This is the first ever anime I went with high hopes as I always, ALWAYS keep zero expectations.
The difference this time is not because of its score, rank, or who directed it. It is because of Rakugo. Believe it or not, I knew Rakugo through this Canadian guy who has done English rakugo and he killed it!
So I went into this with somewhat expectations, and I am happy to say it absolutely delivered!!
First off, Rakugo is not a topic that people can make many episodes on. For most, it is quite boring and depending on the Rakugo story even for me it is a little boring.
I found the essence of this to be super similar to Your Lie in April, in that Arima quit the Piano and so did the older apprentice in this as well. And the other apprentice was trying to reignite the flame within the older apprentice. Just like Kaori was trying to reignite the flame within Arima.
The Negatives:
Only one negative, it was a little confusing in that they jumped from the "present" to the past once or twice and it took a little while to adjust, and towards the end when they jumped to the present it took like 5 minutes to figure that out haha.
Oh and this might be small, but not the biggest fan with the OP. It was not that good in my honest opinion. It might be small, but I do this with every single anime so yeah.
The Positives:
First and foremost, the story. Beautiful yet somewhat sorrowful story as well. It was insane how the older apprentice predicted he might end up as his first master it was eery.
The animation was surprisingly high quality I was quite surprised. Good Animation.
Finally, there was some goooood Rakugo in there, the story selections were really spot-on. The lrakugo story performed by the older apprentice, the one about the purse, it was so good. All the Rakugo stories in here were performed with such emotions I could hear it in the VA's voice. It shocked me how good it was, as Rakugo also relies on facial expression and I did not think they could make up for it but I would sya it is about 70% as good as IRL rakugo, although the comedic rakugo was not as good as comedic rakugo IRL.
The background music was good as well.
All in all, solid anime!
I took a point off for the OP and another point off because although it was amazing, I feel like the story was a little too slow, which most like (I am a SoL lover) but in this case it was way too slow.
Thanks!
-CyanCheetah
