Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju 2nd Season

Descending Stories: Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju is the second season of Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju. The Japanese title is Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu: Sukeroku Futatabi-hen (昭和元禄落語心中～助六再び篇). And, this season is all about passing the torch to the next generation of rakugo performers.

When you really think about it, it’s pretty much what Boruto is to Naruto.

Okay, maybe that’s not the best comparison. But, when I first found out what this season was about, I was worried. I wasn’t sold on the idea of following the next generation.

Luckily, Descending Stories is at least on par with the first season, if not better. I’d say the characters of the first season are better. But, the story of the second season is better. Though, I will admit that the characters of the second season grew on me as I watched it.

As you may recall from the first season, it started and ended in the “present.” The majority of the series was a giant flashback. Descending Stories takes place in the “present,” which is something like 20 years later. Kikuhiko, now Yakumo Yuurakutei, has taken on Yotarou as his student.

At first, Yotarou is annoying. But, that makes sense considering his name. A yotarou (与太郎 / よたろう) is a fool. However, over the course of the series, Yotarou’s character transforms. He develops into someone who can fill Sukeroku’s role from the first season. He’s a foil to Yakumo’s character.

The first season focused on Kikuhiko’s story. Sukeroku was a main character. But, Kikuhiko was the protagonist. In this season, both Yakumo and Yotarou are the protagonists. We get to see the rise of Yotarou and the fall of Yakumo happening simultaneously. To me, this makes for a much better story.

The “New” Cast

Yotarou is a former yakuza member who fell in love with Rakugo while in prison. He saw a performance by Yakumo when the latter held a show at the prison. And once he got out, Yotarou tracked down Yakumo to ask to be taught Rakugo.

Yakumo Yuurakutei, may have been in the first season as Kikuhiko. But, he’s in a different stage of his life and career in Descending Stories. At this point, he’s become disillusioned with the future of Rakugo and wants the art to die with him. But, the fact that he takes on Yotarou as an apprentice seems to show his true feelings.

Konatsu is the daughter of Sukeroku and Miyokichi. Yakumo raised her since the deaths of her parents. But, the two of them don’t get along. Konatsu blames Yakumo for her parents’ deaths. And Yakumo refuses to take her on as an apprentice because she’s a woman.

I could go over some of the other truly new characters from this season. But, these three are the most interesting. So, I want to go into a bit more detail about how they’re all connected. There will be some tagged spoilers.

So, Konatsu gets pregnant and has a child early on in the season. The father is unknown at first. But, it’s eventually implied that Yotarou’s former yakuza boss is the father. And since Yotarou doesn’t want the child to grow up fatherless, he marries Konatsu and adopts her son.

In the final episode of the series, it’s implied that the yakuza boss isn’t actually the father. We never get explicit confirmation. But, it’s heavily implied that Yakumo is the father. Konatsu had some daddy issues and Yakumo was attracted to the daughter of his first love. So, they slept together.

Death of Rakugo

I don’t think it’s much of a spoiler to say that Yakumo dies toward the end of the series. That’s what the whole series was leading up to — even the first season. And it should come as no surprise that the art of rakugo didn’t die with him.

What I want to talk about now is how Yakumo’s death gave the best scene of the entire show. It reminded me a lot of my favorite arc from March comes in like a lion. The Burnt Fields arc in that series is very similar to Yakumo’s death here.

At the end of his life, Yakumo looks back on all he’s accomplished. And, more importantly, he looks back on what he wasn’t able to accomplish. What were his biggest regrets? At the top of the list was his inability to save his best friends, Sukeroku and Miyokichi.

However, after he dies, he gets to see his Sukeroku and Miyokichi one last time. And he even gets to perform the Rakugo he’s perfected over the decades since their deaths for them. Everything about this scene was great.

Of course, it was nice to see the trio from the first season reunited. But, what really made it special was how this one scene brought everything together. Yakumo thought his dead friends would hate him. He found out that’s not the case. And he was able to finish everything in death that he failed to finish in life.

Yakumo died before he was able to perform for Shinnosuke, Konatsu’s son. But, Shinnosuke was able to visit the afterlife to see Yakumo’s “final performance.” And child Konatsu got to do the same with Sukeroku’s “final performance.”

Oh, and then the next episode gave us closure for Yotarou’s story.

Conclusion

Overall, Descending Stories: Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju is an 8/10. It takes a bit to ramp up. But, by the end of the series, it’s great. And if you like this series but haven’t yet seen March comes in like a lion., I highly recommend that one.

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Series Overview

Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju (Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu / 昭和元禄落語心中), also known as Showa and Genroku Era Lover’s Suicide Through Rakugo, is a historical drama centered around the Japanese performative art of Rakugo.

If you’ve never heard of Rakugo before, I don’t blame you. I hadn’t heard of it until this anime came out, which was back in 2016. It’s a form of comedic storytelling performed by a single person sitting on a stage with a few props to use for sound effects.

Honestly, Rakugo itself doesn’t seem all that entertaining to me — at least based on how it’s depicted in this anime. From what I understand, there’s a finite list of Rakugo stories, so it seems like it would get repetitive for the audience if they frequented the theaters.

Since Rakugo is what the series is about, there are plenty of Rakugo scenes throughout. Usually, these scenes aren’t too long, but the first episode is an exception. If you can make it through the first episode (which is double-length), you can make it through the whole series.

I say that because, in my opinion, the Rakugo scenes are the worst part of Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju. The characters and drama are really good. It’s just that, most of the time, I didn’t find myself caring about the stories being told, even if they were tying into what was happening in the lives of the cast.

Now, something that’s pretty unique about this series is that it has two seasons and they both take place in different time periods. The series begins in what seems like the 1950s but then shifts into a flashback of the 1910s – 1920s until the end of the first season.

The rest of this review will be about the pre-war portion of the first season.

Main Characters

There are four important characters within the pre-war flashback of the first season. These are Kikuhiko, Sukeroku, Yakumo (Seventh Generation), and Miyokichi. Kikuhiko and Sukeroku are the main characters while Yakumo and Miyokichi are major supporting characters.

I guess it makes the most sense to start with Yakumo Yuurakutei (Seventh Generation). Yakumo is actually a stage name that’s passed down through the generations of Rakugo performers. This Yakumo is the seventh generation and takes on Kikuhiko and Sukeroku as his apprentices so that he’ll have someone to pass the title down to.

Kikuhiko is also a stage name that was given to Bon upon becoming Yakumo’s apprentice. He was taken in by Yakumo at a young age when he was orphaned and unable to perform any other type of work due to having a bad leg. Kikuhiko has a delicate disposition, which leads him to perform stories with major female characters.

Sukeroku, whose real name is Shin, was originally given the name Hatsutarou by Yakumo. However, he didn’t like that name and thus chose Sukeroku for himself because it sounded more manly. He’s also the opposite of Kikuhiko in basically every way imaginable.

While Kikuhiko is quiet, polite, and reserved, Sukeroku is loud, crass, and outgoing. Kikuhiko is extremely responsible, and Sukeroku goes out drinking and picking up women on a regular basis. But, the one good thing you can say about Sukeroku is that his passion has always been Rakugo, which isn’t the case for Kikuhiko.

Miyokichi, also known as Yurie because everyone in this series has multiple names, is the female lead. She’s a geisha who’s introduced into the story as Yakumo’s mistress, but later becomes the primary love interest of Kikuhiko. I like Miyokichi; she’s cute.

Showa and Genroku Era

If you don’t want to be spoiled on the first season of Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju, you can skip down to the conclusion for my final rating. For anyone else, let’s start this section off by dissecting the title of the series.

The English translation of the title is Showa and Genroku Era Lover’s Suicide Through Rakugo. At the end of the first season, we see the deaths of both Sukeroku and Miyokichi. While not exactly a lover’s suicide, they were lovers who fell to their deaths after Miyokichi attempted suicide.

I’m guessing that’s where the “lover’s suicide” in the title comes from. So I’m going to make a prediction here that something similar is going to happen in the second season, which takes place decades later and with mostly different characters. This time around, it would involve Yotarou and Konatsu.

With that said, I don’t believe the two of them are actually going to die. Unless it’s done really well, I feel like that would be a pretty bad ending. Instead, I see them getting into a similar situation, causing Kikuhiko (now the Eighth Generation Yakumo) to see his old friends in them.

As for the Showa and Genroku Eras mentioned in the title, the Showa Era is when the story is set and the Genroku Era is, I believe, when Rakugo became a popular form of entertainment in Japan.

Moving into the Future

I liked the pre-war portion of the series. But, I have some reservations about the post-war portion. Hopefully, when I watch it I’ll discover I had nothing to worry about. However, based on the small parts of this period we see in the first season, I don’t like the characters as much.

For that reason, I’m really hoping that the series does something interesting with the dual time periods of the story. If the second season calls back to the events of the first, or maybe flips them around, that would make the series as a whole a lot more interesting to me.

I want more than a simple continuation of the story with a new generation. The series is set up this way for a reason, I hope.

Conclusion

Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju is an 8/10. It’s a very good anime. However, my main issue with it comes from the Rakugo scenes. I get that Rakugo is what the series is about, but these scenes could have been done better, like the shogi scenes from March comes in like a lion, which focus more on the characters’ mentality than the thing they’re doing.

If you enjoyed this review, remember to click the like button down below. Also, follow me over on Twitter @DoubleSama so you don’t miss out on any future content. And come join our Discord server if you’re interested in discussing anime with other members of the community.

Finally, I’d like to thank Roman for supporting DoubleSama.com at the Heika tier this month. To learn more about how you too can become a supporter of this blog, check out Patreon.com/DoubleSama.

My review of the second season is available now.