{"id":821603,"date":"2025-01-21T09:13:23","date_gmt":"2025-01-21T15:13:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/21\/studio-mappas-anime-about-making-anime-is-a-surprisingly-refreshing-isekai\/"},"modified":"2025-01-21T09:13:23","modified_gmt":"2025-01-21T15:13:23","slug":"studio-mappas-anime-about-making-anime-is-a-surprisingly-refreshing-isekai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/21\/studio-mappas-anime-about-making-anime-is-a-surprisingly-refreshing-isekai\/","title":{"rendered":"Studio Mappa\u2019s Anime About Making Anime Is a Surprisingly Refreshing Isekai"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A new year means a new season of anime for fans to either add to their weekly rotation or include in their ever-growing pile of backlog series<\/a> that they swear they\u2019ll get to any day now. While 2025 will see a head-to-head streaming battle between the de facto anime juggernaut Crunchyroll and rising star Netflix, the former just released an anime from Jujutsu Kaisen<\/em><\/a> and Attack on Titan<\/em><\/a> studio Mappa that threw anime fans for a loop with its premiere episode.<\/p>\n

Before its release, Zenshu<\/em>, a clever play on the Japanese phrase \u201cwhole collection\u201d or \u201ccomplete works,\u201d piqued anime fans\u2019 interest with its marketed premise about the production process of an anime from a visually worn-out animator. While this isn\u2019t the first time an anime has pulled back the curtain and made art about making art (see Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken<\/em>, Blue Period<\/em>, and Look Back<\/em><\/a>), Zenshu<\/em> had folks\u2019 curiosity because it was a Mappa anime. As mentioned earlier, Mappa is widely regarded as the anime studio to watch, and much of its wrapsheets involve some of the most critically acclaimed shonen anime. It is also a studio with an equal amount of controversy online regarding repeated instances of alleged worker crunch<\/a> to get its highly regarded anime out the door. Mappa creating an anime about the challenges of the animation process was bound to be intriguing regardless. However, Zenshu<\/em>\u2018s first episode swerved fans in its early moments, revealing that it is an isekai anime.<\/p>\n

Isekai<\/a> is a fantasy genre of anime that\u2019s quickly become an easy punching bag for anime fans because of how oversaturated the medium has been for the last decade. While there are some standouts in shows like Re:Zero<\/em> and Jobless Reincarnation<\/em>, isekai shows tend to be derivative power fantasy anime about social recluses in the everyday world getting a second chance at life in a whimsical fantasy setting with godly powers. And while there\u2019s nothing wrong with watching something that stimulates the brain in the same way a frosted sugar cookie would, fans did not expect Mappa to take the isekai route with Zenshu<\/em>. Nevertheless, Mappa finds something novel in its approach to the isekai genre with Zenshu <\/em>first episode.<\/p>\n

\"io9<\/p>\n

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She just caused emotional damage to every isekai fan???? pic.twitter.com\/SDasgvZEN3<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Brandon Varnell (@BrandonBVarnell) January 6, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Zenshu <\/i>follows a woman named Natsuko Hirose who fast-tracks from being an animator fresh out of high school to becoming the creator of a generation-defining anime. Her success propels her to lead a romantic comedy feature animated film in the same spirit as director Makoto Shinkai\u2019s <\/a>Your Name <\/em>or Mamoru Hosoda\u2019s The Girl Who Leapt Through Time<\/em><\/a>. Still, Natsuko struggles with nailing the concept, having never felt the joy of a first love. She doesn\u2019t help her situation by redoing key animations and storyboards her assistants drafted, and she insists on letting her disheveled hair grow unruly until the project is finished. After ego search doom-scrolling on social media, Natsuko discovers that the director behind a critical flop (and the anime that sparked her love for the craft) has passed away. It\u2019s here where Natsuko unceremoniously chokes on her food, dies, and is isekai\u2019d into the fantasy world of said anime.<\/p>\n

Natsuko quickly pieces together that she\u2019s been isekai\u2019d and laments that this phenomenon only happens to unemployed losers before she discovers that she can redraw entire scenes of the tragic fantasy tale to save its heroes from certain doom. This power manifests in her magical peg bar, which acts like the purple crayon in Harold and the Purple Crayon<\/em><\/a> (or a piece of chalk from Nickelodeon\u2019s ChalkZone<\/em><\/a> for the cool kids). Her first feat sees her draw a monstrous kaiju with the genga and settei production markers rawly animated with every movement of its body; it gets a bunch of cool points for being a one-to-one reference shot of Neon Genesis Evangelion<\/em><\/a>\u2018s Hideaki Anno<\/a>\u2018s animation cut from Hayao Miyazaki<\/a>\u2018s 1984 Studio Ghibli fantasy film Nausica\u00e4 of the Valley of the Wind<\/em><\/a>
.<\/p>\n

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Nausicaa \/ Zenshu ep 1.
Special thought for Hideaki Anno ???? https:\/\/t.co\/1eQji1E0SL<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/DzD4xeeFp5<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Catsuka (@catsuka) January 7, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Despite isekai being a well-trodden anime genre, Zenshu<\/em>\u2018s premiere episode strikes a balance as one of the most conceptually intriguing original anime the industry has produced in years. Its comedic elements take witty jabs at the genre while utilizing its latent potential to analyze fiction and reality in a manner primed for refreshing storytelling. While it is still too early to tell whether Zenshu<\/em> will be to animators what Look Back<\/em> and One Piece Fan Letter<\/em><\/a> was to the anime community last year, it certainly leaves a good first impression that it will have the gumption to deliver a riveting isekai while supplying meta-textual insight into the animation process from one of the industry\u2019s leading studios.<\/p>\n

New episodes of Zenshu<\/em> premiere every Sunday on Crunchyroll.<\/p>\n

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Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel<\/a>, Star Wars<\/a>, and Star Trek<\/a> releases, what\u2019s next for the DC Universe on film and TV<\/a>, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote><\/div>\n

Isaiah Colbert
Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new year means a new season of anime for fans to either add to their weekly rotation or include in their ever-growing pile of backlog series that they swear they\u2019ll get to any day now. While 2025 will see a head-to-head streaming battle between the de facto anime juggernaut Crunchyroll and rising star Netflix<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":821604,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27819,22626],"tags":[12276,6347],"class_list":{"0":"post-821603","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-anime","8":"category-studio","9":"tag-anime","10":"tag-studio"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=821603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821603\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/821604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=821603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=821603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=821603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}