Zenshu, as an anime series, very easily could have been the most self-indulgent of the isekai anime to come out in a while – an anime series about an animator who dies and is sent to another world where their cheat skill is related to animation. However, the show manages to stick the landing, serving as something of a love-letter to classic anime films.

Zenshu follows Natsuko Hirose, an animation prodigy who got into the field after seeing the (fictional) film A Tale of Perishing when she was a child – at the time the story went over her head, but she fell in love with the characters and the world, and that drove her to become an animator. Since then, she’s come to appreciate the film and its dark tone more, but she has always wanted more for the characters in the world. When she accidentally eats a tainted clam from a bento box left near her desk, while she is stuck on her next movie, she dies and finds herself in the world of A Tale of Perishing, near the film’s conclusion. And, like any good Isekai protagonist, Natsuko has a cheat skill – the ability to animate things into reality, giving her the ability to help the characters try to avoid the downer ending of the source material (which I’d probably describe as a mix of Windaria and End of Evangelion). So, she tries to use her power to avert that dark fate, while unintentionally getting an opportunity to realize her crush on the protagonist – Luke Braveheart.

The animation and writing for this series is splendid, with the show’s characters and animation doing a tremendous job of evoking the style of mid-to-late 80s animation. It doesn’t quite hit it – there are a few characters who probably would have been more bishoujo in the films and series that are being referenced, but aren’t quite there. They don’t have the opposite problem of going more moe instead, but it almost goes more into kiddy animation of the period, which also wouldn’t quite be what the source material would be either.

That said, the animation looks great, with lots of shout-outs to various classic works in the period – and not subtle ones either. For example, Ichiro Itano ended up coming out of retirement for one last Itano Circus. We have references to the Great God Warrior Attacks sequence from Nausicaa, and Gundam, and ’70s Tiger Mask.

I will add as one additional note – while the end of the series does feel like it’s going to go in a direction that is about as dark as Windaria, or the described conclusion of A Tale of Perishing, and you feel you don’t need that right now, because of the dark times we live in. I will say, without any further spoilers, that the ending is on a hopeful note.

Zenshu is available for streaming on Crunchyroll.

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