Akane-banashi

is a Japanese manga series written by Yuki Suenaga and illustrated by Takamasa Moue. It follows teenager Akane Osaki as she aims to reach the highest rank in rakugo, partly to avenge her father, who was expelled from the profession six years earlier. The rakugo in the series is supervised by professional rakugoka Keiki Hayashiya. Akane-banashi has been serialized in Shueisha's shōnen manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Jump since February 2022, with the chapters collected into eight tankōbon volumes as of August 2023. Viz Media has licensed the series for English release in North America. Akane-banashi has received a positive reception from reviewers and was nominated for the 2022 Next Manga Award, the 16th Manga Taishō, and the 47th Kodansha Manga Award. Plot Growing up, Akane admired her father and his rakugo; a traditional Japanese form of storytelling where a lone performer, called a rakugoka, depicts a long, complicated, and usually funny story involving multiple characters, who are distinguished by changes in pitch, tone, slight turns of the head, and hand movements, all while sitting in place. But when she was in elementary school, her father and all the other applicants were expelled from the Arakawa School during the promotional test to obtain rakugos third and highest rank of shin'uchi. Six years later, Akane, who had been secretly receiving lessons from her father's former master, sets out to become a shin'uchi of the Arakawa School to avenge her father and prove rakugo is a legitimate profession. Characters