Draw, Natsuko! Zenshu's Tale of Perishing

This piece has spoilers for the recent original anime series Zenshu, as well as the film Tale of Perishing. No need to worry, though, because Tale of Perishing is fictional! It can't hurt you. Or can it?

Natsuko Hirose is the world’s greatest and most promising anime director. Unfortunately, she’s dead. A bad boxed lunch poisoned her body and transported her soul to the world of fictional anime film Tale of Perishing. There, the Nine Soldiers fight to protect the last remaining Soul Future from being devoured by Voids. Natsuko loves Tale of Perishing; it’s the film that inspired her to become an animator. It’s also a tragedy that ends with Luke, Natsuko’s favorite character, destroying everything he loves. This time, though, Natsuko won’t let Luke and his friends die without a fight. She’ll change their fate with animation power!

I wasn’t going to bother with Zenshu at first. Its studio, MAPPA, is infamous among fans for its poor management and disgraceful treatment of freelancers. I found it bizarre that they, of all people, would choose to tell a story set in the animation industry. Even the fact that the series would unite Mitsue Yamazaki (Monthly Girls Nozaki-kun) with scriptwriter Kimiko Ueno (Space Dandy, Delicious in Dungeon) wasn’t enough to encourage me. 

MAPPA has several ambitious original series to its name: Terror in Resonance, Sarazanmai, and of course the megahit Yuri!!! on Ice. In recent years though the studio has chosen to starve these productions in favor of big budget manga adaptations. I had no reason to expect that Zenshu would be any different from last year’s disappointing Bucchigiri?!

So I was surprised when folks I respected rallied around Zenshu. Caitlin Moore wrote effusive reviews at Anime News Network; Lucas DeRuyter and my friend Steve Jones covered the series for This Week in Anime. The thought began to nibble away at me: could it be that the show I dismissed at the start of the year was great all along?

Zenshu is a story in the ever-popular “isekai” subgenre. Fans of genre fiction might recognize this as “portal fantasy,” where the protagonist travels to another world. (Think The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.) Japanese subculture abounds with these stories, refracted through hundreds of potential variations. Does the protagonist travel through a portal or are they reincarnated? If they are reincarnated, what do they become: a baby, a monster, a vending machine? Do they travel to a fantasy world, another planet or something else?

With that kind of freedom, you’d think that the sky would be the limit. Unfortunately most isekai stories are concerned first and foremost with masturbatory wish fulfillment. They transport the protagonist to a world that is ultimately designed to reaffirm their beliefs. It’s a far cry from Michael Ende’s The Neverending Story back in 1979, which dared to ask if becoming the destined hero of a fantasy world might change you for the worse.

Zenshu on the other hand is actually interested in its heroine’s strengths and weaknesses. Natsuko carries herself with the brilliance and grace of a genius. She also has the unique power to change the physical world through animation. Even so, she struggles with stubbornness and self-doubt. Transforming Tale of Perishing from a tragedy into a comedy requires that she learn how to work with others instead of doing everything herself.

The series is therefore less about how Natsuko thrives in this new world than it is about how the experience changes her. In that respect, Zenshu carries forward the spirit of classic portal fantasy even though it wears the outward face of modern isekai. Rather than pure escapism, the world of Tale of Perishing is a prism through which the audience (on a very basic level) can see parts of their own lives reflected back to them.

At the core of that prism, I figure, is burnout. Natsuko starts the series toiling fruitlessly on her first full-length animated film. When she travels to Tale of Pershing, she is recruited by the Nine Soldiers: an exhausted community of heroes who have spent the past several years sacrificing themselves to hold back the unstoppable Voids. Even the team’s noble figurehead, Luke, is on the verge of total collapse.

Late in the series, Natsuko is eaten by a Void. Inside its belly she is beset by hallucinations from her past and present. They say to her that she can’t draw, that she’s mediocre, and that she will never be able to change. The parallel between Natsuko’s struggles as an artist and the apocalypse haunting Tale of Perishing is clear. All you can do in the face of total collapse is to keep fighting together with your friends.

This is a nice message that has the benefit of being true. After all, we live at a time when organizing your peers is more important than ever. Yet that message can’t help but frustrate me considering the context. As Alicia Haddick writes for scrmbl, Zenshu never once puts Natsuko’s creative struggles into a wider context. Sure, people burn out. But why? We are influenced not just by our own psychology but by the systems in which we live. Animators in Japan (and across the world) have suffered under these systems for as long as the medium has existed.

I don’t believe that Zenshu had a responsibility to make its studio, MAPPA, the final villain. Art has a right to exist beyond the purpose of propaganda. Also, I suspect that Yamazaki, Ueno and company wanted to speak to something larger than just the anime industry’s woes. They wanted to give hope to everybody. Why not believe in something bigger and better than yourself when the world around you is a garbage pile? That’s where Shirobako, my favorite anime industry sitcom, also landed when it aired back in 2014.

Zenshu and Shirobako are both stories about persevering through hard times in search of a happy ending. They’re catharsis machines. While I love stories like that, they have limitations, too. Hannah Nicklin notes in her book Writing for Games: Theory and Practice that catharsis is first and foremost a release valve. A way to gather your messy, unresolved feelings about the imperfect world in which you live and expel them without having to change anything about your surroundings.

So while I think Zenshu is way better constructed and more thoughtful than its isekai peers, I don’t think it says anything particularly daring about animation, art or creativity. So why do I still like it? Well, I have a weakness for “found family” stories, where disparate oddballs come together to find solace in each other’s company. Once Zenshu reaches its second half and kicks into gear, it transforms into a very good one of those.

I wasn’t sure what to make of the Nine Soldiers at first. Their character designs were too close to Japanese high fantasy cliches to grab my attention. As the story progressed, though, I came around on almost all of them. Luke has a soft, sincere side to him that makes it easy to understand why Natsuko was so attached to him as a child watching his movie. Memmeln might look like just another elf with immortality problems, but she proves to be the most resilient of all the Nine Soldiers.

Then there’s Unio, Luke’s bratty unicorn buddy. He starts out as an annoying mascot character who's constantly hitting on girls. He also roots against Luke and Natsuko’s relationship because he hates being left out. But Zenshu does something very sneaky by having Unio grow and change alongside Natsuko. It’s so satisfying at the end to see him set aside his grudge and team up with her so that they can save their friends.

Another highlight for me is Justice, a sleepy-eyed dragon living with disability. They pretend to be an antihero who thinks the Nine Soldiers are being unrealistic. In reality, their wings were damaged in action, and they’re scared that their friends might blame themselves if they discovered the truth. Justice is both practical and principled; they’re a great conversation partner able to punch through to the reality of the setting. 

There’s a scene in the tenth episode of Zenshu where Unio and Justice sit together by the gravestones of their old comrades. Justice asks Unio if he’s alright; Unio admits that he’s scared his best friend Luke will fall to pieces. To which Justice says, “I’m talking about you, Unio. Are you alright? No one’s okay when they lose a friend.” Sure, it's a sentimental moment. It's meaningful to me, though, that Zenshu takes the time in its scant twelve episodes just to let its cast comfort each other.

Before director Mitsue Yamazaki she made her name with Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun in 2014, she worked under Kunihiko Ikuhara on the 2011 series Mawaru Penguindrum. That series, too, gives its characters time to connect and grieve together before the end. Zenshu isn’t nearly as ambitious as Penguindrum. But its climactic scenes left me with some of the same melancholy feelings.

The original director of Tales of Perishing haunts the world of Zenshu as a talking bird. "It's no use," she says. "Nothing you can do will change the outcome." She's disgusted when this turns out not to be the case, and her life's work is given a deliriously happy ending. But Zenshu doesn't reject the bird out of hand either, because its sad scenes are by far my favorites. I think that's why I like the show despite everything.

Bookmarks

• I've been enjoying Liz Bushouse's ongoing series comparing the English translation of Japanese RPG Suikoden (1995) with that of its remake this year.
• Arpad Okay wrote at length for Comics Beat about Bat Kid, Igaguri: Young Judo Master, and the nonfiction book Desegregating Comics.
• For Anime By the Numbers, Miles Atherton wrote about The Problem With Netflix Anime Data.
• For Polygon, Daniel Dockery covered some of his favorite routes from the Pokémon games. What are your favorites?
• Mark Simmons published a new installment of his history of Sunrise, covering 1976 to 1979. Lots of great reading here for mecha anime fans especially.

What I Wrote

• For Comics Beat, I interviewed Bloomsbury USA's Haaris Naqvi about the upcoming Marvel Age of Comics nonfiction series. It's inspired by the 33 1/3 series of short books about albums, which I think is a great idea!
• I also reviewed Bong Joon Ho's new film Mickey-17.
• For Beat's Bizarre Adventure, I covered To the Sea and Pet Shop of Horrors. Check out everybody else's work, too!
• For Yatta-Tachi, I spoke with PEOW co-founder Patrick Crotty about licensing the beloved manga comedy classsic Stop!! Hibari-kun!
• At Unpacking the Shelf, I spoke with my friend Alex and special guest Kyrie (Scanline Media) about Power Rangers, Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger and living legend Doggie Kruger.

AMV of the Week

Here's "Video Killed the Radio Star" by takara.