Once you get past the halfway point of a season, decisions about coverage start to become moot. I guess I’m in with Akane-banashi, for spring at least. I have no excuses for equivocation, since I know exactly what’s coming. And pretty much exactly how it’s going to be adapted. There are no super-deep lows with this series either – it annoys me sometimes and bores me at others, but it never really grinds my gears the way some bubble series do. As I said once upon a time if manga had a Hall of Pretty Good, Akane-banashi should be a charter inductee.

And hey – the Karaku Cup arc is one of the better ones in the first half of the manga. It spreads the wealth a bit, which unfailingly makes this series better. And introduces some very important side characters, one of whom – the reporter Kashio Kimihisa – we actually met last week. He’s not hugely important but does have his role to play. Of greater moment are the two-time defending champion Nerimiya Karashi and the professional seiyuu Kouragi Hikaru, the co-favorites in the competition.

There are thirty competitors in this competition, and the first day is the preliminary round which whittles the field down to eight finalists. The big dog Arakawa Issei doesn’t bother to show up to judge this part, but his most buzzy disciple Kaisei is on-hand to emcee. Kaisei delivered the best sequence of the anime so far with his “The Practice Room” in the second episode. And he still makes the screen buzz like no other character so far, with the possible exception of Issei himself whenever he opens his mouth and Ohtsuka Akio’s voice comes out.

We don’t get to see either of the two favorites’ preliminaries performances, and in fact we don’t get much Karashi at all. He’s a cocksure lad, dismissive of the threat Kouragi offers (much less anyone else). Kouragi is a pretty big star – successful enough as a voice actor to have fans among her fellow competitors. She seems to see this as a bit of a career promotion move – if she gets Issei’s stamp of approval as a rakugoka, that gets her more work as a seiyuu. She also sports a Fukuoka-ben when she thinks no one is around, which is the case when she’s arguing with her mom on the phone when Akane walks back into the dressing room to retrieve her sensu.

The one performance we do get this week is, naturally, Akane’s. When it becomes clear that she’s drawn the attention of Kaisei that certainly causes ripples in the green room. She has a unique problem here, in that she has to do the same story two days running for some of the same audience – and it’s a universally known one too. Her solution is to attack the first round strictly with enunciation and speed – ignoring what Koguma (in the audience along with Guriko and Iwashimizu-sensei) advised her. It’s a gamble – can she wow the plebs enough to convince the judges to advance her without showing her A-game? Of course she can – the first rule of Akane-banashi is, Akane can do anything she wants.

I won’t be too hard on Nagase Anna’s performance here. It was nothing special, but it was supposed to be nothing special. Next week (or whenever we get Akane’s “true” Jugemu) is going to be the real test, because that’s the first time in the series that Akane’s rakugo is supposed to be really exceptional. It’s also important to see how Eguchi Takuya and Takahashi Rie due with Karashi and Hikaru of course, as they’re supposed to be very gifted performers. But ultimately it’s Akane’s rakugo that’s going to have to carry the story, and for me the jury is still very much out on whether it can.