Episode 5 – ZENSHU. – Anime News Network:FR Find help us

I tend to side-eye people who talk about how they hated doing group projects in school, claiming they were the only ones doing any work. In my experience, one group member tended to decide that nobody else was working fast enough, or that their contributions weren’t good enough, and took over. As we see in “JUSTICE,” Natsuko is the perfect encapsulation of this idea. After all, anime is a collaborative medium; one person cannot do it alone, except in very rare cases. In life, she refused to let anyone else do the storyboards for her new movie despite her lack of relevant life experience, despite her artist’s block. Although a financial failure would spell the end for her studio. She’s convinced herself that no one else can do as good a job as she can, therefore it sits squarely on her shoulders to create the storyboards for her new movie.

Now in the world of Tale of Perishing, she’s doing it again. When the Voids attack, she draws something and fights without the help of her fellow Soldiers, claiming that it’s faster for her to do it herself. She does it out of arrogance, and because she loves being praised, soaking in the cheers from the crowd whenever they return victorious. She doesn’t even bother with feigned humility, striking tokusatsu-style poses and declaring herself unmatched for always figuring out the best characters to summon to defeat the Voids – a montage includes her Sailor Moon/Sukeban Deka character, a Gurren Lagann-type drill robot, and a lantern-jawed baseball player that I couldn’t figure out the reference for.

Pretty much to only kind of outcome for a character like Natsuko is for her to experience a fall. Just like she was failing her studio because she was convinced she was the only one capable of storyboarding the anime, she’s due for a fall against the Void. This doesn’t feel like a case of a strong woman being taken down a peg by a misogynistic creative team; Natsuko’s narcissism is a believable flaw that, by the end of the story, she must face and overcome. That trial may end up hurried along by the bird who used to be Tale of Perishing‘s director, who murmurs that even if Natsuko changes the story, the ending is inevitable.

Meanwhile, Natsuko and Luke are becoming closer, to Unio’s chagrin. The little unicorn hasn’t warmed up to our protagonist at all, castigating her for her penchant for overpromising the Nine Soldiers’ abilities and making goofy poses. Luke, on the other hand, seems outright fascinated by her, copying her poses and pushing her hair to the side to watch her eat his cooking. The writing has been on the wall for them since the very beginning – two socially inept, prickly dorks who take on too much and blame themselves when things fall apart. And, as we learn from Unio and QJ’s conversation, both are inexperienced with romance. Could this be the perfect situation for Natsuko to learn something about… gasp… love? Well, yeah, because this is fiction, and if you make that big a deal at the start about a character never having experienced something, they’re guaranteed to by the end. The narrative tends to be tidy that way.

One of the more interesting revelations of the episode is that Natsuko didn’t enter the story of Tale of Perishing at the beginning, but somewhere around the middle after several of the Nine Soldiers had already fallen in battle. When Destiny asks the group to take some provisions to the District of Despair and convince the children there to come to her orphanage, they run into Justice, an androgynous dragon with long hair and come-hither eyes, voiced in Japanese by Romi Park and in English by Corey Wilder. Justice was a member of the Nine Soldiers until they were injured in a Void attack, but Luke failed to notice. Now, their wings are damaged, unable to fly, and purportedly working as a bodyguard at an illegal gambling facility.

Justice and Natsuko forge an instant connection, seemingly drawn to each other. Justice flirts with Natsuko, calling her cutie-pie, while Natsuko comments on how sexy Justice has become since quitting the Nine Soldiers. However, I don’t think she’s necessarily attracted to Justice; while I’m not generally attracted to non-human characters, the word I’d use to describe them is too profane for this publication, so “sexy” might have to do. Either way, her fascination seems to stem at least in part from seeing how Justice has changed outside of the camera’s gaze. It’s the kind of allure that drives people to write fanfiction about characters post-canon, grappling with the physical and emotional trauma of everything they’ve been through. And here, in front of her, is a physically and emotionally scarred character from the movie that has inspired her for most of her life. Regardless of whether she’s sexually attracted to Justice, it’s not a wonder Natsuko seeks them out.

On the other hand, Destiny is thriving. She’s been spared by the narrative, she has her orphanage up and running, and she is BUFF. Ripped. Shredded. The girl has muscles for DAYS. Unio comments that he liked her when she was smaller and cuter, but Destiny just happily asserts that she likes her current self and honestly, it’s so nice to see a muscular anime girl thriving and living her best life. Too often, any female character with the tiniest bit of physical strength or visible muscle tone is declared a gorilla by rude male characters like Maki from Fire Force. Or, a female character who by all rights should have enormous triceps has zero definition, like the cast of How Heavy Are the Dumbbells You Lift?. I do wonder if Destiny is a deliberate comment on that show, considering Mitsue Yamazaki directed that as well.

As Justice says, Natsuko’s downfall will most likely be her hubris. It’s not subtle about it, so by the end of the episode, we know what’s coming: Natsuko’s abilities will not be enough. She will not be able to do it alone. Facing a new type of Void, she draws a samurai, but in the first cliffhanger of the series so far, the Void manages to defeat it. Her animation desk disappears, and she is left powerless in the face of an enemy she knows nothing about.

Rating:

ZENSHU. is currently streaming on
Crunchyroll on Sundays.