Published May 10, 2026, 3:01 PM EDT

Akane-banashi proves anime doesn’t need fights to feel exhilarating

Image: Studio Zexcs/Netflix

For hundreds of years, Japanese performers have practiced a comedic storytelling art known as rakugo (落語). Traditionally staged in intimate yose theaters, rakugo transforms verbal storytelling into a one-man performance where a single actor inhabits multiple characters through subtle gestures, vocal shifts, and timing alone. Performers, or rakugoka, remain seated in the seiza position for the entire act, armed with nothing more than a paper fan and a small cloth as props. Everything else is left to the audience’s imagination.

Rakugo isn’t exactly the most exhilarating art form, especially in an era dominated by hyper-digital entertainment and shrinking attention spans. On paper, it probably shouldn’t work as the basis for a modern anime ; it is a dying art, after all.…