In August 2019, I took that month's AWC challenge. This show was my choice for the tenth requirement, which was to watch a show that another participant in the challenge had dropped. This is a show that I've wanted to watch for a while because of its high praise, and since Kashimi dropped it, I decided to take the opportunity and watch the first season. I do not blame Kashimi for dropping this show. Depending on what you expect, you too will probably drop it.

The name "Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju" is a mouthful but this is one of the VERY few instances where I can't think of a way to possibly shorten this title. The official English title is "Descending Stories: Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju", and while I respect the effort to try to make a shorter title, calling this "Descending Stories" doesn't really make sense compared to its Japanese title. All four words in Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju are important for the show. The whole series takes place during the Showa era of Japan (kind of a broad statement since that's over 60 years). Genroku is the type of culture born at the turn of the 16th century that flourished in art and is represented by how the rakugo is presented. Speaking of which, Rakugo is the most important word in the title and the most used because that is what this show is about. Rakugo is a type of Japanese theater where a guy goes on stage, sits on a towel and tells a story. The series is about rakugo performers and the drama that goes on in their lives. And then there's Shinju, which means "Double Suicide" (or a lovers suicide). I'm going to leave that alone for obvious reasons.

Going into the series, I knew it would be about a type of Japanese theater and thought it would be about the people working in theater. That's not wrong, however, as the AniList description alludes to, only the first episode takes place in the "present day" (and by present day I mean the 1970s). The rest of this season flashes back to the 1940s and never goes back to the present until the last episode of the season. Don't get attached to the bottom two characters on the poster, the guy on the right is absent after episode one and the girl on the left is also absent after episode one until near the end when she is introduced as a child. The entire season is dedicated to showing how the character of Yakumo got to where he is at episode one.

Does it sound like I'm taking my sweet time to talk about this series? Well, that's fitting since Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju is a very slow paced series that takes as much time as it wants to develop the characters in the way it sees fit. I admire this show for feeling exactly like the Japanese movies that were being made during the time period this series takes place. I've seen about 10 Japanese films that were made Pre-1970 and for better or worse it feels just like them. If you're a fan of Mikio Naruse or Yasujiro Ozu, then I can not recommend this series harder. If the idea of watching a series about people sitting on mats and telling entire stories sounds boring to you, then I do not recommend you watch this series at all. If you're still interested even knowing that, then watch episode one. It's double-length at 48 minutes but it's definitely a good introduction to the series. I would not change a single thing about this show's structure.

I've been talking a lot about what I want from adult animation this month, and Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju is a separate beast in this situation. I would categorize it as "adult animation" (content-wise it's a PG-13 but good luck finding anyone under 18 that isn't bored by this show unless they're REALLY big into Japanese culture of the Showa era), but for me, this belongs in the category of "Japanese animation". Every single aspect, ALL of them, are rooted so deeply in Japanese culture that you can't imagine this show working in any other language without changing it so much to the point that it's unrecognizable. Watching a theoretical English dub of this series would be like watching an Ozu film dubbed, it just wouldn't feel right. If you're not here for the Japanese culture then you are going to get bored very quickly. Recommending this show is a bizarre task because I feel like the people that would enjoy this show the most are not the people who are going to read this. And if they don't watch it because they're the type of people that can't see past the fact that they're watching a drawing, then they'll watch the live-action version that was released last year.

I've seen storytelling like rakugo before, but I've never seen storytelling like Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju before in animation.