天下制覇

Art only counts if it's properly certified.

Impressions:

Can't say anything surprised me here. It's a Jump drama about rakugo, and I have zero love nor appreciation for rakugo. If anything, I feel like this missed the mark by overdramatizing it. From the first half, it really seemed like it would be busting out the excessive rotoscoping for the actual rakugo performances to show how alive the dude became when he did it, which wasn't great on its own since it created a very uncanny valley effect where everything else was static, even when he was having emotional fits. And especially the peanut gallery gasping in awe/horror. Rotoscoping also rarely looks good to me.

But then his big performance at the rakugo regionals started, and yeah, there was still plenty of rotoscoping, but most of it got blasted in the face with technicolor explosions and phantoms of the story wandering around… or just random stills. There was neither cohesion in the visuals, nor was it actually focused on, you know, his rakugo performance. It's trying to show how he's bringing it all to life, but it's actually showing that his performance alone didn't. I assume that we've all been forced to sit through one-man plays at some point in our lives, or at least standup routines. Unless you were on hallucinogenics, there probably weren't flashing lights and ghosts. Which makes it not actually about rakugo, but some arbitrary nonsensical thing instead, which fits with the dour old dude also throwing everybody out for not having enough heart of rakugo or whatever. But also makes it not really about actual performance, but about hand wavey magic. Which is being judged. On how magical it is. And only counts if it gets to go to the best magical school for magical certification. Where his dream is not to perform rakugo, but to get a good grade for performing rakugo, because it's not worth doing without getting at least a B+. …Yeah, you've lost me.

Next Episode:

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