This 48 hours in anime is really about the big names. Especially Watanabe Ayumu, probably the best director regularly working in TV anime. He has not one but two adaptations of quite popular manga within a day of each other. Is that exciting? Yeah, sure. Any season with two Watanabe shows has a leg up on being a good one. But my excitement is tempered by my mixed feelings about those two manga. I’ll talk more about the other one (Tongari Boushi no Atelier) tomorrow. Basically, if manga ever opened a “Hall of Pretty Good” I think these two series would be charter inductees. Frankly, I’d rather Watanabe saved his powder for more interesting targets.

Be that as it may, it’s still a big deal to have these two high-profile Watanabe series on the docket. Both seem to offer ample opportunity for him to display some directorial flair, but I have more optimism for Witch Hat Atelier simply because I stopped the manga fairly early on. With Akane-banashi I”m up to date and have a very firm grasp on my feelings about it. Can a great director level up the material? Absolutely. And I expect that to be the case. The premiere didn’t really change or add all that much, to be honest. It was faithful to the manga and artfully done without really being transformative.

The opportunity for Watanabe to really riff here is, of course, the rakugo. A rakugo series practically screams out for using anime to bring the stories-within-stories to life in a way manga can’t. Anime of course has already had one great rakugo adaptation, Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu. That too had a great director in Hatakeyama Mamoru, and indeed he brilliantly used his modest budget to bring those stories to life. Akane-banashi will never be anywhere near that level no matter what any director does, but that’s not really the bar we should be using. It can still be a powerful experience in the right hands, even with its relatively bland writing and protagonist.

What we got here, of course, is the prologue. It’s the story of the father of the protagonist, a Futatsume rakugoka named Arakawa Shinta (his performing name – in real-life he’s Ousaki Tohru). Shinta has been busting it for 13 years, mostly being supported by his wife, and is the object of adoration by his rakugo-loving 5th-grade daughter Akane. She in fact is the actual protagonist, though it’s Shinta’s story that sets the table for her own journey into rakugo. Along with four other Futatsume in the Arakawa school Shinta is preparing for the crucial Shin’uchi test – an opportunity to rise to the next level and become, in effect, a true professional rakugoka.

To be honest this was one of the best parts of the manga (in part because of who it did and didn’t focus on) so as such, it’s probably OK that Watanabe-sensei didn’t tweak too much. I’ll say this, A-B can’t complain about the treatment it’s receiving. Watanabe directing, a cast featuring the likes of Hirata Hiroaki and Tachiki Fumihiko as master rakugoka and Fukuyama Jun as Shinta, and best of all Ohtsuka Akio as Arakawa Isshou. Isshou is in many ways the second-most important figure in the story, as it’s his actions in the prologue that frame everything that happens after. If this were a 1940’s Hollywood film, he’d probably have been played by Orson Welles.

Those actions are to summarily expel all the Futatsume who participated in the promotion test. He doesn’t explain why he does this other than calling all the men a disgrace. Even when challenged by Arakawa Shiguma, Shinta’s master in the school. If I have a quibble with this premiere specifically, it’s that I never really got a sense of why Shinta’s performance of “Shibahama” was supposed to have been so electrifying. It didn’t make that much of an impression to be honest, and Fukuyama is normally a pretty darn good actor – hopefully that doesn’t bode ill for future rakugo performances, because those have to have serious impact if this show is going to really work.

In any case, it’s the shock of this event that propels Akane forward into pursuing a rakugo career. Effectively, to avenge her father’s honor. That journey is a decidedly mixed bag for me. But there are some interesting moments and quirky characters along the way, and my hope is that Watanabe can elevate them just enough to keep my interest a level or two higher than it is with the manga. I don’t see hard evidence of that in the premiere to be honest, but I have enough faith in the man behind it to feel reasonably confident.