Zenshu

 Zenshu (全修) is an original 12 episode isekai anime produced by MAPPA.  The series originally aired during the Winter of 2025.

     Hirose Natsuko is a celebrated young anime director who is struggling to complete the screenplay for his first movie, First Love.  AFter accidentally getting food poisoning she wakes up in  different world.  She quickly determines she is in the world of the anime that influenced her to become and animator, the derided fantasy A Tale of Perishing.  The world of A Tale of Perishing is that of near death.  The source of its light and growth, the soul futures, have been gradually extinguished by an alien menace known as the Void.  A band of legendary heroes, the Nine Soldiers, have done everything they can to protect them, but only 4 heroes remain.  They and everyone else have crammed into the last city, built around the final soul future.  Things are looking desperate because once the final soul future is destroyed the world will end as they know it.  The Nine Soldiers encounter the out of place Natsuko in the outskirts of town but consider her a nuisance and a trouble maker.  She does what she can to convince them other wise, but the leader, Luke Braveheart wants nothing to do with her.  Using her knowledge of the anime, she tries to warn them of danger only to be ignored even once the next attack happens.  As the battle rages and one of the other heroes begins to cast a spell, sacrificing himself to save the others, an item from the real world begins to urge Hatsuko to take action.

    The item is her peg bar and when she heeds its urging she goes through a fantastical magical girl transformation and finds herself sitting at a replica of her animators desk.  She formulates an idea in her head and with inhuman speed, sketches out a storyboard.  As soon as she is finished with it magic causes it to spring to life, a gigantic being with a powerful beam weapon that decimates the hoard of Voids, preventing the hero Unio from sacrificing himself.  After demonstrating her ability and usefulness she is accepted into the ranks of the Nine Soldiers.  Her prescient ability only goes so far though as the plot begins to change in reaction to her meddling.  The original anime ended in the despair and failure as Luke succumbed to the trauma of loosing everything he cares for.  Natsuko tries to intervene as much as she can to prevent this but as things move further away from what she knew this became harder to maintain.  Will she learn life lessons she was unable to learn in the real world as she struggles to protect this new world?

 

    Zenshu was a unknown given its an original piece that seemed to be part Shirobako and part every isekai out there.  What sold me with the preview was the beauty of the animation.  This is a fantastically animated series with a lot of care placed on making the characters distinct.  In the moments when Natsuko is remembering the anime version of A Tale of Perishing, the art style and quality changes to reflect a lower quality TV anime from years past.  The other characters themselves are done in different styles as well.  Luke looks like a classic fantasy character from the 80's.  Unio, a shapeshifting magical unicorn, looks like he would be more at home in Care Bears.  QJ, the strange statue-like being, is absolutely a reference to a famous figurine from the ancient Jomon era.  As the story played another thing that became apparent was how different the characters were being handled.  They didn't easily fit into traditional fantasy/isekai roles and had a great deal of interpersonal dynamics.  They were also multi faceted and realistic in their portrayals.

    But what about the story its self?  In the end it wasn't anything new or original.  We have seen this type of story countless times and there is no shame in that.  Whats special about Zenshu is how much love was put into it.  This is truly a love letter to anime with an emphasis on its history.  A lot of that is represented by Natsuko herself.  Eeach week she creates a new animated scene to help them in their battles, constantly changing style.  We see a nod to Gundam, Kinnikuman, bishonen harem, kaiju, etc.   While the story its self is well hashed the way it handles it is invigorating and special.  This is a really good anime and should be viewed by all manner of anime fans.  There is a little room with the way it ends for the possibility of a movie but I suspect it will never happen and feel leaving things as they are is the best way to preserve the shows future legacy.

The series was simulcast on Crunshyroll.

Magilumiere Co. Ltd.

 Magilumiere Co. Ltd. (株式会社マジルミエ) is a 12 episode magical girl series based on the manga of the same name by Iwata Sekka.  The first season originally aired during the Fall of 2024.

    Sakuragi Kana is a recent college graduate who has struggled to find employment.  She puts unparalleled effort into researching each company she applies to but ultimately fails to impress them enough to want to hire her.  At one interview the room suddenly becomes infested with a supernatural being known as a kaii.  In recent years kaii have increased in frequency, causing danger and destruction in their wake.  This has lead to a boom in the magical girl industry, where hundreds of companies taught the series of these specialized women in combating the kaii.  The company she's at that is being attacked have been negligent in their kaii prevention measures and decided to hire a small magical girl business for this extermination, feeling they can be less than open on the level of threat involved.

    Sakuragi ends up assisting the magical girl, Koshigaya Hitomi, as she battles the powerful kaii, showing off hr ability to be flexible and objective under preassure.  Koshigaya tells Sakuragi that she should come work for her employer, Magilumiere Co. Ltd.  Overcome with emotion she agrees to join up, grateful for a job, but is uncertain if she is really cute out to be a magical girl.  Not counting Sakuragi, the company only has 4 members.  Its head, a middle aged gentleman who dresses as a magical girl named Shigemoto Kouji has an unconventional approach to how the business operates and what their goal is.  He's not concerned with being the most profitable, instead he's focused on the aesthetics of the magical girl industry and evolving it to a place where the kaii may no longer be a threat.  Sakuragi adapts to the unconventional ways her employer operates and appreciates it for its vision.  As she gains more experience in her roll she becomes more confident in her own abilities, but something dangerous is lurking in the recesses and there may be a preventable tragedy around any corner.

    I don't really watch magical girl series', as its not a genre that appeals to me very much.  I do however respect the genre and am glad that its fans have so many quality titles to choose from.  I've watched a few over the years, most enjoyable being Magical Girl Ore but was intrigued by the initial concept of this series.  I liked the concept of the world in Magilumiere being one of magical girls being rather common place.  The abilities behind them as well seems to stem from advanced technology instead of super natural elements.  The kaii themselves feel like yokai under a different name.  Honestly...this is pretty much the anime version of Ghost Busters when it comes down to it.  At times the action got boring, with the need to continuously call out attacks, largely made of nonsensical words stringed together that had little standardization.  But that's all par of the flavour in the genre so its not with out its precedent.

    This series is a little unconventional for a magical girl story.  Its really the story of a scrappy group of idealists fighting for their own sense of whats right, against standard conventions.  They all have their own past trauma's that have lead them to their fated union and they are stronger as a whole compared to what they can do alone.  Through out the first season bits and pieces of past events in the world leak out, working as foreshadowing for a greater narrative tension to come.  Like a video game, it slowly ramps up the difficulty as the audience and the main character are exposed to the nuances of the world.  At this point I am invested enough to continue watching it when the second season comes out but I'm not sure if I really enjoy this series over all.  All the while I was watching it I rally wanted to shut it off and re watch the original OAV's for Maho Tsukai Tai instead.  Either way, its a fun change of pace for the magical girl genre that adds an amount of maturity, both with the story its trying to tell and the fact that its characters are adults working in an industry, instead of randomly selected (some would say kidnapped) adolescent girls forced to carry the worlds burden on their shoulders.

The series was simulcast on Prime.

Sasaki and Peeps

Sasaki and Peeps (佐々木とピーちゃん) is a 12 episode fantasy anime based on the light novel series of the same name by Buncololi.  The series originally aired during the Winter of 2024

    Sasaki is a low level salary man facing down forty.  He's unmarried, has no children and scrapes by in an unfulfilling and meaningless existence.  Out of pity he decides to get a pet.  Unable to afford a dog or a cat, he settles on a Java sparrow.  When the bird begins to talk to him, he questions his own sanity.  The bird proves to be quite persistent and informs the bewildered man that he is a great magic user known as the Star Sage Piercarlo.  In exchange for being saved, he agrees to impart some of his power into Sasaki.  He agrees, nicknaming the bird Peep's and the two are transported to his home world.  Sasaki, having learned a thing or two while working as a salary-man, realizes that the ability to transport freely between disparate worlds can come in handy financially for him and gets to work setting up and import/export business.  Both he and Peeps seek to set themselves up for a carefree, worry-free, life after a little bit of work.

    Things don't work out as smoothly as either of them would expect as the import business into Peeps world leads to them being ingrained in one countries political issues due to the interest their goods have stirred in the aristocracy.  He soon finds himself embroiled in political intrigue and outright war with a neighboring kingdom due to the alliances he establishes for the trade of merchandise he's transporting from modern day Japan.  Peeps is able to teach Sasaki some magic, lessening the burden on himself in that field.  This presents its self with problems when Sasaki uses magic to rescue a girl back in Tokyo.  The girl, Hoshizaki, reveals that she works for a secretive government organization that tracks down and suppress ESPers.  Not wanting to reveal the nature of the magic he used, he tells the young woman that he too is an ESPer, causing her to force him to join the ranks of the organization.  As a newly minted government agent he has to investigate and combat ESPers that are unwilling to bend to the will of the agency, causing a greater workload on him, just when his import business in the other world is picking up.  To further complicate things...a strange dumpster diving girl with magic powers starts hunting ESPers.

    There is a lot to unpack with this show.  It defies genre classification as it checks off a large swath of story styles.  Slice of life, reverse isekai, mercantilism, psychic powers, magic girls, historical politics...the list goes on.  A new genre is introduced into the story with almost every new episode, further expanding the workload Sasaki has to endure, as all he tries to do is build up a nest egg.  Sasaki works even harder to obscure portions of his new reality from others.  In the other world he tells everyone hes from a far off distant land.  The attempt to hide his growing magical abilities by telling people who know hes actually an ESPer.  The only one who knows everything he's doing is Peep's, his partner in crime.  Invariably juggling so much secrecy would lead to a series of calamities but the story activates Sasaki's plot armor quite effectively and does a really good job of maintaining the suspension of belief.  The complexity, world building and progression of the story are all really well done.  In the end this was a really satisfying story, checking all manner of story lines I wouldn't normally seek out.

   While the characters, plot progression, world building and insane genre mashing is brilliantly handled, the artwork is another story.  Once the insanity of whats going on becomes acceptable by the viewer they are able to take in the scenery.  There is a noticeable lack of quality and attention to detail through out the show.  A prime example of this is the less than realistic hand artwork.  There are segments where a characters blocking is unrealistic given their perspective and placement.  The action sequences as well cut plenty of corners so don't expect something flashy like Jujutsu Kaisen within this story.  The quality of the story far outweighs the uninspiring artwork though so don't let that stop you from enjoying this crazy show...which doesn't have an ending or any hint of a second season.  The series has covered a good portion of the light novels that exist and we will probably never see anything else animated for this weirdly satisfying show.

The series was simulcast on Crunchyroll.

Maho Tsukai Tai (Magic User Club) OAV

In the world of high school stories, Maho Tsukai Tai is both a fan servicing and fan debasing. This 6 part OAV series by Gonzo came out in the mid 90’s and tells the story of a hapless group of high school wanna-be-witches who try and save the world from an invading alien species.

   The series follows main character Sae; a quiet, reserved and nervous high school student. She enrolls in the failing Magic User Club due to her obsession/interest in not only magic but the clubs president, Takeo. Sae and her childhood friends, Nanaka, timely arrival into the club not only helps to keep their doors open in the face of the powerful manga club, but also to bolster the ranks in the fight against the mysterious alien invader. Previous to the girls joining the club a mysterious bell shaped space craft descended on the world. The military sent out fighters to destroy it but were both unsuccessful and obliterated themselves (without killing any of the soldiers). Afterward the object sent swarms of mechanical probes to inspect the surrounding areas. After a while humanity came to accept the mysterious presence of the alien craft and its probes and continued on, not concern for their safety, since it had never been hostile. Takeo has decided that it is his and the magic clubs duty to get rid of the alien invaders once and for all. With the fresh recruits of Sae, Nanaka and Akane, the popular and brainless rich girl, the club is bolstered to 5 members strong, including Takeo and the vice president Aburatsubo. Now that the club is not in danger of being disbanded Takeo works quickly to whip the new recruits into shape to battle the alien bell.

    To the amazement and delight of Takeo, who also has a deep rooted crush on her, Sae is highly proficient at magic and takes to the lessons right away…even if the results aren’t always what was expected. With only a few lessons under their belt and the surprising attack on Akane by the aliens Takeo takes the magic users club against them to rescue Akane and remove the invaders from the planet.

    This is a funny and sweet series and one of my personal favorites. This is a series that was created before the advent of the Moe revolution and the obsession with fan service for fan service sake. Sure, there is plenty of fan service, plenty of classic otaku techniques and characterizations. You have the shy and quiet girl with her secret crush, the awkward boy with his secret crush; you have the tsundere type, the bimbo, the unnaturally large breasted evil woman, the pale gay guy, a semi-talking stuffed animal, nosebleedsalienstechnology…

    The show is still for otaku, but before the time when shows catered exclusively to them. When you had to search for the anime/manga/model stores in Akibahara and when the only anime most Americans had ever heard of was Sailor Moon. The story is cute, simple and filled with tried and true plot devices. You can classify it as a romantic comedy, magic girl/boy, sci-fi, slice of school life series. The humor and story is aimed at adolescent boys, with panty shots, gag comedy and slapstick. If you are a fan of such series as Photon, Tenchi Muyo, Ping Pong Club or All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku you would probably have watched this series already and enjoyed it. This is an old series and has been released commercially in America as well as it’s follow up TV series.

Pani Poni Dash - RePost

Pani Poni Dash is a psychotic comedy. I think that's a good way to start off the review of it. I really enjoyed this series and am happy to see it commercially in America. Even though it is only loosely similar to Azumanga Daioh I will use characters from that anime as comparisons to some of the characters in Pani Poni Dash. If you are not familiar with Azumanga Daioh read my recent review of it. Pani Poni Dash came out in Japan on TV in the second half of 2005. It is a slice-of-school-life, sci-fi, brain melting comedy. It is one full season (26 episodes) and is based off of the Pani Poni manga.

    It is the story of Rebecca Miyamoto, 2nd child of a Japanese mother and an American father. She graduated from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and has returned to Japan to teach high school. She’s only 11 years old. She gets a job teaching at the prestigious Peach Moon high school. Unfortunately the homeroom assigned to her is the rowdiest in the school. This isn't another Great Teacher Onizuka where she has to shape all the students up…there really isn't any discernible plot…well except for the aliens.

    Each episode is one contained story that shows a particular arc within the main characters lives. Once you know all of the major players in the series you can pretty much watch it in any order you want to. Each episode begins with a small intro that has something to do with the plot of the episode. After the ending credits (which change through out the series every couple of episodes) there is a small montage that relates to the episode. That is followed by what can loosely be described as a preview for the next episode

Ok, on with the characters, because this is the best way to give a feel of the series.

    Becky, as her students call her, is a disillusioned ill-tempered version of Chiyo-chan (from Azumanga). She is an 11 year old MIT grad and is now the homeroom teacher for a class of misfits. A depressed, self loathing talking rabbit, Mesosa, ends up befriending her, following her everywhere she goes, only to be continuously berated by everyone, stalked by 'god' and ready to commit suicide every time he is brushed off. Both are late for the first day of school and end up in a wooded area staring at a vending machine. Becky gets a drink out of the machine and when she complains about it being luke-warm the machine opens up. Living inside of it is a large white cat that calls himself God; he looks like he's hopped up on Qualudes. The cat tells her that its 'Body temperature-nya" and offers her a replacement. After this a robotic doll carrying a tray of tea shows up. It shoots notes from its mouth (one of which almost kills Mesosa) informing them that it is from Peach Moon and is there to pick them up. Finally they end up at school. During this time the teacher from the next room, Jijii, is informing the class that their last homeroom teacher left…

    It might help to mention that in every class all of the students who are not main characters are mannequins. Each class has different looking mannequins which show up randomly through out the series. Much of the time the series is portrayed as if being filmed in a TV studio, with a view looking at the set and random crew members wandering into the shots.

    Rei Tachibana is the smartest and cruelest student in the class. Through out the series she will ask the stage crew to remove the class rep, Ichijo, when she stops functioning properly. When Becky shows up Rei becomes the ringleader for abusing her. Ichijo, the class rep, is a bizarre, not-of-this world mystic. She will do random things for no apparent reason and will give even more bizarre answers when asked why she did them. Next is Himeko Katagiri, who is like a cross between Osaka and Tomo from Azumanga. She is empty headed, uber-hyper, utters the word maho frequently and is controlled by her ahoge (think Alfalfa's hair). In one episode her ahoge is removed and she becomes a listless pile of ooze, they then spend the rest of the episode trying to figure out how to replace it.

    Next is Miyako Uehara, the most normal of all the students in the class. She is constantly targeted by the other student, especially Rei, for being stupid even though she studies diligently. Then there is my favorite, for humor factor, Kurumi Momose. She has the same complexes as Mesosa, in fact the entire second episode deals with Becky trying to coax her back to existence after she forgot her name. Kurumi's problem is self esteem. When ever anyone implies (literally or otherwise) that she is plain/normal, she delves into a deep state of depression and self loathing that can sometimes render her near invisible. In one scene Mesosa and her issues play off of each other as they huddle in the schools rabbit cage. Kurumi looks in Mesosa's direction and states that he is her only friend. Mesosa is overjoyed and runs towards her until she picks up one of the normal bunnies and hugs it. The final character from Becky's homeroom is Sayaka Suzuki, also known as Rokugo (6th). She is timid, quiet and is repeatedly taken advantage of because of her inability to say no.

    Jijii is the homeroom teacher from the class next to Becky’s. He is a crafty and cruel old man who controls and abuses his students for entertainment. In one episode Becky asks the teachers who owns a convertible parked out side the school, so she can get ride in it. Jijii says he does which was a lie. Jijii ends up taking her on a near death car ride, of which he comments 'I haven't driven in 30 years’. One of the other more memorable students is Boheimi-chan. She is the schools resident magical girl ala-Magical Girl Pretty Sammy. She does her best to save people from bad luck and unfortunate accidents. One episode focuses on her losing faith in her abilities. Becky's class ends up staging an elaborate event to convince her otherwise. They set the rabbit cage on fire and call for her to use her powers to make it rain. It rains, but only when Ichijo and her bizarre sister perform a Shinto rain ritual.

    There's the endangered giant Japanese salamander they pick up on a school camping trip. It lives a depressive life due to being endangered. It try's to consul both Kurumi and Mesosa on their feelings. There's the cat that lives in vending machines who calls its self God. He's a cruel and mysterious character who enjoys tormenting Mesosa. In one episode Mesosa arrives at school late. He finds God sitting on the gates. God tells him he's late, Mesosa replies he's not even a student at which point God opens a trap door underneath him. Mesosa spends most of the episode in what can only be described of as vending machine hell. The other teachers that are main characters are the gym teacher, Saotome, who like all anime gym teachers, is completely oblivious to reality. There is also the drunken teacher, Igarashi. In one episode Rokugo tells everyone how she looks up to her and even Igarashi questions whether that is a good thing to do. There's also, Akane Serizawa, who is a member of the drama club. She has a penchant for dressing up in costume to try and spy on Becky's class. One running gag through out the series is her dressed as a clunky 50's style robot named Roboko who has come to destroy Becky. They find out who it is but keep playing along to torment her.

    Finally there are the aliens. These bizarre beings have come to earth to judge it. Their computers have chosen one person on the planet to base their review on, Becky. Through out the series they observe Becky and her daily happenings. The aliens are pretty funny, like everything else, casually insulting each other and questioning the selection of Becky to base Earths condition on. They try their best, to not interfere with the humans, but sometimes that doesn't work. One episode has the leader and a subordinate playing with a gun that makes the target speak their mind. They decide to mess with Becky and shoot her with it during class. Instead of hitting Becky, the beam hits Himeko making her fall asleep. The gun malfunctions and ends up steadily hitting her for about 15 minutes or so. What ends up happening is everyone in the class gets sucked into Himeko's dream. A bizarre world filled with ahoge and a large brutish idiot protecting her subconscious. Other then that, due to the crews refusal, the aliens try not to interfere in there observations' life. In one episode they get a bit nervous after Becky ends up fighting in a mecha that looks exactly like the aliens…it is never explained as to why it looked like them, but it did fuck them up a bit.

    OK, so we covered a good portion of the characters, not a lot of comparisons to Azumanga Daioh but the ones that I could compare should help paint the picture. The characters help describe the insanity of this series but they don't quite paint the entire picture. It's hard to really pin down an overall theme. Once you know all the characters it doesn't matter what order you watch the show in. For an overall theme though, I would say Becky shapes up her students to work with her, as opposed to against her, to take on the rest of the school. The series, as a whole, is pretty in-cohesive. It is an exercise in Japanese anime/TV history, as well as other video pop culture references. Each episode is chock full of references, sight gags and homage's to these things. I like to think I have an extensive knowledge of Japanese TV, especially anime, but, at least half of the references I didn't know. So given that, the references range from the old and obscure to the current (from when it was on TV). Stuff like Mazinger Z, James Bond and Card Capture Sakura, all fall pray to the writers in-jokes. It was hard for me to watch the series and really pay attention to everything. I had to find a balance between the actual plot of the episode and absorbing all of the references. Some times the references were so frequent that I was pausing the episode every 10 seconds to read the notes the subers had handily provide

    All in all Pani Poni Dash is an entertaining series. It's for those who enjoy psychotic comedy like Puni Puni Poemy. The characters are inventive and the sight gags don't stop, even after the credits have rolled. If you enjoy school life comedies, satire and non-sense this might just be your perfect series. Definitely not for the casual viewer, there are just too many incomprehensible things that go on in this whacked out series. So pick up the DVD's, sit back, clear your head and enjoy this ride into insanity.

UPDATE: FUNimation has made the first 4 episodes available for free on YouTube.