Akane-banashi Volumes 1-3 Manga Review

Following the humiliating end of her father's rakugo career, Akane Osaki has just one goal in mind: to get answers from the man responsible for it, Issho Arakawa. But as Akane embarks on her journey to prove that her father's artistry was worth keeping alive, she'll need to navigate becoming a rakugoka in the first place! Although she seems to have the support of her father's mentor and family friend Shiguma Arakawa, can Akane convince her mother, her senpai, her teachers, and the rest of the rakugo world that she has what it takes to prove Issho wrong?

Akane-Banashi is translated by Stephen Paul with lettering by Snir Aharon.

Following the humiliating end of her father's rakugo career, Akane Osaki has just one goal in mind: to get answers from the man responsible for it, Issho Arakawa. But as Akane embarks on her journey to prove that her father's artistry was worth keeping alive, she'll need to navigate becoming a rakugoka in the first place! Although she seems to have the support of her father's mentor and family friend Shiguma Arakawa, can Akane convince her mother, her senpai, her teachers, and the rest of the rakugo world that she has what it takes to prove Issho wrong?

Akane-Banashi is translated by Stephen Paul with lettering by Snir Aharon.

Some of the comments about Akane-banashi's early start were that it did not seem to fit within the confines of Shonen Jump: It didn't feature fighting, it wasn't explicitly a comedy, it had no romance, and most importantly, the protagonist was a sensibly drawn girl without fanservice in the same zip code of the manga. However, that first complaint- that it was supposedly not a battle manga- missed the mark on not only why Akane-banashi is in Shonen Jump, home of One Piece, Bleach, and Naruto, but also on what Akane-banashi actually is; Akane's story is absolutely a story of revenge, of clawing and scraping, and like many battle manga, proving oneself as the best against a constant tide of increasingly difficult foes. The difference is that Akane's world revolves around the very real world of rakugo, a spoken-word performing art steeped in Japanese cultural traditions, and her battles take place on the stage, often placing Akane against very real concerns of fighting for one's life in the real world: navigating relationships, building networks, and proving that being a generational talent isn't always all it takes to succeed (but it helps).

The first volume helps set the stage for this revenge coming-of-age story, with the initial cast of characters being revealed in somewhat breakneck fashion. Readers first meet a very young Akane, watching the moment in which her father, Shinta, falls from grace, and like so many anime parents before him, functionally dies; there's no real mistaking the fact that following the expulsion, Shinta doesn't appear in the manga other than through long-distance phone calls and shrouded cuts of just parts of his body; the man that he was, the performer Shinta Arakawa, is dead, leaving Tohru Akane in his place. Perhaps the greatest strength Akane Banashi has aside from clean and impressive art is that it knows shonen story expectations and plays with them to exceptional degrees. Readers get a dead-parent revenge story, an overbearing and all-powerful villain in the form of Issho Arakawa, and a plucky band of supporting cast that function as ways for Akane to level up before she begins meeting her rivals and opponents.

Volumes two and three bring Akane out of the very early stages of Shonen Jump Standard introductions, establishing her personality and introducing her to the wider overarching plot; if anything, some of the earlier chapters really do make it hard to remember who many of these characters are, with some of them almost immediately falling by the wayside of the story once they've done their job. Her seniors Kyoji, Guriko, and Koguma all kind of float around Akane before slipping into the background, with Guriko going from what seems like a secondary protagonist to a side character pretty quickly. As Akane enters the Karaku Cup, her first major hurdle, we're introduced to her two main rivals: voice actress Hiraku Koragi and the tombstone-toothed and cocksure Karashi Nareimaya.

Akane-banashi's strength at knowing how to work within the expectations of Shonen Jump series is certainly one of its strongest points, but the art and writing do much of the heavy lifting. Akane is an expressive and energetic leading lady, with her facial expressions working in tandem with her words to sell readers on her magnetism as a main character. Artist Takamasa Moue's knack for drawing humanity comes to life in the rakugo scenes, which take on a much more cartoonish and at times retro manga aesthetic. Each rakugoka also has their own slightly unique flourishes, such as Kaisei's horror manga tropes, Karashi's cartoonish and carefree freewheeling, Hikaru's idol trappings, and then there's Akane, whose rakugo keeps changing and evolving into a reality-warping experience for those who observe it.

Perhaps the only real weakness to these early volumes is that, like many Shonen Jump series, the first two volumes are very much the authors trying to find their footing. While Akane is an amazing character and one of the best Jump protagonists in maybe a generation, the first volume bumbles around a bit as we get odd relationship fakeouts, such as her former classmate, Guriko, and even her first meeting with Kaisei. Thankfully, the series never veers into fanservice, and Akane also never has romance dangled in front of her in a way that distracts, but some of those early editorial choices that many Jump series have to navigate certainly make themselves visible. As the manga moves towards the Karaku Cup, though, the series really begins to strike out on its own, and the fleshing out of antagonist Issho Arakawa helps make him far more compelling than an unknowable villain; not only is he a jerk, but he is the best at what he does, meaning that perhaps his jerkish behavior belies rationale for what he's doing.