Ever since Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu became my top-rated series of all time, I’ve been dying to read some rakugo manga…but I found what I wanted in an unlikely place: Weekly Shonen Jump.
Heads up: If you didn’t see my latest update, from this point forward, I’m going to try monetising more sincerely. That means you may see affiliate links every so often.
Akane-banashi is an odd beast. It’s a rakugo manga! In Weekly Shonen Jump, home of the traditional battle manga like Boku no Hero Academia! With a female protagonist! (If you’ve seen Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu season 2, you’ll know women being allowed in rakugo is only a fairly recent development in the wider scheme of things.) That said, it certainly does use that position well. It proves it can go as hard as any battle manga with rakugo competitions, rivals and more. It even explains things easily by comparing rakugo concepts to video games and listening to things in the background of the rakugo theatre as being like playing video games in class, which is very relatable…not that I’ve ever tried doing the latter(!)
In this way, Akane-banashi is special because it shows you can leverage existing norms and styles in different ways that make the creator – or fuser, or whatever you could call the “joiner of concepts” – better off. Take, for example, how Akane worked in an izakaya as a sort of “training arc” for her rakugo skills – it sounds silly at first, but if you think about the skills she’s trying to work on at that point, there is a logic behind it. It’s marrying shonen manga tropes, real-life experience (possibly even nostalgia) people might have and the general lack of understanding around rakugo to make something new and appealing.
Sidenote: One of the many ways in which Akane-banashi leverages “crossing over” is through connections to music. Coltrane (from ch. 43) actually exists, so you can find out what he sounds like for yourself.
To better understand what I mean by “crossing over”, jump back a bit to chapter 37, where this concept is introduced:
Shu (守) – protect what your master teaches you | Ha (破) – break from tradition and evolve | Ri (離) – separate and make the art your own
To be honest, as someone who likes to deal with creative endeavours, I find the later two parts the most useful since I tend to have unorthodox ways of blending ideas together. To apply this to my blogging, I found it sort of embarrassing to put out the post on anime cheese together because I kept laughing at it and not because of it, but I’ve never seen anything like it before or since I wrote it.
I also like to apply those stages to translation, as you know if you’ve been around here long enough – my best-performing post is consistently this one, which is…me pointing out puns. I realised I’m the only one who writes that sort of post – most others wouldn’t think of an explanation as having enough “meat” to turn into a blog post, for one thing, and (different) others would explain it in different ways. I believe there was a blogger who used to do very thorough anime character name breakdowns (I forgot their name and URL though…*sweatdrops*), which I think is the closest someone’s encroached on my blogging space.
Akane-banashi is the sort of manga that happens to pop up at the right time – it’s filling in a vacuum left by Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu and Joshiraku and it’s gotten Eiichiro Oda’s blessing, among other factors. (Personally, I’m able to leverage the customer service skills in my job while being entertained, so I’m not complaining.)
Keep seeking the magic,
Aria.