The Art of Rakugo
Akane-banashi (あかね噺, literally: "The Akane Stories") is a Japanese manga series written by Suenaga Yuuki and illustrated by Moue Takamasa. It began serialization in Weekly Shonen Jump in February 2022.
After seeing her father get expelled from Rakugo school during his promotional exam, Akane sets out to become a rakugoka in her own right and confront the one who expelled him.
The manga can be read for free on the MangaPlus or Shonen Jump apps.
This series features examples of:
- Almighty Janitor: Akane is far more skilled at Rakugo than what her status as a newbie would imply, as she's in truth been practicing it since childhood.
- An Aesop: Failure, even massive failure like never being able to make it on the industry you spent years working on, is not the end of the world, and is certainly not the end of your life. Tohru loses the career he spent years building up in a single day, but he is shown to have been able to put his life together pretty well right afterwards, and is not only content, but happy with his normal job and a great family life. He in fact is annoyed at how people from his past act like he died that night or carry it around their necks.Tohru: Do I have regrets? Sure, but I can't dwell in the past. It didn't ruin my life. I might be going in a different direction, but I'm still moving forwards.
- "The Breakfast Club" Poster Homage: Chapter 29 cover shows Shiguma's apprentices, including Akane, posing as this.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: At one point, Koguma gives an explanation to Akane about the levels of Futatsume, she picks up one of the manga panels that showed his explanations to question about the presence of Maikeru in that one.
- Call-Back: During Tohru's promotional performance, he gets his second wind by hearing a young Akane sneezing in the audience. Years later, Akane performs for Asagao's Futatsume promotion and gets way too into her story, only being pulled back by hearing her dad sneezing in the audience.
- Casting Gag: For the V-Comic, Tohru is played by Kappei Yamaguchi, a seiyuu who also is well known for his love for rakugo (to the point of occasionally performing as an amateur storyteller). Akane meanwhile is voiced by Yamaguchi's own daughter
Akane, who also does amateur performances. - The Comically Serious: Kyoji Arakawa is a very straight-laced and dedicated rakugoka, so when he's performing he exaggerates those traits to the point where he can't be taken seriously.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Akane's victory in the Karaku Cup comes up as one, since it is supposed to be an amateur tournament, but Akane has received formal training by a Rakugo master. On top of it, she won it with a handicap.
- A Degree in Useless: Played for Drama. Akane's father, pre-story, was a student of a Rakugo school for nineteen years and made meager money performing in the interim. He was expelled from the school along with every other person taking their last exam, and as a result he left rakugo altogether and went to work in a cement company. Nearly everybody in his life applauds him for it, celebrating that he has a stable career and mocking him for ever seriously pursuing rakugo—everybody except for Akane, who knows her father is dead inside from having his dream crushed instantly and genuinely loved seeing her father perform. At the very least, it's implied the acting and communication skills he built up over his schooling were applied at his job, and that he's well-off financially.
- Don't Call Me "Sir": Zigzagged. When Akane meets Kaichi and Tama for the first time, she assumes that the former is a master and bows to him. However, he clarifies that, despite being much older, he actually joined the school later than her, making him her junior. Afterwards, Kaichi starts calling Akane "nee-san" (as is the custom for apprentices to refer to their seniors), to her discomfort. She then asks him to stop calling her "nee-san".
- Double Meaning: After Akane's final performance in the Karaku Cup, Issho Arakawa's only remark is a livid "You know this isn't where you belong, don't you?". He acknowledges her skills, but is angry at her for participating in an amateur competition despite having years of training under a master.
- Foreshadowing:
- Koguma is first shown reading a book about Edo period culture when he's introduced alongside his fellow pupils. Later on, it's revealed that his style of Rakugo is a form of Edutainment, where he educates the audience on the historical context of his subject matter.
- Rokuro is often seen listening to music on his headphones whenever he isn't talking to anyone. It is later shown that he regards Rakugo as something similar to music, and uses his own voice, as well as the characters' intonations, to make something like a song out of the stories he tell.
- Good Parents: Both Tohru and Masaki Osaki are loving and sweet parents who, even with their reservations, fully support their daughter's dream.
- Never a Self-Made Woman: Zig Zagged. On one hand Akane was inspired at a young age by her father's rakugo, but he was never famous or successful at it, and quit it for a more traditional job by the time she started doing it. On the other hand she's been training since her youth by Master Arakawa (Tohru's previous master) and he accepted her because she wanted to prove that her father's Rakugo had value. It can ultimately be justified by the fact that in real life Rakugo is a male-dominated field
. - No Antagonist: The closest thing the story has to a Big Bad is Issho Arakawa, but even then he's not a bad person. While his decision to expel the Shin'uchi candidates from the Arakawa school was certainly harsh, he had legitimate reasons for doing so and is actively pleased when he discovers that Akane seeks to prove his viewpoint wrong.
- Overly Long Gag: When participating in an amateur contest, Akane is made to perform "Jugemu" a story about about a boy with an overly long name. This becomes a challenge as the joke of the story is that the whole name gets repeated a lot, meaning that part of the challenge is to find a way to make it funny. In the preliminaries, she does this by reciting the entire name extremely quickly. In the finale, she slows down the pacing of the story to focus on the meaning of the individual names and then recite the name through different moods and scenarios.
- Reference Overdosed: Akane's performance of "Tanuki Dice" ends up becoming this this when she gets into the zone, as she incorporates references and jokes from the other rakugo tales she's practiced. Played with in that the audience loves it because of her delivery, but all it does is pad out time and overshadow the actual reason she's there.
- Shout-Out:
- Chapter 37 opens with a colored page of a pastiche of Dragon Quest, with Akane dressed as the hero.
- The three masters introduced by their nicknames in chapter 74 are all based on real-life famed storytellers, though they aren't explicitly namedropped.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Akane's stunt of upstaging a superior on her performance was something of a moment of awesome for her and the senpai she was collaborating with for, but it left her with a scarlet letter in her chest as other superiors are upset at her for disrespecting the hierarchy (mind you, they're unlikely to have the context of said superior's misbehavior), and Akane has a harder time in the backstages because of it.
- A key issue is not that she upstaged her superior but rather that she used rakugo to humiliate him. One senior who refuses to teach her specifically states that he doesn't mind that she insulted the guy, but using rakugo to do it is disrespecting the art.
- Technical Euphemism: Karashi tells a Setting Update variant of the rakugo story "Tenshiki". The lord and vassal are replaced with a researcher and his assistant discussing livestock management, the former whom was asked how they'll handle the issue of "BM". While he pretends he knows what it means, he's shocked at the end to figure out it refers to bowel movements.
- Technician Versus Performer: In the Karaku's cup, Akane's (pure rakugo) is the Technician to both Karashi's (sketch comedy) and Hikaru's (dramatic stage monologue) Performer. Karashi and Hikaru's performances manage to get the audience more excited, but Akane demonstrates better skill in the art.
- Universal-Adaptor Cast: Invoked. After much study, Akane realizes that a lot of Rakugo stories not only share character archetypes, but various names. As a result she considers the stories a Shared Universe, and when she needs another character she can invoke ones from stories she's previously read.
- Unknown Rival: Hikaru sees Akane as this after learning some parts about Akane's past (Akane's dad was a rakugoka and her training under a master) and is motivated with anger to beat Akane. Meanwhile while Akane herself is cordial towards Hikaru (as Hikaru gets the information from Akane herself), she's more focused on winning the competition to get an opportunity to question Issho Arakawa about her dad's expulsion.
- Untranslated Title: Akane-banashi would translate to "The Akane Stories", but the official English release keeps the original title. This may be due to its ties to rakugo terminology, where different styles/genres are called -banashi.
- Wax On, Wax Off: In order to teach Akane how to read her audience, Kyoji gets her a part-time job as a waitress.
- Wham Episode: Chapter 93 adds a reveal concerning "Shiguma's Art", something mentioned or alluded multiple times in the series. Namely that it is an unfinished story held by the previous carrier of the name Shiguma, and not by the Shiguma that's been a part of the story since the beginning. This adds a wrinkle to the mass expulsion committed by Issho Arakawa 6 years before the story begins.
