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Akane-banashi is what happens if the world took comedy as seriously as it took sports [Popverse Jump]
Hit anime Akane-banashi is, basically, a shonen sports anime about a stand-up comedy set
I went into this year knowing that Akane-banashi would be one of the anime I couldn’t wait to see. The mixture of high-stakes drama with traditional Japanese storytelling formats makes it one of the most refreshing and unique shows in the current anime season. While a show about someone sitting down while performing stand-up comedy doesn’t feel like the kind of shonen anime we’re used to, Akane-banashi makes it work by leaning into the drama – and by being genuinely funny.
Akane-banashi is about a young woman who enters the rakugo scene to avenge her father, who was disgraced during an exam to reach rakugo’s highest rank years earlier. Rakugo is a traditional form of Japanese entertainment that dates back hundreds of years to the late 1600s. It involves telling a humorous story about two characters, with the performer kneeling on a mat in the center
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