Zenshu does what so many modern isekai are afraid to and actually tells a story whose goal is something other than setting up a vague status quo as a wish fulfillment fantasy/waifu delivery system. Instead it’s morphed into a meditation on our relationship to fiction, specifically the stories that influenced us growing up.
Natsuko naturally assumes that the reason she’s been isekaied into the world of the movie that inspired her to work in animation is to “fix” it and give everyone a happy ending, and for the first two thirds of the show, that’s exactly what she does, taking an axe to what she sees as tired tropes like the annoying mascot character heroically sacrificing themselves, or the hero’s love interest agreeing to an arranged marriage to save the city only to be hunted down by a mob when she and the hero are blamed for everything going wrong, or the weird part that the movie never explained where the stoic elf warrior disguises herself as a monster and gets killed by the hero.
And in response to this, the show turns into exactly the kind of lighthearted romantic comedy/wish fulfillment simulator that you’d expect from a modern isekai, where the biggest concern is whether Natsuko can treat Luke as a real enough person to even acknowledge his budding feelings for her, until one day, sitting in the sun on a perfect day with her new friends, she wonders: “Was A Tale of Perishing supposed to be this happy?”
And the answer she receives immediately, from the movie’s creator, is “Of course not.” Natsuko achieved what she assumed her mission to be, but while it makes for a fun upset of tropes that genuinely were pretty dated, it’s not a satisfying story. And then the story starts pushing back.
The original narrative reasserts itself, but twisted. A mascot character still dies, but it’s the robot instead of the unicorn. Destiny still agrees to the marriage, but to save the orphanage she built thanks to Natsuko’s previous intervention. The void cultists return, but heralding Natsuko as their messiah. Luke and his love interest are still pursued by a mob, but this time, Natsuko has been thrust into that role.
The voids begin to copy and integrate everything Natsuko had summoned to defeat them, meaning that the one weapon she had to change this story is what’s actively making it worse. In trying to “fix” what she saw as mistakes, a habit she already developed as a professional where she only trusted in her own vision and discounted the work of everyone else, she lost sight of what she learned from the story when she first encountered it.
The show’s refusal to let things stay static and comfortable is what keeps me coming back to it every week, and I’m really excited to see how it ends.
turnnoffyourmind
kaledo-art
origamiaround
baratheonpilled
yousharknotpass
ellievsbear
