English Dub Review: Akane-banashi “Beyond Joy”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Akane makes use of what she learned working at the pub for her next performance, showing adaptability based on her audience. Later, she observes Kyoji perform with his own unique style.

OUR TAKE

Carrying on from last week’s episode, where Akane learned that she was trying to use a one size fits all approach to her Rakugo performance regardless of audience, we see that Kyoji’s seemingly strange choice of having her work in an Izakaya has gone a long way. Going at an 8 out of the gate is not always going to work when the audience is starting at a 3, for example. Now that she knows to be more personable with how she acts with certain types of audiences, she’s ready to try again, performing in front of a retirement home and tailoring her story to being about knowing someone’s age. This is unfortunately where the cultural barrier becomes a bit of a problem, at least for me and probably many others who have next to no previous knowledge of Rakugo and the usual repertoire of stories that performers pull from, as while the show does a fine job of showing how the stories used seemingly are recognizable and a brief summary of them, I can’t help but feel a bit of a disconnect from all of that going on and just have to take the show’s word for it that it’s being told well and effectively.

But at the end of the day, the point of these scenes is to show that Akane is making use of the lessons she was given, and is having considerably more success than she was in the last episode when she did not have these lessons, so character development has been accomplished. And that’s not even the last lesson of the episode, as she, and us by extension, see how Kyoji performs in his own way. He seems to take a more serious tone while performing comedy, so probably something similar to Leslie Neilson in the Naked Gun movies (or Liam Neeson in the recent sequel), and so the absurd or comedic things he’s saying with a totally straight face get people laughing. We have seen a few other performers in these handful of episodes so far, but this helps to show that there are many ways to do a Rakugo performance, even among pupils of the same master. And lastly, upon learning that Akane has been neglecting her studies, Kyoji tells her to focus on that since that should be her priority, even if Rakugo is her passion, which is a good move on his part as a mentor. Onto next week!