Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu

I really don't understand why this anime get's such good reviews, it's average at best hence my rating of 5. There are some nice elements that make it watchable, but ultimately the anime is boring.

SOUND: About what you would expect. It's average, good enough, but not good enough to overlook the drastically detracting qualities of this anime.

CHARACTERS: The characters and character development is good. Their back stories and origins are good. It's nothing special, new, or particularly enthralling, but definitely better than your average Shounen character development by a longshot. In fact, this is the best part of the anime. If you like slice of ... life, or anime's that focus on characters, their interaction, their development, and their relationships, then you may really enjoy this anime.

PLOT: Interesting enough. Without going into spoilers you can see above under characters what to expect here. Character relations and interactions are the main focus. However, the plot is also not good enough to overlook the drastically detracting qualities of this anime.

ANIMATION and DIRECTION: I combine these two elements together because they are both easily the biggest issues that this anime has and are related to each other. THE BIGGEST PROBLEM WITH THIS ANIME is that it is boring. Specifically the Rakugo is boring. Other reviewers have discussed this as well and it's just bad. I took the advice of another reviewer and searched up Rakugo on an "unspecified video hosting site" (you know the one I just don't know if I'm aloud to advertise it on MAL), and saw a Rakugo performance of the Shinigami, which is one that is discussed and performed in the anime. The one on the video hosting site was 1000x better performed, voiced, and acted than anything in Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu. The characters are not animated (speaking figuratively here as they are obviously 'animated') when performing, the voice actors are boring and just speak faster. It is literally just the characters sitting there, talking fast in Japanese, with a laugh track over it. A real Rakugo performer takes on different postures, voices, and characteristics for the characters they portray. A real Rakugo performer will whisk you away to a different world and build imagery in your mind of the story they are telling. A real Rakugo performer is not even close to what is portrayed in this anime. There was so much that the director and animators could have done to really make this a fantastic anime. So, animation and direction get an F.

THINGS THAT NEEDED TO HAPPEN TO MAKE THIS ANIME JUSTIFY IT'S 8 ON MAL: First, it needed to have better voice actors, or rather, voice actors should know how to portray different voiced characters... Really no excuse for the voice actors on this one. I know they are not Rakugo performers but they are VOICE ACTORS! Voicing different characters in a Rakugo performance should be no problem for them. Second, the Rakugo performances would have benefited from some serious sakuga (for the characters characterizations during the performance) or just other animations. They play around with this in one Rakugo performance where we do cut to a black background and see some other images from the story being told, but it's sparce and underperforms. Three, I understand that they need to tell the Rakugo stories fast because there is only 23 minutes per episode (except the first one) and that a real Rakugo performance can easily be 30 minutes. So, if the director cut the stories down to the most essential parts, directed the voice actors to use different voices for characters in the Rakugo performance, and directed the animators to visually animate the world of the story being told, then this anime would justify it's 8 or even a 9. I know that Rakugo is not a visual medium, but anime is, so animation should have been a key factor in this show but instead, it's just garbage.

Overall: 5 Average. The only reason that I scored this as a 5 instead of a 4 is because 4 is "Bad" and this anime is not bad, it's just deeply flawed, had some very bad choices made by the director, and is just plane boring. If I had to sum up this anime in one sentence it would be "A missed opportunity for greatness."