{"id":648033,"date":"2025-01-05T21:35:24","date_gmt":"2025-01-05T18:35:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/zenshu-episode-1-review-an-uncompelling-isekai-experience\/"},"modified":"2025-01-05T21:35:24","modified_gmt":"2025-01-05T18:35:24","slug":"zenshu-episode-1-review-an-uncompelling-isekai-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/zenshu-episode-1-review-an-uncompelling-isekai-experience\/","title":{"rendered":"#ZENSHU Episode 1 Review: An Uncompelling Isekai Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Series<\/a> synopsis:<\/strong> <\/span>After graduating from high school, Natsuko Hirose starts her career as an animator. Her talent quickly flourishes, and she makes her debut as a director in no time. Her first anime<\/a> becomes a massive hit, sparking a social<\/a> phenomenon and earning her recognition as an up-and-coming genius director. Her next project is set to be a romantic comedy movie theme<\/a>d around first love! However, having never been in love herself, Natsuko struggles to understand the concept of first love, and as a result, she\u2019s unable to create the storyboard, causing the movie production to come to a standstill.<\/span><\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

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Storyboard artist: <\/span>Mitsue Yamazaki\u00a0<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Episode director: <\/span>Sumie Noro\u00a0<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Screenwriter: <\/span>Kimiko Ueno<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

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If you\u2019ve seen the subsequent trailers for <\/span>ZENSHU<\/span><\/i>, you\u2019ll know that it isn\u2019t quite <\/span>Shirobako<\/span><\/i>, but an<\/span> isekai story where the protagonist enters the world of an anime. Main character Natsuko is a young star director \u2014 although this first episode,\u00a0 titled \u201cFIRST STROKE,\u201d does better at showing her current ineptitude than convincingly portraying her rapid rise to success \u2014 and when she ends up in the fantasy anime film <\/span>A Tale of Perishing<\/span><\/i>, she brings with her the power of storyboarding.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

There are two big problems plaguing <\/span>ZENSHU<\/span><\/i>\u2019s premiere, and the first is its main character. While it\u2019s only natural for Natsuko to be flawed to enable the premise described by the synopsis, the episode makes it hard to want to continue seeing her on-screen at all. After a staff member (presumably a<\/span> production assistant<\/span><\/a>) hands her key frames for checking, Natsuko nonchalantly asks for a full retake (<\/span>zenshu<\/span><\/i>, the very word that serves as the show\u2019s title) and would rather take on the task herself than provide any feedback. Having an asshole character (or a character who starts off as one) is perfectly fine, but the premiere doesn\u2019t offer more than that \u2014 no sympathetic angle, no special quality, no twisted self-justification for her current temperament<\/span>\u2014 so my first impression of Natsuko is that she\u2019s neither interesting nor hateable but entertaining. She\u2019s just annoying.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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