First lets tackle the voice acting which is truly spectacular. Especially during Rakugo scenes where voice actors shine at almost mindblowing levels. It really shows how great Japanese voice acting is. I am not japanese speaker so I can't really appreciate or criticize the rakugo perfomances but I can hear how the voice actors can jump between characters during the performance and it's pretty fantastic.
With that also comes the editing which smartly uses cuts and camera angles to enhance the rakugo scenes and I absolutely loved it. Really great stuff
The drama is good and not so good. I appreciate the maturity of the series and how it tackled themes of obsession loneliness and devotion, but the story itself is hardly original and at certain points it becomes kinda stupid. I am talking about the episode 12 in particular. The stuff that is happening here feels like forced end of the plotline because author wasn’t sure how to end it. It was just dumb.
The rest of production is okay. The music is great mix of traditional Japanese music and jazz. The animation is inconsistent. Especially when it comes to scenes with audiences. You have this beautifully drawn main characters and then the camera cuts to the audience and you see blobs with eyes. I know these characters are completely irrelevant but the difference of quality is truly striking.
Only truly interesting character to me was Kikuhiko who was greatly complex. Some people might say that Sukeroku was the best character, but to me he was just straight up Gary Sue. Sure he’s drunk and filthy and lazy but that’s about all that’s bad about him. He still performs godlike rakugo at the end of the day and everybody still loves him. He only has 2 interesting moments in the entire series, one comes out of nowhere but I enjoyed it, the other came way too late for me to care. Overall the cast is not bad per se and it obviously mainly focuses on the dynamic between the two main characters but there’s nothing notable.
I am glad this anime was created because it taught me about the great art of rakugo but outside of its setting the story is hardly original. Far from bad, and not so far from amazing but still far enough.
