The Spring 2025 Anime Preview Guide

Zatsu Tabi -That's Journey-

This is one of those anime in which I like the idea more than the actual execution. With Chika, we have a young manga author who has had some rather notable amateur success. Unfortunately, now that she's in the big leagues, she's not quite up to the standards of what her editor is looking for. The problem Chika faces is common to many young writers: her worlds and characters are lacking. They don't pull the reader in.

One of the rules of writing is “write what you know.” Now, this doesn't mean that you can only write about being a princess if you are one or that no one can write sci-fi because none of those things can happen in the real world. “Write what you know” means to put your own personal experiences into your writing.

As a bit of an introvert who prefers to stay home and/or work on her manga, Chika has little breadth when it comes to real-world experiences—as her journey shows. She's never thought about the logistics of traveling or how traveling has updated as technology progresses. She's never done the cliché things she's seen in manga, like having a bento on the bullet train or staying at a countryside onsen. She's never experienced how spread out things are outside the big city or what it's like to go somewhere without a set plan. She's never climbed a mountain just because it was there.

Over the course of her two-day trip, Chika gains a world's worth of knowledge she can put into her writing. And while, of course, a single excursion isn't enough to suddenly up her game (as the joke at the end of the episode shows), she's certainly on the right track.

Yet, as good as all that is in concept, that doesn't change the fact that this episode feels like a travel log at best and a tourism ment at worst. Having prices rattled off constantly and long shots of ultra-detailed backgrounds that are clearly just traced photos of real locations only adds to this feeling. And worst of all, her trip is a universally positive experience to an unbelievable degree.

Every piece of food she eats is delicious, the beds are fluffy, and the baths are perfect. She doesn't run into a single rude person or have her plans impeded in any way by any outside force. It's a show about bettering your fiction through realism that doesn't feel real. This is why even having an interesting thematic core does little to offset the fact that it's rather boring to watch.

I know anime promoting tourism is nothing new. Hobby anime are nothing new. Heck, anime combining the two are old hat at this point. Usually, the intersection of the two things involves a group of girls involved in some sort of local craft or location-specific hobby; I've never seen one so blatantly crying out, “Please go here!” as Zatsu Tabi -That's Journey-.

Rather than using a location as a setting for a story that gives the characters opportunities to enjoy the local specialties, eat local food, or walk through the beauty of nature, Zatsu Tabi is about a young manga artist who decides to use her manga prize money to travel to small tourist towns based on cryptic social media polls. She first goes to Aizuwakamatsu, describing in detail how much things cost, how to get there by train, how she gets a room at a local inn, and so on. Chika herself doesn't bring much to the table, but that's because she's not the focus; the location is. The overall effect feels something like watching a 20-minute commercial for a resort town thousands of miles away.

Not that the episode is without its charms. I've done my own share of traveling in rural Japan. There were small moments that evoked those experiences: Chika rushing to get on the train because it only comes once an hour, hoping to reach some accommodations before the sun completely sets, walking up a random hill and being surprised by a beautiful view, taking a more arduous hike only to discover an anticlimactic finish at the top. I wouldn't call it “pure” nostalgia, because the constant references to prices and other practical details didn't allow me to forget that I was essentially watching an ment.

The thing is, if I still lived in a place where it was accessible, it's entirely possible the ment would work. Rural Japan is, in fact, beautiful, and there's a wealth of places to visit that are primarily known to domestic tourists instead of being overcrowded by international visitors. Chika doesn't quite mesh with the hyperrealistic, probably filtered-over photograph backgrounds, but the important thing is that you look at the places she goes and think, “I'd like to see that in person.” It makes me want to travel in general and long for the time when I lived in a country that had actual infrastructure, since it's hard to get out of the city without a car of my own.

Zatsu-Tabi is the kind of flagrant advertising that I can respect because it is at least successful at its stated goal of making me want to spend my money. Would I walk out of my front door right now and hop on a train to Aizuwakamatsu for a cheap bento lunch and a refreshing afternoon hike up a beautiful mountain landscape? You bet I would, if a round-trip ticket to Japan didn't cost over $2000 dollars, and it wouldn't mean taking several days off of work during the busiest season of the year, and if recent economic developments hadn't made a simple trip to the grocery store a matter of carefully balancing my whittling budget, and—

Ahem. Sorry about that. The point is, a soul-rejuvenating trip to the land of the rising sun is something that I'll be saving up for a little while longer, and so I am forced to satisfy my wanderlust by vicariously experiencing the cozy overnight trips of cute anime girls. Zatsu-Tabi lets me do that, which is pretty neat. Even if the show itself isn't doing much beyond serving as a moderately entertaining vacation planner, it's still got me saving some bookmarks into my “Travel Plans” folder for future reference, and that means that whatever dark pact Zatsu-Tabi has made with the Japan Tourism Agency is paying off.

To be fair to the show, it does have a little bit more going for it than just its chill travelogue vibes. Chika is a perfectly likeable and relatable heroine. While I hope she gets a ing cast to bounce off of and liven up the proceedings a little bit, she makes enough of an impression for her show to technically function as a narrative slice-of-life comedy. There was one sequence that even made me chuckle a bit, where she goes through the various stages of exercise-induced psychosis while climbing up a famous landmark of 1200 steps. Here in Colorado, a lot of folks would call that “pre-gaming for the real hike”, but good for Chika, I say.

So, while Zatsu-Tabi is the furthest thing from water-cooler television, it might be worth picking up for folks who are feeling a bit restless and want to get some virtual sightseeing in (especially if they're a little more strapped for resources out in meatspace). It's a decent time, and you might even find yourself making plans for a journey of your own by the time it wraps up.

Joke's on you, Zatsu-Tabi—I've never had the burning desire to go on a journey! (At least, not in real life. Fiction's another matter entirely.) So much for your broad generalizations. Of course, that statement made in the episode isn't intended to be a value judgment or anything of the sort; it's instead a hook to grab the viewer because this show is nothing if not an attempt to promote tourism. The protagonist, Suzugamori, really needs some perspective on life, if not a bit more experience, and she gets it while watching a TV program where the bit is that they roll a die and assign a place to each face. Then the presenters visit the spot they've rolled. So Suzugamori does the social media equivalent: she launches a poll on her and goes in the direction that gets the most votes.

Thus begins an extended tourism video for what is clearly a beautiful area, replete with forests, mountains, and hot springs. The episode takes pains to show us how gorgeous and new this whole thing is for her. Sparkles adorn mundane things like what seems to be a very basic hotel room and a very, very nice breakfast buffet (by American standards, anyway; it's not just an omelet station!). She marvels at electrical outlets on trains and local pastries. It's all very wholesome…and kind of dull.

Still, the beauty of the scenery is very well done. There's a photorealism to every background Suzugamori wanders through. While the juxtaposition of her very anime form and the highly detailed backgrounds don't hold a candle to Shigeru Mizuki's work (which is always my association with the style), it still works and is the draw of this episode. Most of it is just focused on her wandering around; she interacts with people online and with the editor she's trying to get to accept her manga for publication, but otherwise, this is mostly just Suzugamori talking to herself. That stands to change if the theme song (presumably destined to be the opening theme) is to be believed; the woman she sees overindulging in the hotel bar looks like she'll become a regular.

If you like slice-of-life and travelogues with a lazy pace, you'll almost certainly enjoy this. It's not my cup of tea, but there's a slow-paced charm to it, regardless.