A couple days ago, I wrote my review for S1, saying "Tbh, S2 is higher rated so maybe I'm just dooming and it'll be all peaches and cream, the author managed to make a plot point I was dreading actually pretty good, but the present day stuff is kinda blah."
And I was quite surprised at how the author managed to surpass my expectations.
...it's even worse than I could have expected.
So, naturally, it failed to live up to the giant albatross S1 gave it by skipping ahead a decade. In that time, Yotaro went from being basically fresh out of Kikuhiko's boywomb as a storyteller to being a shin'uchi, Yotaro and Konatsu basically had their entire love story told, and Konatsu got knocked up (which... trust me, we will get to the father in due time).
That is absolutely, patently ridiculous. How the fuck are you going to skip the progression of Yotaro as a storyteller and his main relationship?
So what is the story about then?
I think it fails to find a compelling avenue for Yotaro to go through. He doesn't have a rival like Sukeroku, he never has a roadblock in his relationship with Konatsu, Kikuhiko is never really a threat to his advancement as a rakugo storyteller, they kind of play around with his gang-related past but it only lasts a couple episodes before he has his symbolic way of moving past it and everyone just kind of accepts him as a storyteller again.
The other big story for him is the concept of introducing new aspects and new stories to rakugo, which Kikuhiko seems nominally opposed to but he never, like, does anything. He seems very blase and laissez-faire about the whole situation, telling everybody to do whatever they want. Sure, he SAYS he'd rather rakugo die with him than it be bastardized but other than refusing to let Konatsu be his apprentice, nothing he does ever actually affects the progression of rakugo.
It should come as no surprise, speaking of which, that Kikuhiko is the only interesting character. His conflict with the present-day people doesn't really do anything for me but him grappling with his mortality was the only interesting aspect of the show for me. It's a pretty natural thing for the show to do with an old-ass man but it impacted me and the episode involving him facing the ghosts of his past, so to speak, was the only episode to make me tear up this season.
Konatsu's always wanted to be a storyteller but because she's a ~woman~, she never really got the opportunity. I'll open by saying that as someone who really only learned about rakugo because of Akane-banashi's existence (although I was vaguely aware of this show's existence prior), the concept of a female storyteller was never really all that weird to me so maybe if I was more into the history of rakugo, the concept of Konatsu having to try to be the first female storyteller EVER would've done more for me but, like, they also don't really do much with it. Konatsu spends most of the season either being "Yotaro's wife" or "Shinnosuke's mother", hell, she spends more time being the shamisen player for the male storytellers than trying to become a storyteller proper. That's not to say they spend ZERO time on it but like many of the present-day storylines, it felt underbaked.
Speaking of Konatsu, I did mention the father, right? They reveal who the father is in the last episode (they never explicitly say it but it's pretty obvious, especially looking at adult Shinnosuke) and... it's fucking disgusting, character assassinating, something on the level of Usagi Drop's manga ending. I won't say who it is if you can't figure it out from this paragraph but yeah, nasty, no notes.
There are technically other characters that matter but other than Yotaro, Kikuhiko, and Konatsu, they failed to make any sort of impact. Even Higuchi, who gets plenty of time and an actual place in the story, like, I have nothing to say about him. He's just kind of a guy with no boundaries who really wants Yotaro and Kiku to read his new rakugo stories and, as said above, they don't do enough with this to make it a compelling storyline.
There is one other scene which rewrites a scene from S1 so hard, it actively broke my immersion and I had to open S1 and find the episode to rewatch it to make sure I wasn't being actively GASLIT.
So, in S1, Miyokichi wants to die with Kikuhiko until Sukeroku runs in and vows to give up rakugo and get a fresh start on life. As wont to do in dramas, the balcony breaks and Sukeroku sacrifices himself to try and save Miyokichi. Kikuhiko tries to save them both but Sukeroku makes him let go so Kiku lives and the other 2 die.
Okay, cool, good emotional scene, right? I had no problem with this in S1, made sense to me.
But they completely rewrite this scene in S2 in such a way that it literally cannot be explained away, it's just poor storytelling. There's no unreliable narrator or anything, S1 was just Word of God storytelling of the 8th generation. Not only is it immersion-breaking, it makes every single character in the equation look worse. Sukeroku doesn't vow to clean up his life for the sake of his family, Miyokichi looks like a straight up psycho (which is later confirmed in a future episode where she is described as "constantly holding kitchen knives, threatening to kill herself"), and Kikuhiko doesn't try to save Sukeroku and Miyokichi. Not only that, but we don't hear Sukeroku say Miyokichi's real name in the S2 version so that whole thing about Kikuhiko hearing Miyokichi's real name for the first time is just straight up blipped into the atmosphere, it never happened.
I praised the rakugo in S1, so how is it this season?
Well, they reuse a lot of stories, not just between seasons, but in S2 alone. They do introduce a couple new stories but you'll hear a lot of repeats, hell, one time they just show one of Sukeroku's performances from S1 again but under the excuse of Yotaro seeing film of his performances for the first time.
Not only that but it wasn't as funny. It just felt soul-crushing to see the rakugo I so enjoyed going from a highlight of the show to "filler" that I had to sit through to get to the drama parts again. Comedy is very subjective so I can't really tell you why I didn't laugh as much or like it as much other than the aforementioned repetition but it just wasn't as good as last season.
And that's the best word for this season.
It was soul-crushing to see a show I so loved last season turn into a soul-crushing chore to finish. It failed to make a lasting impression with any of the present-day characters and it actively assassinates the characters of the flashback arc. It's not without its merits but those are few and far between and it would've been better served making a movie all about Kikuhiko struggling with his mortality because that was the only interesting part of the season.
For the most part (the baby's father aside), the plot beats aren't terrible, the mangaka just fails to make it compelling in any way.
To be honest, you're better off pretending it ended with Kikuhiko adopting Konatsu and the "grudge" between the Yakumos and Sukerokus being buried with that act, never watching S2.
