#9 Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu
revisiting the anime after already having read the manga last year, and i have to admit this is one of few works where i feel like it works vastly better in the animated form. the manga is absolutely stunning artistically, but ive struggled with its pacing for the entire duration. in a way this is my fault, since i have a problem with giving comic based mediums the time they require, tending to rush through it and barely pay attention to the art (i know, really funny for a guy who considers himself an artist), and yet it still feels like a story thats the perfect length as a whole but strangely rushing and delaying in its sections. the anime adaptation sacrifices the purity of its line and character work for a more cinematic approach, which doesnt always work but it gives rakugo shinjuu the feel of a drama show and feels appropriate to the story itself. stylistically it follows quite closely to the distinct faces and bodies of the mangaka which are a wonder to look at.
i would argue that rakugo as an art form is equally as important to the 'meaning' of the work as the actual evolving story between its characters, so the ability to actually see it in motion and fully acted heightens its significance to a level it simply cannot achieve in a purely visual medium. thankfully the nice people at studio deen also understood its significance and chose to cut as little of it as possible (although i was a little mad when they cut sukerokus performance of inokori but i guess you see enough of it later in the show. and also the full performance is apparently 40 minutes long.), with rakugo taking up considerable parts of each episode at times. it truly allows the voice actors to shine in their roles as they rarely can in other shows, and i have to praise ishida akira for managing to flawlessly portray yakumo through his entire life from a child to an old man, and showing how his rakugo has changed in that entire time as well... i could not begin to imagine the skill required to make such nuances noticeable, and as much as i love to joke about most anime VAs being able to do only one voice he really proves me wrong.
the story itself is great as well, with all the josei themes i hold close to my heart. its about honoring the legacy of others, about the selfish desire to hold everything you care about close to your heart and destroy it if it cannot exist in the perfect form you imagine, that even when you think your life is over with time you will realize that you gained a new life you never couldve imagined before. despite fundamentally being a story of yakumos entire life, the people surrounding him feel almost realer than he is. it truly feels like a growing community as much as it feels like the practitioners of an art.
even though it centers male characters the topic of being limited by your gender and the world around you plays a central role in the story... almost everyone is affected by it, yakumo who was forced to become a rakugo master because dancing was a womans job, konatsu who could not follow her fathers footsteps and do rakugo because its a mans job, miyokichi who could never feel safe in her future without a man to rely on... its a story about the expectations the world imposes upon you, whether as a storyteller, as a gendered individual, or the sheer economics of survival. it is not a story about destroying that world and trying to build a new one from its ashes, but its still about finding a place you can fit yourself in despite everything working against you.
the elephant in the room i feel too guilty to not mention is that unfortunately the story follows its shoujosei roots too closely and there is a surprise incest moment in the final stretch of the show. OR IS THERE? it is of course left way too uncertain in the story itself, which is almost more frustrating. it makes sense thematically, and i understand why the mangaka chose to insert it into the story, but i just feel like the characters themselves would not have done that. i guess i just know better.
the one thing i kind of regret about the anime is that they couldnt add the meta sections on rakugo that appear at the end of each tankobon release of the manga, since it serves to tell the reader about things that could not naturally fit in the manga, as well as details about the art of rakugo in modern japan as well. it would have worked perfectly as one of those chibi shorts that so many shows tend to have (sniffle). i definitely recommend looking at the manga just to see those.
