If any series were ever meant to be in a digest post, it’s Akane-banashi. As with the manga, I’m kind of just interested enough to stick with it but rarely more. But digest posts are at the mercy of the schedule – you can’t dance a waltz if you don’t have a partner (speaking of which, what a shame Sesuji wo Pin! never got an anime). No way I’m relegating Mao to a digest and Yomi no Tsugai might be the best show of the season. There is Nippon Sangoku the following day, but there’s a complicating factor with that which will become apparent tomorrow…

If only the episodes themselves were as distinctive as the OP. But they aren’t, and this is the perfectly fine, pretty good series it is. And we get another episode that’s saved by a couple of minor characters more interesting than the protagonist. The first is Iwashimizu-sensei, Akane’s guidance counsellor (and homeroom teacher too, I think). She’s played effectively by an against-type Ise Mariya, which certainly doesn’t hurt. Then we have Jumbo Ozaki – played an anything but against type Ochiai Fukuchi. He’s Akane’s childhood friend and a likable chap, but seeing him always makes me laugh because there was a famous Japanese golfer named Jumbo Ozaki and the naming can’t possibly be a coincidence.

I’m kind of torn on Iwashimizu. On the one hand, if Akane’s parents are OK with her career choice it’s really not her place to try and bully her into changing it. This is an endemic problem in Japan, where schools act like they own students more often than not. On the other hand, Akane is a zygote and she’s going to be around a long time. Is it really such a bad idea to have a college degree just in case the whole rakugo thing doesn’t pan out (which surely happens most of the time)? It’s not like she couldn’t continue training while attending college. I mean, even Chihaya(furu) decides to go to college, and she’s as much a karuta-baka as Akane is a rakugo one (though karuta is even harder to make a living with).

As for Jumbo, he and Akane almost share a last name and do share a past. Jumbo is just a good kid, plain and simple. He likes Akane without it getting caught up in romantic entanglements, and he sticks up for her because it’s the right thing to do. He convinces the teacher to attend Akane’s next Rakugo performance where Akane couldn’t, and does it by gently forcing her to see the hypocrisy of her position. That’s all good, but also where things start to come unraveled a bit, in the way this adaptation so often has.

In the end, I think a rakugo anime can only go as far as the rakugo can take it. I’m just not invested in most of these performance scenes – they’re as drab as army fatigues. This is especially true when the rest of the plot is kind of predictable and generic – something really daring and brilliant like that other rakugo anime could get away with it (though it never had to, as its rakugo scenes were off the charts). It is what it is, and maybe we’ll get the odd seiyuu flashing brilliance as the story develops and we meet more of Akane’s future peers and rivals.