 episodes.

DEE: Mm-hm. I do think— I will say, like… I mean, clearly they were told, “You have 12,” and they paced it accordingly. It is a very tightly narrated story. When I was putting the show notes together, I realized that basically every two episodes form a little story arc. And there are threads in that that get addressed and touched on and built on in later arcs as well, but it was kinda cool to see how it sort of thematically linked like that. Before we do start getting into kinda the meat of the show, I did want to ask, did y’all experience this subbed or dubbed or a combo? Where were you there?

CAITLIN: I watched every episode—

DEE: [crosstalk] It did have a simuldub.

CAITLIN: I watched every episode subbed, and then when I needed to go back and rewatch parts of episodes or it’d been a couple of days and I needed to refresh my memory, I would often watch it dubbed. And it is a really good dub. Madeleine Morris is great as Natsuko.

DEE: She’s incredible.

CAITLIN: I think it’s cool that Justice’s English voice actor is nonbinary.

DEE: Yeah, I love that. That was a great choice. Yeah.

VRAI: Nice.

CAITLIN: But I did— I watched every part of it subbed as well.

DEE: Gotcha. Yeah, I watched this dubbed the first time through because when I popped on the first episode, the dub came on, and I was like, “Yeah, we’ll see how it is.” And I was like, “Oh, my God, I love Natsuko.” And then I switched over to the sub track, and the English Natsuko has a little bit more gremlin energy, which I really enjoyed. And again, because, you know, with the dub script, you’ll take more liberties with the comedy because you want the comedy to hit for your audience. And so, I thought the funny bits were funnier in English so I ended up sticking with the dub the whole way through. I did watch it subbed the second time, when I binged it this past week. And it’s also… the Japanese cast is also very, very good. So, you’re not going to have a bad experience here, but they are slightly different experiences, which I always think is kind of interesting. And, you know, I think it speaks to a dub knowing how to keep the general tone and mood of the story while still bringing its own flair to the script and the series as well. Vrai, what about you?

VRAI: I feel like “It just started in English and then I got attached” is the story for so many… That’s what happened to me with Dead Dead Demon’s.

DEE: Oh, yeah?

VRAI: [Chuckles] But no, for this, I just watched it subbed because I jumped on it so fast and then I just got used to it. But I’m really glad to hear that the dub is good because I do enjoy me a good dub.

DEE: Yeah, it’s very well done as a dub. Yeah, so I think either track that you prefer, if you want to switch it up… I could see it being one of those where I bounce back and forth between them during a rewatch just because I’m enjoying both of them so much. So, yeah, it was really well done. And sometimes with simuldubs, because you do kind of have to get them out with the episode, they can be a little rough. I felt like this one was really strong all the way through. And yeah, Natsuko is… she’s so, so, so good. And because she’s got the hair over her face for, like, the first half of the series, they can take a little bit of leeway with lip flaps, which gives them some more room to let some of that humor shine through and some of her character shine through. So, that was also great.

Okay, so, with those preliminary talking points out of the way, let’s dive into the story of Zenshu itself. So, I kind of wanted to start with those first couple episodes, where Natsuko enters the Tale of Perishing. And, you know, we have kind of a combination of throwback genres that happen here, where Natsuko is really struggling, she’s under a lot of pressure, but at the same time she’s also causing a lot of her own pressure because she’s refusing to accept help from anybody, and she gets sucked into her favorite movie. So, we end up with… It’s an isekai, but it immediately… I think all three of us pinged on this immediately with this, because we watch so much like, ‘90s shoujo isekai. It has immediate strong vibes of, like, a Fushigi or an Escaflowne, of, like, “Oh, she’s going in here to work through her shit so that she’s better prepared to handle the real world afterwards.” This isn’t like, “She’s dead and now she’s just living out her power fantasy.” And then the other element of that— Well, you know, let’s talk about that first. Was that your experience with getting into this one? Did it immediately feel like a ‘90s shoujo isekai to you? Because, very much, I was like, “This is special,” from like the first episode.

VRAI: Immediately. I think this is a show that is—I mean, like you said, Caitlin, especially considering that they didn’t want to do it right away—this is a show that is very clear and tight, like you said, Dee. It knows precisely what it wants to say about Natsuko’s story, and it is really good at telegraphing the specific things it wants to do. And I think it is not ashamed of its genre influence, in a way that feels celebratory but not… “congratulatory” is the word that I’m reaching for, but I don’t know if that’s the thing. Like, it works for it, because it has ideas of its own. It’s not just “I recognize that reference.”

CAITLIN: Yeah, it works really well that Yamazaki and Ueno were not isekai fans. I wouldn’t be surprised if they watched some of the ‘90s… the same series that we kinda draw on.

DEE: Yeah, which I guess at the time weren’t really considered isekai. I cannot believe that they did not grow up with Fushigi Yugi. This series feels like it is engaging with Fushigi Yugi in a way that, if it’s accidental, wow. Because Natsuko even goes through that thought process of, like, “These are drawings on paper,” right, that same idea of “Well, these aren’t really real people, but I’m in the world so they’re real to me.” Like, she has some of those same conversations. Again, it very much follows that… You know, Miaka kind of wants to escape reality because the pressures are too big for her, and Natsuko’s an adult, so her stressors are different, her challenges and personal growth is different. But yeah, them not being familiar with isekai, I’m like, okay, maybe you’re not familiar with, like, modern isekai, but… [Exclaiming as if withholding words] ah, mm!

CAITLIN: There’s a lot of conversation about whether the term “isekai” should be used strictly for the modern version of the genre and, you know, a different term should be used for the… you know, the Fushigi Yugis and the Escaflownes.

DEE: And the Wizard of Oz–es and the Alice in— Yeah, no, no, the sort of there-and-back-again, personal growth stories.

CAITLIN: All the series that got shouted out in Reincarnated as… in the, um, From Bureaucrat to Villainess series, that wonderful scene…

DEE: Magic Knight Rayearth. Yeah.

CAITLIN: [Chuckles] …where Kenzaburo’s wife […] leaps.

DEE: Yes. [Chuckles]

CAITLIN: But the first sentence I wrote for my first Zenshu review was “Zenshu could be the series I’ve been aching for for a long time.” You know, immediately I could see, oh, this is a grown-up version of these stories, because Natsuko is an adult in a lot of ways. You know, she’s sitting there like, “I have a job with benefits and a pension! I should not be here!”

DEE: Yeah. “Why did I get isekai-ed? Isekais are for losers!”

CAITLIN: But she has a lot of emotional growing up to do, still. She exists in a state of arrested development socially in a lot of ways. And that is like, oh, yes, like you said, Dee, it’s time for Natsuko to work through something and I’m gonna sit here and I’m gonna watch it, and it’s gonna be about an actual adult. Because you don’t necessarily finish growing up when you quote-unquote “grow up.” You know, we all bring lots of stuff with us to adulthood. And I know that even when I was Natsuko’s age, because I’m, you know, a little— I didn’t do the math on how old Natsuko is, but I know that I’m older than her. She’s not in her mid-to-late 30s.

DEE: No. She’s in her mid-to-late 20s, I’m pretty sure.

CAITLIN: Yeah, something like that. And, you know, I have grown up a lot since how I was ten years ago.

DEE: Yeah, absolutely.

CAITLIN: Yeah, so, you know, that was sort of my—

VRAI: I do find it—

CAITLIN: —my first feeling about that show, like, “This is… what… I want… now…”

DEE: These are the isekais we’ve missed, but we’re also getting that extra addition of, like, this is the stuff we loved when we were teenagers but now we’re adults and we’re getting a version of it that is about an adult, and that’s terrific.

VRAI: I am really curious about the work’s legibility to people who aren’t our very particular slice of age and expertise, right? Because one of the things I found interesting—and I don’t think it was a wrong impulse, just one that didn’t end up being applicable—the sort of assumption that this would be about studio culture, which I think is a fair thing to say [when] this is a project about animators made by MAPPA. And MAPPA is certainly not unique, but it has become this poster child for being exceptionally egregious about the industry’s problems with labor violations and overwork. And I think that would have been a very interesting show. It never— When I was watching the first episode, I was really struck by how, from out the gate, and I don’t know if this is because of what I know about shoujo isekai and the expected beats of those stories, but it was so clear to me from the jump that this is not a story about industry. This is a profoundly individual story. This is a story about an artist’s relationship to her art, not about the process of artistry, even though it also has some of the trappings of that kind of story, which I love. I love that kind of story.

CAITLIN: Yeah. People wanted it to be the next Shirobako, and it was not the next Shirobako and a lot of people reacted very negatively to that. I don’t know how involved you guys were with the conversation when it happened, but I saw a lot of people being like, “This isn’t the show I wanted. I wanted another…” Well, I keep going back to it. “I wanted an anime about making anime.” I’m like, we already have Shirobako. We can have something else. It would be great to have another anime about making anime, but let’s take this for what it is.

DEE: [crosstalk] Yeah, I mean, if that’s what you want, that’s fine. Then you don’t have to watch Zenshu. But that was never Zenshu’s… Yeah, I don’t think— Zenshu is— I mean, like you said, Vrai, it’s specific but I also think it can be expanded out to an artist’s relationship with their art, right? That’s what it is much more interested in talking about and exploring. And also, an artist’s relationship with the art they love. I will probably continue to touch on this because I really latched on to it, but I feel like a lot of this story is about transformational fandom and the writing of fanfic in a way that I found really, really fascinating. Like, you know, Natsuko goes into her favorite story, and it’s kind of a self-insert, right? She runs up in the story and she ends up helping the characters and making relationships with them. And then she— Again, we’re getting ahead of ourselves. I do kind of want to take this a little bit in chronological order here.

VRAI: Oh, I did want to say, what… because I do want to move on to that, too, but as a last to put a pin in that idea of “This isn’t the show I wanted it to be,” it was very interesting to me as I started to watch that Natsuko bears some superficial similarities to the manga artist at the beginning of Season 2 of Oshi no Ko. Well, I mean, Oshi no Ko is certainly a story of continual diminishing returns, but one of my favorite things about Season 2 was that the first couple episodes are about the manga artist who’s making the sort of Demon Slayer stand-in that’s the basis for the play that the characters are doing. And a lot of it is about her perfectionism to the point that it is killing her, and also it’s hurting everybody else a lot in the pipeline who depends on her, and the fact that she is simultaneously overworked but also young and got this fame so early. And so, Oshi no Ko has its many, many problems, which we can talk about, but I will say those couple episodes might be worth people looking into if they want— And it’s between her and her female mentor, too. So, again, it’s one of the best parts of Season 2! If they were left wanting that after watching Zenshu, and then maybe they can look at Zenshu for what it’s trying to do and accomplish, and that’s okay, too. Let’s do the thing.

DEE: Yeah. I mean, you know, hopefully folks listening to this enjoy Zenshu [Chuckles] and are here for that conversation, but yeah, certainly there are other media, like Oshi no Ko, that are discussing animators in the industry in a different way.

So, the other thing I wanted to kind of talk about, like it’s being kind of a simultaneous throwback here, is Natsuko goes into a movie that, while the timeline puts the movie at coming out in like the mid-2000s, it is very much in the style of an ‘80s, ‘90s grimdark fantasy series. Even the animation is designed to look like it was done on cels, not on a computer, right? And that comes with… I think that’s where the story starts to— That, to me, when Natsuko starts kind of interacting with it as a piece of somewhat dated media, I think that’s really when it starts to kind of pop off and started to click for me as, like, oh, this is engaging with your faves in a way that’s really interesting to me, because Natsuko enters the book, she kinda joins them— [Backtracks and corrects self] “The book.” Sorry, there’s Fushigi Yugi in me. [Chuckles] 

She enters the movie. And, you know, she starts interacting, she becomes a member of the Nine Heroes, and then we back-to-back get these episodes about a couple of the underutilized female characters in the film, first with Destiny and then with Memmeln. And Destiny is this danger-magnet damsel who’s constantly in trouble, and then Memmeln doesn’t— She’s a cool elf warrior, but then she betrays the team and there’s no explanation as to why in the film. It’s basically just like she dies so Luke can be sad—sadder. And, you know, the anime takes episodes to talk about the two of them. So, first talking about Destiny, who becomes a buff wrestler, I want to open the floor. What did you guys think about those two storylines as a unit and then individually, as well?

CAITLIN: I mean, I love Destiny. I love Memmeln. I think Destiny is a really interesting character, not just as kind of a subversion of the damsel in distress but also in the context that Yamazaki worked on How Heavy Are the Dumbbells You Lift?, where I haven’t watched it but I think one of the girls has a genetic mutation where she’s super-duper strong but her muscles are just so compact so she doesn’t look “scary.”

DEE: Yeah, there’s no muscle definition in that show, is my vague memory of it from way back in the day.

VRAI: That fucking show.

DEE: Whereas when Destiny decides to become a pro wrestler, she is jacked!

CAITLIN: Oh, she’s big!

DEE: And beautiful.

CAITLIN: And historically, any time there is an anime girl who has defined muscles, all of the male characters are like, “Ugh! A gorilla!” And so, it’s so nice to see Destiny is just thriving when she is getting big and muscular and she’s not like, “I must marry Gary Oldman from The Fifth Element to open up an orphanage because I am so soft and helpless.” So that makes me incredibly happy to see.

DEE: Yeah, I love that Natsuko is very supportive of her muscles. And there are some characters who make comments about “Hm, I liked you better before,” and she’s like, “Too bad! I like me now,” and I’m like, “Good for you, Destiny.” Yeah, Vrai, sorry, were you gonna say something?

VRAI: Oh, no, no, that’s what I was gonna bring up. Like, I think it’s nice that she— I don’t think all shows need to be didactic like that, but I think with a character design like that, it can be nice to have that verbal affirmation, especially in a comedy, where sometimes characters are just, you know, “Oh, this character is so absurd,” but they’re happy about it. And, I don’t know, giving her the chance to really affirm herself and to have Natsuko cheer for her is such a nice way to be, “No, she’s not just a ridiculous comedy character who took this too far. She’s happy, and that’s wonderful.”

DEE: Yeah. Yeah, she becomes kind of aspirational. The other thing I kind of wanted to touch on with Destiny is—you know, rewatching it, I noticed this especially—Natsuko’s summary of her as a character in the movie is very much like, “Oh, God, she’s so annoying. She’s constantly in the way and causes all the problems for everybody else.” And to me it was somewhat reminiscent of the way fandoms will sometimes hate on the love interest of the main male character because, like, “Grr, no, he’s mine” kind of a thing or just blame all the problems on the damsel character, who, like, I mean, it’s not her fault she was written that way. So, I thought that was kind of an interesting element there, is you maybe get a little bit of Natsuko’s internalized fangirl’s sexism with Destiny, as well. But then, at the same time, Natsuko is the one who says to Destiny, like, “Why do you need to marry this dude? Your dad’s the mayor. You can just build an orphanage, can’t you? You have some power,” and kind of sends Destiny down this particular track. So, am I imagining that or did you guys pick up on a little bit of that as well with her?

CAITLIN: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

VRAI: No, totally.

DEE: Okay, well, I’m glad I’m not hallucinating. [Chuckles]

VRAI: [Chuckles] It’s definitely in there, and it’s so… that’s so… I feel like it captures that sense of people who are frustrated by these sexist storytelling tropes but don’t necessarily know how to articulate that, so they come back to “God, she’s so annoying.”

DEE: And Natsuko—

VRAI: And it’s not malicious. It’s just… yeah.

DEE: [crosstalk] Yeah, and, well, it’s like Natsuko loves the story so much, she doesn’t know how to critique the creators, so she just gets mad at this one character. And then I think we see that with Memmeln a little bit, where that is another one of where Natsuko kind of is like… she makes a comment to the effect of, like, “It’s actually kind of a massive plot hole that we never find out why Memmeln was transformed into the Ultimate Void in the first place.” And then within Zenshu, we get all this extra information about them that wasn’t in the character sheets or was cut out of the movie. And Memmeln’s a huge part of that.

VRAI: Every second that we learn something about the original Tale of Perishing, I just think about watching the X movie.

CAITLIN: Mm-hm! Yeah!

VRAI: I feel like we don’t—

DEE: Yes! Yes, yes, yes, me too!

VRAI: I feel like we don’t—

CAITLIN: Very much that kind of experience.

VRAI: Yeah, like, we don’t get this kind of movie anymore. And are they good? Probably not, but they’re like so an experience.

DEE: It was definitely a— You know, I feel like Tale of Perishing is kind of operating in that space of, like, the epic fantasy, the hero always wins out in the end, it’s always a happy ending, and then there was sort of a creative backlash to that almost of, like, “Well, no, I’m gonna really highlight the fact that sometimes the good guys don’t win” or like “Sometimes at the end of the war, it’s tragedy, it’s despair.” And I think that… X is the example that came to my mind as well, but that does seem to be the realm that Tale of Perishing is playing in. And, you know, Memmeln—

VRAI: I’m gonna be real: I want to watch that movie! I want to see the original.

DEE: Tale of Perishing?

VRAI: Yeah, for real!

CAITLIN: Yeah.

DEE: It’s like, what a bummer! What a massive bummer!

CAITLIN: I think it’s also partially inspired by Unico, which was a movie I loved very much as a three-year-old.

VRAI: [crosstalk] Oh, yeah. I mean, Unico is in this show.

CAITLIN: Yeah, Unio is just Unico.

DEE: Yeah, for sure.

CAITLIN: I was obsessed with that movie when I was three.

DEE: Well, and that’s one of the joys of Zenshu, is that you get some of that ‘90s aesthetic, that ‘80s, ‘90s aesthetic, but without some of the more dated tropes and archetypes.

VRAI: Yeah, do we want to just acknowledge that now?

DEE: Oh! Sure, sure, sure. Yeah, that’s a good point, as far as dated archetypes. Yeah, let’s go ahead and just mention that there is a character who isn’t in the show, like at all, because he dies before Natsuko gets there, but he’s one of the Nine Soldiers, his name is Chingosman, and his design is very much playing on insensitive racial stereotypes towards black people. It’s not the worst thing I’ve seen, but it’s not great.

CAITLIN: He’s a dryad whose leaves look like an Afro, and he has the big, round lips. It’s not ideal.

DEE: No, it’s not.

CAITLIN: We don’t need to go back to that, unlike elf girls with big pauldrons.

DEE: Yes, yeah. There are some things that deserve to be left in the past and some things that do not.

VRAI: I do think Memmel’s… Memmem’s… I’m never going to be able to do it.

DEE: Memmeln?

VRAI: Her story is definitely one of the notable places where I feel like the show strains against its runtime a little bit, even with the two episodes.

DEE: Memmeln gets one. Two episodes would have been perfect.

VRAI: Better, yeah.

DEE: Again, rewatching it, it didn’t feel as rushed, but that’s probably also because I knew what was coming. But yeah, no, Memmeln’s whole arc about the despair of eternity… Two episodes of that, I think, would have helped a lot to kind of flesh that out a little bit.

CAITLIN: Yeah. I did like, ultimately, the message about it.

DEE: Oh, absolutely.

CAITLIN: Because, you know, she finds meaning in her life again because Natsuko draws her an idol boy voiced by Mamoru Miyano.

DEE: Who has, let’s be clear, saved a lot of people’s lives as an idol boy.

CAITLIN: Seems, like, really frivolous. It’s like, oh, well, she feels like she can exist again because she has an oshi. She just has this fictional boy who she can think about and obsess over. But that’s so real for so many people.

VRAI: “I can’t die. I need to see the next episode of the show I like, so maybe I’ll die after that.” And if that gets you through the day, that’s fucking great.

CAITLIN: Yeah!

VRAI: I’ve been there.

DEE: [crosstalk] Yeah, I mean, and I think it ties really neatly back into… I mean, Natsuko is… you know, Tale of Perishing was very life changing for her. Like, it changed the trajectory of what she wanted to do. I think there were some downsides to that, as far as she got so focused on this one thing that she forgot to have human relationships. But I think it makes a good point about the value of art and the value of being a fan of something and how that can be very positive and life affirming, even if in situations where it might seem a little silly from the outside. And I also think, you know, as Natsuko is sort of… you know, part of her being here is she’s kind of… right before she eats the clam, she finds out that her favorite director has passed away. She’s trying to cement her own legacy here, so I think that she is also kind of thinking about… [I] think that in the back of her head is the idea of mortality and what happens when you’re gone, and so the idea of the art and the stories living on past you as this kind of form of eternity, I think, ties into her story as well. So, it’s a little rushed, but I feel like thematically it works really well with the full story that’s happening here.

CAITLIN: I thought that was a really strong sentiment that struck me as well, especially since we didn’t know what Natsuko’s ending was going to look like, really. Yes, in a lot of the classic isekai that we grew up with, that the show is drawing from, they learn their lesson and they go back and they live more actualized lives. But with modern isekai, it’s much more common for them to be fully reincarnated.

DEE: Yeah. Well, and sometimes even in the classic ones, they stay. Like, I mean, Red River, Twelve Kingdoms, off the top of my head, they decide to stay there. That’s a choice they make. So…

CAITLIN: Well, Yoko doesn’t choose to stay.

DEE: Oh, I guess she’s just kinda stuck there, but she makes the best of it.

CAITLIN: Yeah, she is stuck. But—

DEE: [crosstalk] But there’s a narrative and a coming of age. There’s still a story you can tell with that. Yeah, but you’re right: we didn’t know what was going to happen to Natsuko at that point.

CAITLIN: And Natsuko doesn’t know what’s going to happen to Natsuko, so she’s sitting there facing the idea of “Maybe my career is over. I’ve left this mark on the world. And the things I’ve made are going to live on past me.”

DEE: Including the idol boy she draws for Memmeln.

CAITLIN: Yes! “And I left my mark on the world in this way.”

VRAI: And obviously, all of Natsuko’s drawings are references, like big, fun, geeky references, and often they got crew from those to come in, but I think the one that hits strongest and sweetest and props up a lot of the episode, even if it’s a little rushed, is the fact that Yamazaki also directed Uta no Prince-sama.

DEE: Worked on UtaPri, yeah.

CAITLIN: Yeah. She didn’t direct it fully.

VRAI: Er, yeah, no, sorry, yeah, she was an animation…?

DEE: She worked on it. It was, I think, one of the early shows she worked on, yeah. Kinda like Natsuko did, so there is definitely a drawing it from the real world in that one, as well.

CAITLIN: Mm-hm. And in the show, Natsuko talks about how working on Uta-Men was a really difficult time for her.

DEE: Oh, okay. Oh, Natsuko does, yeah. Yeah, she says the director was kind of a monster and she had a really rough time on it, yeah. But so, it is kind of… you know, I feel like the fact that she draws it for Memmeln and it makes Memmeln so happy probably gives her a little bit of peace about that time in her life, like “That sucked but, you know, I guess I made some people happy, so I can take that from it,” a little bit as well. So, yeah, we get that neat little two-arc with sort of reimagining the female characters and building up the world. And again, I’m gonna keep tying this back to fanfic and transformational fandom. I think you could argue either that Natsuko is seeing the stuff that the original director, Tsuruyama, cut from the film, like the stuff might have been in there but they just couldn’t fit it, because the final product does sound like it was edited to hell; or you could also see it as Natsuko is discovering these things as part of that fanfic process of inhabiting the world with the characters and learning more about them. And—

CAITLIN: Yeah. There’s something interesting that comes up a little bit later with the two different translations, with the dub versus the sub. When Natsuko is talking to Tsuruyama, Tsuruyama makes a reference to having to cut material. In the sub, the implication is that she had to cut a bunch of her own scenes from the movie and it was very hard for her, and now Natsuko is here blowing the story back up. And in the dub, I think it came across more as she’s out here and she’s having to cut out the new scenes that Natsuko is creating, like Natsuko is somehow altering the movie itself.

DEE: Yeah, it was more unclear in the dub than the sub. I agree with that, because rewatching it, I was like, oh, Tsuruyama’s talking about the fact that she had to cut a bunch of scenes from her final version of the film, and that she’s frustrated… We’re skipping ahead a little bit, but I don’t care, it’s fine. I really like talking about this stuff. …And her frustrations that Natsuko is coming in and just changing things and expanding it to this huge proportion, which, again, is like a fanfic writer going in and writing, like, a million-word novel, which I’m guilty of [Chuckles], and the original director’s like, “Do you have any idea what it’s like to have your material cut and sliced to fit a runtime?”

[Chuckling]

DEE: “You amateurs!”

VRAI: I… I… You know what? We’re here. We’re here now. I’m just gonna do the thing. Tsuruyama is like my big sticking point with the show that I keep coming back to, because I love this show but the early episodes, and especially with opening with the news of her death, sets up so clearly Natsuko and Tsuruyama as foils to one another. Obviously, she’s not just her mentor, but is she going to end up in this trajectory where she’s found dead, alone in her apartment? And I need to know what this woman’s deal was.

DEE: I do wish we knew.

CAITLIN: [crosstalk] Yeah.

VRAI: She’s a woman director of this film that is stridently artistically daring and depressing at a time when that probably wasn’t a thing. Like, it’s probably a major pushback. And look what happened to Anno, and he’s not a woman in the arts industry at a time when that would have been extremely uncommon—and still kind of is, honestly. And I have to imagine it tanked her career. What drove her to make this? What was the process like? What did she do after it? Clearly it might have destroyed her. And she also looks like that. I need to know what’s going on with this woman. And she’s just kind of a Drosselmeyer figure in the end, which functions as far as Natsuko’s story but feels like such a missed opportunity in terms of talking about art and touching it across generations and this process of giving art to somebody and it meaning more to them than the pain it caused to you, which Natsuko does for so many other people in her life.

DEE: I hear you.

CAITLIN: I completely agree.

DEE: I do think more Tsuruyama would have benefited the story, especially from a viewer’s perspective of wanting to know more about the character, which, again, puts us in the position Natsuko is in while watching Tale of Perishing and wanting to know more about the characters, which is an interesting kind of echo out there. I think it works a little bit better if you think about the fact that this is all like… How do I put this? I don’t want to lean too hard into, like, “Oh, it was all just a dream happening in Natsuko’s head,” even though a little part of me does sort of see it as her writing a fanfic while she’s working through shit. But I don’t want to… I feel like if I pull it out that far, then the story itself loses some impact. And you can read things on multiple levels, and that’s cool. But all Natsuko knows about Tsuruyama is what she read in interviews. She did not know this person. So, I think the fact that we don’t get a ton of Tsuruyama and she’s more like, I don’t know, a representation… Again, I’m sorry. I’m getting symbolic. I apologize, everybody. She’s more like a representation of Natsuko’s—

CAITLIN: [crosstalk, ironic] Oh, no! Symbolism?

DEE: She’s more like a representation of Natsuko’s guilt about changing Tale of Perishing. Like, Natsuko knows all the work Tsuruyama went through, so her coming in and being like, “Well, you can’t change the story. This is how it ends. And you love this story,” and Natsuko kind of having to grapple with the fact that she has made all these shifts to it. I think Tsuruyama works better from that perspective. But again, that having been said, within the context of the story, she is a character who, to me, would be a very interesting person to have a two-episode OVA about. I know we don’t do those anymore, but…

VRAI: But, like, we should. We should bring that back.

DEE: [crosstalk] It would be great. Maybe the Blu-ray will have a special episode about Tsuruyama’s career.

CAITLIN: [Chuckles]

VRAI: I do get what you mean about her being like, this isn’t the magic of somehow we’re speaking to one another across dreams; this is Tsuruyama as imagined by Natsuko. And I can more or less accept that, because the story, as she fits into the story’s goal, it really comes to a good landing. It is so interesting about this show, though, right, because I feel like there are so many things about it that cry to be metonymous, right, like with genre references and because it’s so reference heavy, but also, you come back again to that fact that it’s, at the end of the day, a very personal narrative, which I think is super interesting.

DEE: Yeah. And, I mean, I’m a big believer that stories can exist on multiple levels. I mean, I love Utena as a story of two girls falling in love, and then I also love it as this big, dramatic, metaphorical exploration of princes and princesses and gender norms and all that jazz. So, yeah, I definitely feel that with Zenshu. Again, I latched on to the whole transformational fandom and fanfiction aspect of it like a koala around a tree, which is why I can’t stop coming back to it!

VRAI: No, well, no, but I think the transformative fandom element of it is relevant to me in an interesting way, like by the— Not to say— That sounded shitty. [Assumes a playfully lofty tone] Uh, unlike your point, mine is interesting. [Returns to normal tone] [Chuckles] No, but I think the part where the anime starts to veer back into “Oh, no, you’ve tried to write happy endings, but actually bad things are happening anyway” is so interesting to me, because I think… I’m somebody who’s not super fond of the coffee shop AU mentality that the best way to fix-fic is to write a story with no conflict in it whatsoever, where the characters just get everything they wanted. And sometimes, when a story is really tragic, that’s what you need, and you need [Sniffs] a quick hit of that to just, like, “I want to see these people I love have a nice time.” But a story needs stakes and conflict, and those are good things. And so, I like Natsuko having to reckon with that, too, as an artist. Right? It’s not just about this sort of gut-level wish fulfillment.

CAITLIN: She’s here with these characters, living this life, and when there are people here in front of her, she wants to help them, but would she have become obsessed with the movie in the same way if it didn’t end with Luke destroying the world? Probably not. And Tsuruyama confronts her, being like, “Hey, you’re fucking up my movie. That’s so disrespectful.” And Natsuko’s like, “No!”

DEE: “But I love your movie,” yeah.

CAITLIN: “I love your movie! It changed my entire life! It changed me as a person!”

DEE: Yeah. Well, and I think the fact that reality does kind of start to creep back in is indicative of the fact that… You know what I mean? If the Voids are supposed to be a grand metaphor for despair, because, you know, Memmeln gives into it and becomes one and Luke gives into it and becomes one, then the fact that Natsuko does have to… Like, Natsuko is continuing to fight this. She’s been escaping, right? She’s been escaping reality. To backtrack a little bit, I do think it’s interesting that reality starts to intrude after Natsuko works through kind of the big… She kind of has two character arcs. One of them is like her fear of failure, and that doesn’t come until the end because that’s harder to get over. But the end is like the thing that I think she’s aware that she’s escaping, whereas the middle thing, I think, is the thing she does not realize that she needs to learn, which is teamwork and collaboration and understanding how to play nice with others. And so, you know, we get that little two-episode arc in the middle, right before reality starts to intrude again and the story tries to kind of reset itself, where Natsuko has really gotten a big ego about her artwork saving the day over and over again and she’s striking silly poses and everything’s happy and fun, but she’s also saving the world by herself and it starts to cause problems, because instead of, like, waiting for recon, she just jumps in and attempts to draw a solution that does not work. And that’s also when we’re introduced to Justice.

CAITLIN: Yes, Justice. I was actually going to try to bring the conversation back to these episodes using Justice, because the way Natsuko responds to Justice reminds me of… A lot of people will be like, “Oh, she’s attracted to Justice.” To me, it’s more like just— I know that her true blorbo is Luke, of course. But Justice is the character that she has so many curiosities about. We see all of Luke’s story, but Justice’s story gets cut short, and it’s like she’s fascinated at what comes next that she never knew about Justice. And she is like someone who comes in and writes the fanfic about what happens to the secondary character, like the introspective fic. That’s how I was going to pull the conversation back around.

DEE: That’s also terrific. Yeah, no, I think we got there! We got there from two angles! High five, team.

CAITLIN: But I do—

VRAI: Whoo!

CAITLIN: But I had a question for both of you. In school, when you did group projects, did you think of yourselves as the person who ended up having to do all of the work yourself while everyone else slacked off?

VRAI: 100% of the time, yeah.

DEE: I thought of myself as the person who happily took the lead because I liked doing the work. It never felt like a burden. It was just like, “Well, yeah, I’m happy to take this on. No problem, team. I have an idea for what we want to do here. So, if you guys are cool with it…” and I typically would ask, like, “Hey, are you guys good with us doing it like this?” and they’d all go, “Sure,” and “Yeah.” So, kind of there wasn’t a sense of bitterness to it. I just enjoyed taking point, I guess!

CAITLIN: [Chuckles] So, I was the person who had my work pulled away from me…

DEE: Oh, shit. Okay.

CAITLIN: … because the person decided I wasn’t working fast enough, or they didn’t think my process was what they wanted.

DEE: Damn.

CAITLIN: And so, Natsuko reminds me of those people. Sorry, Vrai, I’m calling you out a little bit here!

VRAI: Oh, I’m aware.

DEE: [crosstalk] Hey, I apologize because I may have accidentally been that person without realizing it, too. So, I definitely remember asking permission by the time I got to high school. Before that, mm, it’s a coin toss. [Chuckles]

CAITLIN: But Natsuko is, honestly, to me, a really— I really appreciate that arc of Natsuko’s, because being the person who’s like, “Well, I have to do all of this work…” Once again, Vrai, I’m not trying to call you out. I love you so much, Vrai, and I love all the work you do for us in the organization.

VRAI: [crosstalk] Uh-huh.

DEE: Blowing up your entire spot!

VRAI: Uh-huh. [Chuckles] No, go on.

CAITLIN: There is, um… That can very quickly turn into toxicity, as we have seen with Natsuko when someone at the studio turned around and yelled at her like, “Hey! You’re not the only one who does this, you know?” And she’s just like, “What the fuck are you saying to me, brother?” And so, it’s really nice seeing that represented as kind of a toxic trait instead of, like, “Oh, Natsuko’s just the leader and she’s the one who has to take everything on herself, and she has to learn through the power of friendship that maybe she needs to play nice with others.” No, things start to fall apart because she’s taken everything on herself, and it is not a nice, gentle, friendly lesson that she learns. It is a hard lesson that she learns, and she sees the way that it hurts others when she starts to do that.

DEE: Yeah. And I think there are some kind of interesting parallels between her and Luke, because he also kind of has a tendency to take everything on himself, more from a guilt-and-responsibility perspective. Like, he’s better at working with people in the moment, within a battle, but then, after the fact, he’s often the one who’s overworking himself to help others because he feels like he needs to be like the hero of legend, which is part of the reason why Justice won’t fucking talk to him, is because they’re like, “I know he’ll just blame himself for this, so rather than do that, I’d rather he think I’m a slacker.” And it hurts Luke’s relationships as well, so I think that’s a very neat parallel that we see within those episodes.

I feel like there’s probably an inter— I don’t have this as a fully formed thought. I’m throwing it into the ether, and maybe somebody will write us an essay. I feel like there is— First of all, I think it’s cool that Justice is an androgynous, pronounless dragon who is perceived—

CAITLIN: [crosstalk] Voiced by Romi Park, in—

DEE: In Japanese, yeah, which is a great choice, and then by an openly nonbinary actor in the English version, as we’ve mentioned. They just avoid pronouns in the sub, from what I could tell, and in the dub they use they/them, which I thought was nice that they did that. But Natsuko talks about finding Justice sexy. And Natsuko is definitely kind of in love with a lot of the Nine Soldiers. There’s a scene in that kind of teamwork arc where Memmeln also sits Natsuko down and is like, “Listen, you’re a part of this. You need to lean on us.” They have a conversation. And by the end of it, Natsuko is blushing furiously, like, “Oh, my God, I’ve never seen Memmeln look so sweet before, and supportive!” and wants to draw that, too.

But yeah, I like the way they portray Justice. Circling back to that. I feel like there’s probably something interesting to say about the fact that Justice is a wounded warrior who is disabled and then is kind of a part-time protector after that and ends up helping out at the orphanage with Destiny, but the fact that they don’t want to tell people that they can’t fly anymore and there’s some shame there. Then they talk to Natsuko and Natsuko’s like, “Well, can you get us up in the air even a little bit? It doesn’t have to be pretty. It’s fine. I just really need your help here.” I think there’s probably an interesting conversation to have there. I just… I don’t have those ideas fully formed in my head, so maybe somebody else does.

CAITLIN: That’s also one of the most beautiful animation sequences in the whole series.

DEE: It’s a really nice part, yeah. And it’s nice that Justice is able to be a part of that teamwork scene, too, because, you know, they feel like they don’t deserve to be a warrior anymore, but Natsuko continues to make them a part of it and they’re still able to help and contribute. And then they get involved, kind of as a non-combatant, but still they get more involved in helping to help the town and the people who need them. So, I think it’s a nice little— Again, it would be cool to have more episodes because I feel like a whole episode of Justice and Destiny at the orphanage would have been delightful. But hey, that—

VRAI: Because they are in love.

DEE: Yeah, by the end of it, I would say yes.

[Chuckling]

DEE: But that’s what fanfic is for, right?

VRAI: Mm-hm! No, but it’s—

DEE: Which I guess kind of circles us back to the whole sort of transformative fandom conversation and talking about Tale of Perishing as… Timeout. Vrai, you were about to say something.

VRAI: Oh, no, I just, um. Eh, it kind of leads into that, I think. I do— Nah. I do think— I am impressed that the story really finally threads the needle of the fact that… Part of Natsuko’s arc is realizing that she’s in love with Luke. Luke the person, yes, but it’s also tied to this greater love for this work that he represents and how it changed her life. And they don’t even kiss, really, because it’s like this big, sort of unnameable thing that… and I, um… Words. It is not uncommon, right, the storyline of the closed-off girl who needs to feel romantic love as part of her self-actualization. But I think Zenshu really couches this nicely in terms of putting a lot of Natsuko working on friendship and teamwork first and then having her sort of realizing she has feelings for Luke alongside this greater narrative that ends with accepting that she has to go back, and sort of grounding it there. I found it really touching.

DEE: [deadpan] But Vrai, you know, they never kissed and all they ever said was “Suki.” So, as far as I can tell, they’re just really good friends.

CAITLIN: [amused] I’m gonna kill you!

VRAI: Yeah, you know, actually—

DEE: Just gal pals. [Chuckles] Best buds!

VRAI: [Chuckles] They didn’t even exchange best friend rings in front of a church on Christmas.

DEE: [Chuckles] So, I think they’re just buddies. I think Natsuko discovers the true power of friendship, is really what happens there at the end.

VRAI: [Chuckles]

CAITLIN: [Fighting through laughter] I’m gonna kill you!

VRAI: I think you’re right, yeah.

DEE: [crosstalk] Sorry, I’m being a troll on purpose.

[Chuckling]

DEE: But yeah, no, I… Yeah, I think it is nice that the story Natsuko needs is… You know, we know that she’s kind of missing something, and it’s like she has to start noticing and caring about the people around her. And part of that is romantic love, but there’s a lot that comes before that. And her becoming a part of this community and pulling her hair out of her face is that nice little symbolic touch of her not closing herself off from everybody.

CAITLIN: Right. And part of it is—and this is from the same interview that I was referring to earlier with the production notes—is that Natsuko, because she devoted herself to copying, she learned how to copy the art books in extreme detail, she learned how to copy character art, she never learned how to have her own experiences and draw from reality. And you can’t—

DEE: Yeah, well, she drew from reality but it was all observation. It was no, like… Because she’s drawing that boy in middle school, running, so she’s good at… But she’s not really engaging with him as a person at all. Like, she doesn’t even bother to learn his name.

CAITLIN: Right. And the anime that she has made before has all been kinda tropey fantasy. You know, there’s the Sukeban Moon anime, which is just mashing together two different archetypes, and maybe it was an incredible series, but is not pulling from the deep wells of human relationships and experience.

DEE: Well, and I don’t know if this was ever— Caitlin, correct me if I’m wrong here. I think everything she’d worked on prior to this was an adaptation of some kind. Like, I don’t know if they ever specify with Sukeban Magical Girl.

VRAI: Sukeban Moon, I think, is… Yeah, I think that’s an original.

CAITLIN: [crosstalk] It’s not clear.

DEE: Is it? Yeah, because I was trying to pay attention to that this time, and maybe I just missed it, but I don’t know if they ever clarify if it’s based on another series and if Hatsukoi is supposed to be her actual… But regardless… Sorry, I wasn’t sure if you remembered or not. But regardless, you’re right. Everything else has been very fantastical and kind of over the top, and Hatsukoi is supposed to be more like a grounded, slice-of-life–type realism story. Yeah.

CAITLIN: Mm-hm. And so, instead of the show prioritizing romance (“Well, she needs to have this romantic experience specifically because romance is fundamental to being a human and having decent relationships”), it’s very like “You’re trying to create this romance story, and you can’t just fake that and copy from what other people have made and make something that is good and authentic.” And I think that’s a very smart choice, and combined with her still having those other authentic relationships, the fact that she has… She has always loved Luke. It has been all about Luke since day one. And now she is loving Luke as a full person instead of just drawings on paper. I think that does so much to make it feel like this is not a show about how romance is the center of the human experience.

DEE: Yeah, I agree. I also think it’s kind of interesting because she does come to a point where she thinks, “No, he’s real to me in this moment. Where we are, this is the real world for me.” But even if you want to expand it a little bit, it is also her kind of acknowledging the fact that Tale of Perishing was her first love. Right? She has that moment when she gets literally swallowed by despair, the Void takes her and Unio down, and she imagines everyone telling her how much she sucks and what a disappointment she is… Which, boy, that scene hits. And then she’s sitting at her desk, and the trigger— Which, I think we haven’t talked a ton about Unio because Unio is kind of a comedy character but is a really sweet best friend character throughout as well. But he has this very important moment where he is like… Natsuko keeps being told that she is amazing, so talented, a virtuoso, you’re gonna make the studio so much money, and Unio is just like, “I don’t even like you, but I love your drawings and what they do for people.” And that is able to kind of trigger her to think back to her childhood and have that conversation with her childhood self about why she drew in the first place. So, you know, her first love is Luke, who, in this story, in this isekai world, is a real person, but it’s also her drawing from the lived experience of, like, “Oh, these feelings I had for this fictional piece of work, I can also pull into other aspects of life. That can be an authentic experience as well.” So, it’s kinda doing a couple of things at once there, which I think is really interesting as to what you can draw from to get that feeling of… that first-love feeling, I guess.

VRAI: Mm-hm. I do think— I don’t think this was ever confirmed anywhere, but I saw it on around on Tumblr, and I think it’s fun, this kind of—speaking of fanfic—running theory that the assistant from the very first episode is the girl that she gave the drawing to in grade school.

DEE: Oh, that’s an interesting theory. I’m here for it, because that was like the last time… from what we’ve seen, that was like the last time Natsuko had a genuine relationship with someone. Right? Like, she and that girl were friends. And it’s from that point on that she kinda starts to slowly close herself off and focus on her craft, to the exclusion of having human connections in the world and, you know, having to go into her favorite movie and find those connections again. But yeah, I guess that— Does that kinda just bring us to the ending of the show? Was there anything we should have touched on before then? We didn’t talk about QJ. We didn’t talk about QJ!

CAITLIN: Oh, QJ! He was just a little guy!

DEE: He was just a little guy!

CAITLIN: [crosstalk] It was his birthday!

DEE: The fact that he died on his canonical birthday is wild! But it’s okay. He came back. Everybody came back. [Chuckles]

CAITLIN: Actually, one of the things that I felt like the show kind of fell down a little bit on was that, you know, we made this whole thing about him sacrificing himself, and then he dies and it doesn’t change anything, even though it seems like it should. And then they rebuild him—

DEE: [crosstalk] It adjusts the story. I would say it adjusts the story because the town turns on Natsuko instead of Luke. But yeah, I got you.

CAITLIN: And they make this deal about them rebuilding him, and when it comes down to the big climax, what he does is he stands behind Natsuko and says, “Draw, Natsuko! Draw! You can do it!” And it’s like…

DEE: He’s her light in the darkness, Caitlin.

CAITLIN: I guess! I guess! It felt really anticlimactic after everything, you know?

VRAI: I don’t know, man. That moment was pure Escaflowne to me. Like, no thoughts, only feels.

[Chuckling]

DEE: Yeah, I got emotional watching it, especially on the rewatch, when she’s in the dark and she’s like, “It’s fine. I can draw it in the dark,” but she’s stumbling, and then QJ is there to help her out. Also, the other thing I really like about that is less QJ himself—which, sorry, QJ—and more the fact that Memmeln is the one who goes, “We’re gonna fix him,” because she’s the one who wanted destruction at the beginning, and now she and her friends… And her friend— You know, she certainly has these two very close friends.

CAITLIN: Sally and Mary.

DEE: Sally and I think, Meg, but yes.

CAITLIN: Meg, that’s right. Two of the most… They’re just the most un-elflike names possible.

DEE: I know, it’s hilarious. That’s another episode we needed, was the three of them having shenanigans. But, you know, because Natsuko feels like, “Oh, nothing’s changed. Everything’s the same,” but Memmeln is noticeably different. I mean, Justice and Destiny are as well, but I feel like Memmeln is such a big part of that, the ability to bring hope to others and kind of that light in the dark, which is, then what QJ becomes, I guess, for Natsuko to know that what she’s doing is having an impact.

CAITLIN: Well, Destiny was the opposite. She was getting shoved back into her place in the narrative.

DEE: She was, but then by the end of it, she and Justice are actively protecting people and trying to keep everyone together, and she’s not giving into despair. She’s protecting the kids right until the end. So, I do agree with you that she is starting to get shoved back into her storyline, which is why Memmeln is a bigger deal in that moment, but I do think we see some small differences with her and Justice as the story progresses. But yeah, no, you’re right. Yeah, Destiny was one of the characters who was getting shoved back onto the tracks of the original story, for sure.

CAITLIN: I feel like we haven’t talked about Luke very much.

DEE: No. Sweet Luke.

VRAI: He’s a nice boy.

CAITLIN: He cooks! Natsuko sees his penis.

DEE: [Laughs] Yeah, the thing I really like about— Yeah, we’ve woven Luke in a little bit as kind of a parallel to Natsuko in some ways. I like that… You get the sense that Luke, outside of the burden of being a hero, would be just a sweet homebody who wants to cook for his friends and learn new hairstyles.

VRAI: [Chuckles]

CAITLIN: It’s really adorable! He would make a really great househusband.

DEE: He would! And, you know, it speaks to that idea of, like, what do they do when they’re not at war and that question of… because that’s the stuff that wasn’t in the character sheets either, because Natsuko’s like, “You can cook? I didn’t know that about you.” And so, it’s like, did that get left on the cutting room floor in favor of the despair arc, or is this something Natsuko has decided about Luke over the years? You know, the things you discover about people or char— characters and people as you spend more time with them.

CAITLIN: Well, going back to the Ueno interview, apparently, cooking for Natsuko was a huge catalyst in Luke’s shift as a person, because Natsuko was the first person to get… You know, cooking was like the one thing that he could do that was not related to him being a hero. But his companions were never excited for it, but Natsuko is like, “Yes! Luke’s food!”

DEE: Oh! Interesting. Okay.

CAITLIN: So, seeing her get excited over the food he’s cooked for her made him feel more like a person instead of just this mythological figure, which, as someone who really likes to cook for people, makes a lot of sense to me.

DEE: No, I could see that, yeah.

CAITLIN: Whenever I cook, I’m just like, “Tell me how good it is because your praise fuels me,” and I love it when people tell me how— I like to bring things I’ve baked into work. And, you know, people are always like, “Oh, my gosh! That’s so nice!” I’m like, I do it because I like it when people tell me how much they enjoy the things I’ve made! So, it makes sense that that was a huge thing for Luke feeling more like a person and also for him falling in love with Natsuko.

DEE: Oh, absolutely. Yeah, no, I… Yeah, I totally see that. Well, you know, I mean, everybody else sees him as the hero. They don’t really see him— Like, especially the townsfolk kind of suck as a unit.

VRAI: They’ve got that Marvel syndrome going on well.

DEE: Well, and just they… they just sort of rely on the Nine Heroes for basically every— And again, there’s a few people who kind of stand out, but they kind of get that mob mentality going, which is how they were written for the story. But they don’t really see Luke as a person; they just see him as the hero. And even the other Nine Soldiers, to an extent. They’re all warriors in this together, and Luke feels like he has to take on that mantle, to the extent of self-harm. And, you know, kind of tying that into Natsuko seeing herself as the virtuoso and everybody hanging their hopes on her as far as the studio’s future and success of her projects and things like that. Yeah, I think they’re cut from the same cloth, so it makes sense that they butt heads initially but then that they also form this close bond with each other. And yeah, the fact that he doesn’t see her as the animator, the director, and she doesn’t see him as the hero. They’re able to engage with each other as individuals. It’s a sweet little romance built into the story of Zenshu, even though, you know, eventually they do have to say goodbye.

CAITLIN: They’re very cute.

DEE: It’s such an Escaflowne ending. I love it. Did you guys…? I know the ending. My first watch of it, I was like, the ending was very abrupt. I still kind of felt that the second time through, but it didn’t bother me as much. Did you feel like basically we got…? Did you want more? Where were you in the ending there?

CAITLIN: Absolutely. Absolutely wanted more. The example I will always go back to is… I had a lot of problems with Fate: Unlimited Blade Works. Don’t get me wrong. But the last episode… The climax happens in the penultimate episode, and the last episode is all denouement, and it’s like Rin and Shirou going to King Arthur’s grave and what is happening in their lives next. Now that this huge thing has ended, how are they moving forward from it there? And I think that Zenshu is another series where something like that would really work. I want to see— Like, we see Natsuko back at her desk. The movie is a success. Her hair is tied back. She’s working better with others. I want to see what happens… Like, how does she wake up? How does she respond to being pulled away from Luke the moment that he becomes real to her and she understands her feelings to him? How do the other people at the studio respond to her now that she is a more healthy, self-actualized person who is more pleasant to work with? You know, I want— I don’t think we need to see every single beat of every single story. It’s fine to leave some things implied. But Zenshu left out—much like in Tale of Perishing—left out so much of that connective tissue that it felt very, very… yeah, the word you used is “abrupt.”

DEE: Yeah. I think in some ways it is true to the genre because you kinda get… Again, Escaflowne I keep coming back to because she and Van have their big kind of emotional connection moment, and then she’s like, “Bye! I love you! I’ll never forget you!” And we really get… I think it’s maybe like two to three minutes after that. I didn’t need a full episode. I felt like about ten minutes. I just needed about ten more minutes, yeah, of Natsuko getting back to the real world and adjusting her relationships with others. I agree with you. I think a montage would have taken care of it. So, yeah, it bothered—

VRAI: Oh, I’ll see a montage.

CAITLIN: [crosstalk] A little bit of reverse culture shock. You know, coming home after being away can be a really jarring experience.

DEE: Yeah, for sure. Again, I think if you— I’m so sorry to keep moving into metaphor territory. I think if you do kind of see it as like Natsuko coming out of this… like she got sick from clams, went home and wrote herself a fanfic while she was working through shit, and then was like, “Okay! Feel like I can do this now,” I think the abrupt ending works a little bit better from that, as far as the realities of moving from the movie world back into the real world of, maybe, it not taking as long as it would if you were literally in that place for six months or however long she was there. Yeah, it didn’t bother me as much the second time, just because… again, maybe because I knew it was coming, but… I think you’re able to draw those connective tissues on your own to an extent, because we see how she learns teamwork with the other soldiers, so it’s like, oh, well, yeah, okay, so she’s learned the skill, so now she can apply it to her day job. But yeah, I mean, I do agree with you. I would have enjoyed a little bit more at the ending.

VRAI: Same. Oh, speaking of isekai, it reminded me a lot of the ending of Labyrinth, you know, where you have the big emotional breakthrough and then, yeah, it’s gonna be all right, and we have the cute, you know, “Should you ever need us” moment at the end that I liked.

DEE: [crosstalk] So good. And we get that in this one, too, where they’re walking on the other side of the street and…

VRAI: Yeah, that’s what I’m saying! Yeah! [Chuckles]

DEE: I like that her hair stick glows a little bit and you’re like, “Okay!” And that is interesting because that does sort of suggest that it really happened. Right? She kept Unio’s horn and is able to continue to use it, which is a nice touch. But yeah, you’re right, Vrai. It is very much that “Should you ever need us” moment.

VRAI: It’s one of those where, like, yeah, I would have taken a few more minutes, but I’m contented with where it ended up. Yeah, I wanted to know a little bit more about— Honestly, the thing I wanted to know the most about was the movie that she made, like the shape and vibe of it.

DEE: [crosstalk] Yes! I was very curious what First Love turned out like, like how she made that work based on the experiences and the understanding that she gained about herself. Like, did she lean on other people on the team, like, “Okay, well, you write the script and I’ll…” or did she draw from her own experiences? Yeah, I think those elements would have been really interesting to see. I agree. But that having been said—

VRAI: It’s a good show. [Chuckles]

DEE: —overall, overall, this one gets an A rating for me. I mean, where are y’all on it?

CAITLIN: It’s a, it’s A−/B+ series. I think it had some flaws that did affect how much I was able to fall in love with it. But it was overall an incredible piece of work that we really get very rarely these days.

VRAI: Yeah, I’d go with A−. I think, you know, I’ve pretty well enumerated the things about it that I don’t even think are necessarily failures of the artistic team in what they set out to do, so much as things that it feels incomplete without, I guess. But still, by God, they accomplished the goals that they set for themselves, and I think that that is an important metric as a critic. But also, it’s just so moving and important to me to see an original anime made by two women!

CAITLIN: Yeah, that seems to have done reasonably well. Not huge, but it’s got 56 fanfics on AO3.

DEE: Heyo. I think it was fine. It was very—

CAITLIN: [crosstalk] And they’re not all from the same three people.

DEE: I mean, my understanding, it was very critically well regarded, which is not… I mean, Rakugo Shinju wasn’t a ballpark smash hit, but it has withstood the test of time because it’s really, really good and people acknowledge that about it. So, I think—

VRAI: [flat] Where’s my Blu-ray?

DEE: Where’s my Blu-ray? We might get one for sure because they dubbed it, so that is a series I would happily have on my shelf. Yeah, I mean—

CAITLIN: I would… I would do terrible things for Rakugo Shinju Blu-ray.

DEE: I took us off— I veered us off track on that one. That’s on me.

CAITLIN: You know what happens when you bring up Rakugo Shinju, Dee!

DEE: I mean, I’m impressed I wasn’t the one who veered off track, because I wrote a damn novel about that series and I was just mentioning it as a comparison point in terms of, like, you know— Again, it’s early. Who knows. I think Zenshu is one of those series… I hope it ends up being an important series in terms of bringing back some of those shoujo isekai trends from the ‘90s and that idea of that there-and-back-again story because I think that is, in many ways, a more satisfying experience as a narrative. Yeah, I just really loved the series. And watching it the second time, I was worried in the first few episodes. I was like, “Mm, I’m not enjoying this as much.” And by the end of it, I was like, “Oh, no, I actually like it more this time.” So, I think, you know, what you guys said, it’s two female creators working on a story about a female character working through… an adult woman working through her trials and tribulations and character growth in this fantastical world. And… Yeah, I don’t know. It just hits for me. To me this is a big recommendation for the AniFem crowd.

CAITLIN: Absolutely.

DEE: If you somehow got to the end of this and slept on it, I really can’t recommend it enough. Good luck on anything else toppling this for my anime of the year, is where I’m at personally. So…

CAITLIN: Yeah. I also want to throw a shout-out to the community that I had discussing it on most platforms. The ANN thread, outside of a few bumps in the start of people with terrible ideas about what the story should do, was really great discussion. There was a lot of really great conversation in the AniFem Discord server. On Bluesky… The community around the show was excellent. So, if you’re someone who I talked to the show about, know that you are appreciated.

DEE: Yeah, I really enjoyed the AniFem Discord community’s discussions around that one. It was one of those shows where our Discord briefly turned into a CIA document because everybody was talking about it but they were blacking out the spoilers, so…

[Chuckling]

DEE: I love it when that happens. I love it when the gang all falls in love with the same piece of media together. It’s great.

VRAI: [Chuckles] And then it doesn’t turn into Wegg.

DEE: No, it didn’t turn into Wonder Egg Priority. You know, again, we have some quibbles, but I think overall it stuck the landing very nicely. Did what it wanted to do, made me feel some feelings along the way, so…

CAITLIN: [crosstalk] It didn’t undercut itself.

DEE: No, it absolutely didn’t undercut itself. I agree with that. So, yeah, I don’t know, that feels as good a segue to the outro as any. Or did you guys have any other thoughts here, or are we ready to call it?

VRAI: It good.

DEE: It good. I agree.

CAITLIN: It good.

DEE: It good! AniFem seal of “It good” approval.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of Chatty AF. If you like what you heard, tell your friends about us. And if you really liked what you heard, why not head over to patreon.com/animefeminist and become a patron. If you enjoy our podcasts, consider our $5 tier, which gets you bonus episodes and transcripts, as well as access to our private Discord server. You know, the one where we were having these awesome conversations about Zenshu? You could be a part of those. And at our Discord server, you can geek out with fellow feminist-minded animanga fans.

We also have a store, animefeminist.com/store, where you can find cute and cool merch for the progressive geek on the go.

And if you’re interested in more from the team and our contributors, you can check us out at animefeminist.com. For our full list of socials, such as Bluesky and Tumblr, that you can follow us on, just search for “Linktree Anime Feminist,” and we’ll pop right up, and you can find all the platforms that you would like to be a part of.

And that is the show! Let us know your thoughts on Zenshu in the comments, and we will catch you next time.