Descending Stories: Shōwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjū

Episode 3

It's finally time for Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu: Jerry Springer edition. Konatsu's sperm donor has been a longstanding mystery since the end of last season, but it's finally addressed in this episode. Remember that yakuza boss Yakumo knows? Well, that's who was giving a hesitant-looking Konatsu a car ride at the end of the previous episode. Yotaro recognized that guy from his criminal days and got suspicious over his baby-daddy potential. However, he wasn't able to do anything about this until a few days later, when he's suddenly told where this mobster's been hanging out. As soon as he's informed, Yota-chan rushes over, baby in tow, to confront his hunch and secure his place as the kid's "For Real As In Raising Him" father. Most of this episode consists of the tense confrontation between Yotaro and the Boss, in which the stakes are Yotaro's personhood, the baby's future, and even Yotaro's capabilities as an artist.

Keep in mind, Yotaro just thinks that the Boss fathered the kid. There's never any outside confirmation of this, as well as several indications that there's more to the situation than we've been told, but the scene plays out with this as the underlying assumption. My suspicion is that this is misdirection; the baby wasn't fathered by Mr. Bossman, but rather by Yotaro's nameless superior from his gangster days. (For the sake of convenience, I'll be referring to this guy as Aniki or Big Bro.) It would give Aniki a reason to still be hanging around in the story at this point (he's superfluous to this situation if the Boss is truly the baby daddy) and result in some nice narrative mirroring. Yotaro originally went to jail because he took the heat for Aniki's crime. Now he'd be taking Aniki's “place” in a positive way by raising Konatsu's baby.

I also can't see Konatsu choosing to sleep with that older guy for any reason short of prostitution, which she both despises due to her mother and has no apparent financial need to participate in. On the other hand, it seems like she and Aniki were around each other a lot while they worked at the restaurant, and he even called her by the intimate nickname Kona-chan, so I could see them having a thing. It's also worth nothing that the baby looks like Aniki as much or more than Boss. The Boss's weird claim over the kid – which is central to the scene – is the wrench in this theory, but there's an easy explanation for that too. Since yakuza are family-run organizations, it's likely that Aniki is somehow related to him. Either way, the crux of the scene is the same – Yotaro resists being used as a pawn in someone else's drama (again), asserting his status as the baby's father so he will be acknowledged as a person with agency in this game for the baby's future. His gambit works – both Konatsu and the Boss are left impressed. It seems like the yakuza won't come after the baby in the future, and the conversation with Konatsu afterwards shows her continuing to warm up to Yotaro.

Baby daddy drama aside, the confrontation scene is harrowing, easily the strongest this second season has been from a production standpoint so far. With his chillingly reserved affect, the Boss is revealed as the clear model for Yakumo's shinigami characterization – he's even accompanied by that routine's leitmotif. This show hasn't always been impressive in terms of animation, but this second season has been consistently strong, featuring some fantastic character work throughout this scene. The direction – a criminally under-discussed aspect of this show – is still absolutely killing it, imbuing this conversation between two men with as much threat as possible. Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu is a prestigious production, and stuff like this exhibits the height of its powers.

As an added bonus, this all formed another step in Yotaro discovering his own rakugo. The episode began with a conversation between him and Higuchi that revealed Yotaro's rakugo as primarily an imitation of other performer's rhythms, where he wasn't even trying to understand their actual content. By the end of the episode, this has all changed. His confrontation with the Boss included an impassioned rendition of a routine that had previously stumped him – a stooge's tract in defense of his own individuality. This seems to have pulled Yotaro up from his developmental plateau, and now his rakugo is becoming more than a copy of Sukeroku's. It makes sense – while Yotaro and Sukeroku are superficially similar in their demeanors, they're very different people under the surface, and their performance styles should reflect that.

Sukeroku was a natural-born entertainer who rode high on energizing an audience. This was the basis of his self-esteem – or ego, to reference Yakumo's terminology. He wasn't an emotionally honest person, which also came through in his rakugo's reliance on caricature, not doing much to express a character's intimate thoughts (or his own). The opposite will become true for Yotaro. For him, performance is turning into a form of self-expression. He's starting to use rakugo as a language for both understanding and expressing himself – something that he lacked previously, due to his false perception of himself as a silly and easily-manipulated fool. So Yotaro's “rakugo is about empathy” claim wasn't just an observation on the medium as a whole – it was also a mission statement for his specific approach to rakugo! Neat! Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu continues to excel as an exploration of what art means to different people, serving as both a broad and in-depth exploration of the many forms that artistic expression takes.

In the end, Konatsu is shown coming around to the idea of Yotaro as a father to her child, as well as a real romantic partner. I look forward to seeing how their relationship develops, but so far it's been pretty heartwarming to watch this totally closed-off young woman slowly shed her defenses in the face of genuine love, concern, and patience. This show reminds me of Fruits Basket in its power as a story about individuals recovering from tangled histories of abuse and neglect. I can't really praise it much higher than that.

Grade: A

Descending Stories: Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Gabriella Ekens studies film and literature at a US university. Follow her on twitter.