Art is a powerful thing. It has the ability to captivate an audience, entrance them in a new idea they never thought of, enamor them into a sight that marvels them. There are so many types of art: paintings, drawings, stories, videos, games, and even music. All of these things can enamor us now, but back before even the late 20th century, we didn't have videos or games (aside from maybe betting games and sports). Nowadays, not only do we have all of these things, but we can literally combine all of these. Animation is the ultimate tool for doing so, with the only thing surpassing it being interactive visual novels that can actually be played in the sense of more than just a story we control: like say, a fighting game with a visual novel story (like Blazblue). Nonetheless, we're getting horrendously off track. Earlier, I mentioned stories. There are so many kinds of stories to tell, especially in anime...
You can tell an epically expansive and complex narrative like Legend of the Galactic Heroes. You can tell a charismatic, absurd, and dramatic thrill ride with twists and turns around every corner, like Code Geass. You can tell an exciting and inspirational story to get our blood pumping, like Gurren Lagann. You can create a work that heavily celebrates a franchise, like Carnival Phantasm. You can tell a grippingly dark and tragic tale to remind the audience that not all good stories have to have happy endings, like Fate/Zero and its second season. You can tell a charming and lovable story mixing many ideas you'd never have seen working, like Macross. You can even tell a down to Earth, realistic story that celebrates a concept we love, like Shirobako. Or, you can be like today's anime, Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu, and tell a charming, gripping, down to Earth, and realistic story that celebrates the concept of art -a concept we love- that happens to be a dramatic and sort-of inspirational thrill-ride that has a complex narrative (well, more so than many of us think). It's the best of all worlds, really.
Episode 1 shows us a reformed criminal (Yotarou, his new stage name) inspired by Rakugo so much that he tries to find the master who showed it to him, with hopes that maybe said master will take him in. We follow his escapades of being introduced into the world of Rakugo at its truest, while being fed crucial information about the residents (namely, a girl named Konatsu, who hates the old man) and their lives so that Yotarou doesn't accidentally strike a horrible nerve. His former boss shows up and tries to encourage him to take up crime again, but to no avail, especially after seeing Yotarou's performance, After almost being expelled (well, more like he was expelled and reinstated), the master tells him and Konatsu about his past which led to where we are today, in a realistic and down to Earth story that unfolds as he narrates. Hell, we get to spend the rest of the series joining the fun.
The old man, who is now the 8th generation Yakumo, was originally known as Bon (so, for the duration of the review, I will address him as such). After a fateful meeting with Shinn (soon to be known as Sukeroku, and I will call him as such for now), they get taken up by the 7th generation Yakumo during boyhood, and we follow the dramatic and eventually tragic tale of these two men and their journey through their Rakugo careers. Bon had to say goodbye to a girl he was dating, and Sukeroku started drinking. Their careers have shown them to have notably different styles, and while Sukeroku has his perfected, Bon still doesn't know how to take advantage of his. Soon, Sukeroku and 7th Yakumo are forced to leave for the army; World War II has started.
He, his master's house attendant, Matsuda, and the master's wife, are forced to wait patiently, without much hope. Soon, he meets a beautiful (and I mean BEAUTIFUL) girl named Miyokichi, and it seems like things are going smoothly again. Then, the two men arrive back, and now both Bon's and Sukeroku's careers can truly take off. Inspired by how much of a "tightwad" Bon is, Sukeroku's latest Rakugo piece is a story about a tightwad's dream. There is soon tension not only between the two boys, or even between them (especially Sukeroku) and the Rakugo Association, but between Bon and Miyokichi. The middle of the series is about how all of these tensions truly spiral out of control, causing Sukeroku to be expelled after being denied the rank of Shin'uchi, Bon to break up with Miyokichi, and the two boys to make one last promise and then split up on unhappy final terms (part of those terms being Sukeroku and Miyokichi leaving together); it's a dramatic turn for everyone's lives.
Soon, after the 7th Generation Yakumo has a heart attack, he reveals an underlying reason why he would never pass down the Yakumo name to Sukeroku: he was the second generation of the Sukeroku who was his rival back in his youth. Dying with that one regret, Bon is forced to take up the name Yakumo. His friend, Matsuda, soon loses his wife, and Bon goes to find Sukeroku, only to discover that Sukeroku has a child named Konatsu (Are those signals flaring yet?). He soon reunites with Sukeroku only to discover that he has lost his drive for Rakugo thanks to his wife Miyokichi, who has recently ditched him and their child, probably out of resentment for their love of Rakugo and Sukeroku's refusal to move on to a new career. After some time, they prepare one big Rakugo performance (which happens to be rather inspirational to Sukeroku despite him being the one to perform it) despite Rakugo heavily declining in popularity after the war. Hell, news of this got Miyokichi to show up, now that Yakumo has cone back.
In a truly tragic and impeccably told scene, Sukeroku and Miyokichi hang off a cliff after some heartfelt words by all of them spiral into their emotional climaxes, with Bon trying desperately to save them. Knowing that Bon will only die with them if he tries to save them, he falls with his wife, resulting in Shinjuu, meaning lovers' double suicide. Now, Konatsu is all alone, thinking that Bon is responsible for all of this...and he kind of is; he knows it to be true. After all, he let Miyokichi's parasitic desire for love spiral out of control when he chose his career over her, and he couldn't stop his friend from leaving with her, and he sure as hell wasn't capable of saving them after everything. Still, it's not all his fault, especially since it was Miyokichi that caused all of this to happen, especially with what happened to her and Sukeroku in the end. Bon was the one that caused her to really go haywire, but she basically took care of the rest, resulting in this tragedy.
We head back to the present, or rather, a few years after we last know the present. Yotarou has become a shin'uchi, Bon continues his life as the 8th Yakumo, Konatsu is now a single soon-to-be mother (with Yotarou volunteering to become the husband to take care of the child), and we are treated to Bon visiting Sukeroku's grave, in which the ghost appears in front of him, as if to tell him something. Yotarou goes to him and requests to take up the name of Sukeroku, and now he and we get what that ghost scene meant. Thus, the story ends for now, with Yotarou closing us out and teasing us about an eventual season 2.
The story is impressively written, without any leaps in logic or holes, and with one impressive prequel narrative. On its own, it would be a 9 for being great but not reaching extraordinary high. Then, we take the Rakugo stories into account. With one exception, every single Rakugo performance that is played from beginning to end has some meaning to the character that performs them, and most of them have pretty heavy meanings. When Yakumo played the story of the bumbling crook, that really represents him (in which his former boss points out to Bon). When Bon plays the story about Shinjuu, it ends up happening to his friend (Sukeroku) and his former lover (Miyokichi), which he is deeply affected by. When Sukeroku plays the one about the fisherman and the girl, it probably is due to him constantly talking about girls (along with booze) and bringing them over in the earlier parts of the series. Finally, I'm not sure what the Shinigami one means to Bon (who performs it several times), but season 2 looks like it's gonna reveal that to us, especially after this season hyped it up. When we see any of these 3 major Rakugo performers get to play their work from beginning to end, it always has some meaning in their lives, whether they be then or in the future, making things a lot more complex than many of us may have realized. They are surprisingly funny, making this art-form much more charming and charismatic than we anticipated before seeing those performances.
There is an impressively strong cast of characters in this amazing show, some of whom are almost as realistic as the characters in Macross Plus, which sports easily the most realistic anime characters of all time. Side characters like Matsuda and Yuurakutei are still great additions to the main few with their hinted-at personal lives and fun personalities, and Konatsu has quite a lot of understandable personal baggage given what happened to her parents, that you can understand why she can be a total emotional ass. Yotarou is a funny yet truly dimwitted decoy protagonist (who'll get his time to shine in season 2) who acts very similar to Sukeroku. Well, with these guys out of the way, onto the tragic trio this season of Rakugo centers around.
Yakumo is rather stingy and cold, conflicted about his feelings towards Miyokichi and his career, who loses everyone he cared about (except Matsuda). He is the centerpiece of this tragedy, and at least some of the unfortunate things that unfold were due to either his mistakes or his inability to calm an impossibly bad situation. Despite being pretty cold and assholish -often to great comedic effect- his struggles are definitely real: trying to find your own true form of expressing your passion and trying to balance your career with your social life and relationships. He, while passionate about it, mainly does it for ends meat (convenient given that he overall loves this medium). When the tragedy hits in episode 12, it hits him especially hard and we can easily sympathize with him for what he failed to prevent. Thus, he lives on for a career that he has long since lost the true drive for.
Sukeroku is a man-child; he is a free-spirited, irresponsible, slob-like, drunken, and actually arrogant individual who only truly cares about his passion for Rakugo and how he entertains the people with it, Bon, and eventually Miyokichi and their child, Konatsu. He often gets drunk and talks about girls. He complains at the demand for him to be responsible, more than I do. His success in Rakugo makes him too cocky and ambitious, with the latter causing chagrin amongst the higher-ups, and the latter proving to be his downfall in episode 9. Still, his mindset is what I agree with personally: art should be for the people; art should be there to enrich the people's day and enthrall them, making them appreciate and enjoy your work. Sucks that he has to die without being reconciled with the Rakugo Association, for his Rakugo was entertaining as hell.
Miyokichi is quite a broken character. Forced into prostitution just to make ends meet after her family died, she has been burned by relationships with men so many times that she somehow grew dependent on a proper and loving relationship with a man, to a parasitic degree. This lovely lady had to struggle with the fact that Bon grew more detached with her, and after he cut the relationship off, she not only started hanging with his best friend (because that is clearly a good idea in real life) but grew to love him out of desperation. Her resentment for Rakugo broke her new family apart and is the crux of why she and Sukeroku died. Shame, really. I'd love to have seen everyone's story in even further detail.
If you're at all familiar with Studio DEEN's track record over the past 11 years, you know how dicey their art quality is and how hit-or-miss their adaptations can be, especially concerning their work on Fate/Stay Night and Unlimited Blade Works. While they also worked on Konosuba during the season this show came out, this show looks so much better on account of overall polish, character designs, and attention to detail. The little things like those bells with tags on them, really add this amazing touch to the world, and the character designs are pretty good if you ask me. There were very few slip-ups here, too.
The phrase "visual poetry" is a term that is not meant to be thrown around lightly. However, this show deserves it. Masterful directing from the dialogue to the way scenes are structured. The scene in episode 9 where Miyokichi tells Bon that she'll see him in hell, is portrayed so majestically, that you can't help but marvel. The OP is visual poetry at its finest. While almost nothing moves, the sheer symbolism and craft put into it make it a feast to look at, not only for its unique and culturally traditional look, but for how much meaning is packed into almost every shot. This is further emphasized when they revoke it for episodes 11 and 12 but put it back for episode 13 now that you know literally everything the OP actually showed you due to what you just witnessed. Studio DEEN deserves to be commended for their work on this series.
While not many of the songs in the background OST truly stick out or me to the point where I actively try to hunt them down with exception of the glorious track "Sukeroku" (though I centrally did try), the blaring and jazzy tunes set the stage perfectly, and every piece is used to excellent effect, like the two major scenes in episodes 9 and 12 that I referred to multiple times. As for the OP, Usurai Shinjuu, by Megumi Hayashibara, is quite the catchy and jazzy tune as well, making me snap at every beat while gawking at what the visuals of the OP display. The ED, "Kawa, Taredoki", by Kana Shibue, is actually without any lyrics, and is a relaxing song that's a perfect way to calm us down after many of these episodes force us to endure these highly dramatic scenes. Sure, It's not highly memorable, but it gets the job done.
Art is an expression. Stories are expressions. This show is all about an expressive form of entertainment. When an entertainment and story-driven fictional medium like anime truly takes off, there will always be those who try to evaluate individual installments to the medium, and those people, including myself, are called critics. Critics have a very mixed reputation and are sometimes looked as stingy buzzkills who relentlessly shut down these entertainment pieces. However, while we often do take part in that, we find it especially fun to cherish stories that manage to mesmerize us so much into an impressive new world and plot. This show cherishes the art of Rakugo, and shows us many perspectives on how an artist (of any kind) approaches his or her art, and, along with the great story and impressive way it's told, this is something us critics love to see. We can get more passionate about these stories more so than most people do, so seeing works like this, really refreshes us.
In fact, that's the perfect word to describe this show: refreshing. Can you name a single other anime that showcases the art of Rakugo? Can you name many anime where the characters often wear robes? Can you name a drama that is told like visual poetry? No one can, at least in this point in time. Not every work of art is original or done with the people or the art in mind. Some art is made for the cash, and those works are often what us critics bash (like Mahouka, The Asterisk War, and so...so many others). The medium is chock full of this stuff. Hell, all entertainment mediums have failed ambitious projects and projects that were made with cash in mind rather than quality or ambition. That's what makes works like this so refreshing to us.
Well, that's enough rambling for now.
Thank every single one of you that ever liked any of my reviews. I would've never made it to making 50 of these if none of you cared about what I make. This review has been a lot more personal than I thought, but with a special milestone review, comes a special title that truly needs to be discussed, like this one. Well, with all that said, I bid you adieu. Here's shooting for 100.
