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I would just like to once again promote my current favorite weekly manga, that I discovered on happenstance browsing my local comics shop, after Dr. Stone ended and left me longing for a new manga to look forward to. I started reading Akane-Banashi about two years ago (the series just now had its 3 year anniversary) and it has once again proven to me that you don't need to be into a manga's subject in order to get invested in the story.
I mean I am also following Medalist - which got an anime this January - and I know jack-all about figure skating, but the story is still engrossing, the rules well explained, and you really wanna root for the main character Inori. I am also following Blue Lock, a series about football of all things, and with all due respect to football fans that sport genuinely bores me. Yet manga and anime always find a way to make even boring things look epic, and Blue Lock is no different.
ANYWAY, BACK ON TRACK!!!
Akane-Banashi is about a girl who is really into this Japanese form of one-man comedy show called rakugo, and loves peeking at her dad when he practices. When she and her mom attends his exam he is expelled (hardly a spoiler as it happens in the first chapter), and so, mortified by this, she sets out on a journey of "vengance" to become a talented rakugoka herself and prove to the people who expelled her dad that they were wrong.
Again, I know silch about rakugo, and while this manga - which is currently on chapter 150 with 16 volumes released - has done nothing to peaque my interest in the artform itself, I still find myself tuning in week after week, to see Akane grow and mature as a person through all the hardships she must overcome, and all the interesting people she meets along the way who have their own stories to tell, and all the life lessons she learns. Plus, whether you are into rakugo or not, the storytelling is genuinely great, and we see, with beautiful artwork to boot and epic paneling, how the characters grow both on and off stage.
I say that rakugo itself doesn't have my interest, but as a form of storytelling a lot of Akane's growth as an artist hinges on how she learns to tell a good and compelling story, and so within that growth she experiences, there are a lot of great points and values for me to pocket as well; How to draw out the essence of a story. Understanding your story and in turn get better at performing it. Staying true to your craft. Finding your "specialty". Telling the same story in different ways. Learning new stories from others and making them your own etc ect.
In my youth I was mostly into action manga, and while will still put Naruto or Bleach on any day of the week, adulthood has taught me to also appreciate these more grounded "slice of life" manga, that don't need big battles and Earth shattering energy blasts to be entertaining. No, this manga has it all in its artstyle and clever dialogue alone... which is also why it is THE manga I hope with ALL my heart gets an anime adaption soon. I don't know how they would pull it off, but since seeing how Medalist got a boost in popularity and exposure when the anime came out, I hope the same happens for Akane, because more people seriously need to know about her. Plus it is commonly only anime that get merchandise, not manga.
...oh... and if you're interested you can either sail the seas and read it on your prefered manga site, or officially get Shueisha's manga app.
I mean I am also following Medalist - which got an anime this January - and I know jack-all about figure skating, but the story is still engrossing, the rules well explained, and you really wanna root for the main character Inori. I am also following Blue Lock, a series about football of all things, and with all due respect to football fans that sport genuinely bores me. Yet manga and anime always find a way to make even boring things look epic, and Blue Lock is no different.
ANYWAY, BACK ON TRACK!!!
Akane-Banashi is about a girl who is really into this Japanese form of one-man comedy show called rakugo, and loves peeking at her dad when he practices. When she and her mom attends his exam he is expelled (hardly a spoiler as it happens in the first chapter), and so, mortified by this, she sets out on a journey of "vengance" to become a talented rakugoka herself and prove to the people who expelled her dad that they were wrong.
Again, I know silch about rakugo, and while this manga - which is currently on chapter 150 with 16 volumes released - has done nothing to peaque my interest in the artform itself, I still find myself tuning in week after week, to see Akane grow and mature as a person through all the hardships she must overcome, and all the interesting people she meets along the way who have their own stories to tell, and all the life lessons she learns. Plus, whether you are into rakugo or not, the storytelling is genuinely great, and we see, with beautiful artwork to boot and epic paneling, how the characters grow both on and off stage.
I say that rakugo itself doesn't have my interest, but as a form of storytelling a lot of Akane's growth as an artist hinges on how she learns to tell a good and compelling story, and so within that growth she experiences, there are a lot of great points and values for me to pocket as well; How to draw out the essence of a story. Understanding your story and in turn get better at performing it. Staying true to your craft. Finding your "specialty". Telling the same story in different ways. Learning new stories from others and making them your own etc ect.
In my youth I was mostly into action manga, and while will still put Naruto or Bleach on any day of the week, adulthood has taught me to also appreciate these more grounded "slice of life" manga, that don't need big battles and Earth shattering energy blasts to be entertaining. No, this manga has it all in its artstyle and clever dialogue alone... which is also why it is THE manga I hope with ALL my heart gets an anime adaption soon. I don't know how they would pull it off, but since seeing how Medalist got a boost in popularity and exposure when the anime came out, I hope the same happens for Akane, because more people seriously need to know about her. Plus it is commonly only anime that get merchandise, not manga.
...oh... and if you're interested you can either sail the seas and read it on your prefered manga site, or officially get Shueisha's manga app.
