Full disclosure: I originally intended for Zatsu Tabi to be part of the digest post I have going today. But in the end I thought it deserved a post of it’s own. Yes, that does mean a liked it – quite a lot, actually. It’s been an encouraging start to the season in that more shows have proved better than I expected than the reverse. That’s a long way from saying it’ll continue, and I have some specific reasons to be skeptical this show will. But I’ll certainly give credit where it’s due – I really enjoyed that.

I’d have been happy if you’d told me that would be the case about a Watanabe anime this week. But it’s not that Watanabe – not Shinichirou. So the other Watanabe? No, not him either – not Ayumu. In fact the director here is Masaharu Watanabe, who’s probably best known for Re:Zero. So, the other other Watanabe. Zatsu Tabi (which has the funniest Engrish title of the year so far hands down) is the tale of an 18 year-old aspiring mangaka named Suzugamori Chika who wins a ¥1 million newcomer prize, but keeps getting her names rejected for not having a story hook.

Chika gets soaked on the walk home (which she does without an umbrella to look atmospheric and moody) and collapses onto the safe. A travel show is playing on the TV, where the two pinheads hosting decide their destination via a roll of the dice. Inspired, Chika decides to hit the road to find inspiration. Rather than dice she puts a poll up on her Twitter account, where the mangaka she worked as an assistant for retweets it and gets her 2300+ votes. Of the choices – “up”, “down”, “left”, and “right”, they choose “up. So she randomly chooses a brochure from the train  station travel agency and heads for Aizu-Wakamatsu, in Fukushima.

Make no mistake about it, Zatsu Tabi is a series about the magic of travel. And that’s mainly why I like it, I feel sure. This series just broadcasts on my frequency. The joy of an ekiben, the excitement of opening the door of a hotel room. The lure of a shrine you stumble upon, the hesitation when you calculate whether your legs have all those steps in them. And of course, the sheer joys of a mountain onsen and a hotel buffet breakfast. It all just rings so true – I know exactly what all that feels like, and it resonates with my core being.

I’ve even fallen asleep on a hotel bed planning to get up for dinner and not woken up until the next morning, starved and panicked. You don’t realize how much of a release it is for your body and mind to be on a journey, and how exhausted daily life has made you. That’s journey, ROFL I also appreciate that the locales here are all real places, including the Kutsurogijuku Chiyotaki hotel in Higashiyama Onsen (it comes off looking great, for the record). On thing about this series that I didn’t realize was that the mangaka, Ishizaka Kenta (I would not necessarily have pegged this series as written by a man) used to be an assistant for Mizukami Satoshi. Maybe I’m projecting, but I can totally see it.

I do, as I noted, have some skepticism about Zatsu Tabi’s staying power for me. One of the things I loved here was Chika’s inner monologue and experience as a solo traveler, because that’s my favorite mode of travel. But the series looks like it’s going to focus on her journeys with four other women (her shishou and the sake lady are two), which seems potentially less interesting to me. We’re also flirting dangerously with CGDCT and healing here even now and those are usually third rails – that risk goes up as the cast expands. But that’s a worry, not a reality. For now, we have one episode that was really well-written and directed, and I’ll just have to hope my misgivings are unfounded.