It’s a pretty straightforward theme about how an animator visiting her childhood muse to escape from writers block?
It’s not a complex theme but it’s honestly a common feeling for creators. When you get stuck you daydream about what you found fun in your childhood.
Unlike a lot of other anime about being a loser who does nothing, Zenshu is actually a decent mindset for a go getter animator. We all get stuck and sometimes overworked. But we can often find inspiration from our childhood memories.
That seems like it might be what they’re going for, but my problem with it is that we haven’t seen her actually engage with this idea very much. What is it she likes about this old movie? All we’ve seen from her is her complaints about it (QJ being useless, Destiny causing problems for no reason, etc). The things she draws to resolve the conflicts also seem like they should tie in to those themes because they’re ideas pulled from other anime, but she doesn’t engage with any of them as a fan either. It’d go a long way if we got some flashbacks of her watching or fangirling about the stuff that inspired her, or really anything that shows us how excited she used to be about animation.
TBH, I feel like Zenshu’s biggest strength right now is that it has a lot of space for viewers to bring their own ideas and themes related to artistic endeavors and insert them into the story, which I can understand being enjoyable for some people, but for me that just ends up feeling like they forgot a big piece of the heart of the story.
It’s a pretty straightforward theme about how an animator visiting her childhood muse to escape from writers block?
It’s not a complex theme but it’s honestly a common feeling for creators. When you get stuck you daydream about what you found fun in your childhood.
Unlike a lot of other anime about being a loser who does nothing, Zenshu is actually a decent mindset for a go getter animator. We all get stuck and sometimes overworked. But we can often find inspiration from our childhood memories.
That seems like it might be what they’re going for, but my problem with it is that we haven’t seen her actually engage with this idea very much. What is it she likes about this old movie? All we’ve seen from her is her complaints about it (QJ being useless, Destiny causing problems for no reason, etc). The things she draws to resolve the conflicts also seem like they should tie in to those themes because they’re ideas pulled from other anime, but she doesn’t engage with any of them as a fan either. It’d go a long way if we got some flashbacks of her watching or fangirling about the stuff that inspired her, or really anything that shows us how excited she used to be about animation.
TBH, I feel like Zenshu’s biggest strength right now is that it has a lot of space for viewers to bring their own ideas and themes related to artistic endeavors and insert them into the story, which I can understand being enjoyable for some people, but for me that just ends up feeling like they forgot a big piece of the heart of the story.