A lot happens in this first episode, so buckle up. Our story opens at a rakugo (traditional Japanese storytelling) cafe in Tokyo, where a 30-something man is giving a performance. We quickly learn that this man’s name is Tohru Osaki, stagename Shinta Arakawa, and his performance…has room for improvement. We can tell he’s under a lot of pressure, even before the cafe matron lets us in on the reason by encouraging him to do his best at the big shin’uchi (rakugo master) promotion exam next week. Adding to his worries, Tohru is next called to the elementary school his 10-year-old daughter attends after his headstrong and tomboyish girl has gotten into yet another fight with one of her classmates. As the situation is about to devolve into a he-said/she-said shouting match, Akane stops to give her side of the story to the teacher through a rakugo performance, which is remarkably skilled for an untrained grade-schooler. It turns out she’s a textbook Daddy’s Girl, and she has developed her rakugo skills by watching and imitating him day after day. Then, at the promotion exam, after recovering from a rough start through the power of paternal love to deliver a knockout performance, Tohru finds himself blindsided, gut-punched, and shocked. He is not just failed but also expelled by his rakugo school’s ruthlessly demanding head, the living rakugo legend Issho Arakawa, and all for reasons unknown. Shinta Arakawa’s rakugo journey ended that day, but then the story skips ahead seven years, and we find out Akane’s banashi (story) has only just begun…

The hidden gem of Shonen Jump finally gets its anime adaptation, and even Day One fans of the manga, like me, have no reason to be disappointed. Given the subject matter, this anime was always going to live and die by the show’s ability to deliver fluid but subtle animation paired with skillful voice acting. Both of those things are here in spades, and they meet the manga’s standards; at times, they even enhance the source material. I always intellectually understood the pressure Tohru/Shinta was under going into his promotion exam, but this time I felt it. And Akane, the true star of this story? She’s absolutely incredible. In less careful hands, her character could have been an obnoxious, abrasive, overpowered “girlboss,” but series writer Yuki Suenaga made her into an immediately lovable mix of drive, passion, diligence, combativeness, vulnerability, humility, adoration, and grit. I do sometimes joke about how Akane-banashi is the Gen Z reskin of 2008’s Bakumon (both stories center on an artist seeking to follow in the footsteps of a family member who gave it their all in a particular art form but had their careers tragically cut short), but rakugo is all about taking a familiar story and reworking it with your own unique twist, and Akane-banashi does that brilliantly.

Akane-banashi is currently available in sub via the series official YouTube channel. A full dub and sub release is scheduled to begin on Netflix in May.