Contains spoilers for Akane-banashi Chapter 27!

A lot of Shonen Jump manga use common tropes that can make their characters and stories feel stale, but Akane-banashi just turned these tropes completely on their head. This is hardly a first for the series, as its entire last arc subverted the standard plot of a classic Shonen tournament arc. But this time the ground-breaking series is deconstructing the very nature of Shonen villains.

Akane-banashi is a manga by Yuki Suenaga and Takamasa Moue following a high school girl named Akane as she tries to become a professional Rakugo entertainer. Rakugo is a Japanese performance art centered around a single performer telling one of a variety of classical stories on a stage without props. This may not sound too exciting, but the manga does a good job of making these performances feel akin to more typical Shonen battles. Akane recently participated in a Rakugo tournament in order to have a chance at having an audience with the Rakugo master Issho Arakawa. Issho was responsible for rejecting Akane’s father from becoming a high-ranking Rakugo performer, causing him to give up his dreams. This event motivated Akane to become a Rakugoka herself, as she wanted to show Issho that her father’s style of Rakugo is worthy. While Issho has typically been portrayed as a villain because of this, the manga’s latest chapter just brilliantly called this into question.

Related: A Surprising Shonen Jump Manga is Changing Tournament Arcs Forever

In chapter 27, Akane finally asks Issho why he didn’t accept her father’s performance. This has been the whole motivation for Akane joining the Rakugo tournament, so the moment is infused with the tension found in many other manga when the hero and villain confront each other. In response, Issho asks her whether she truly believes her father’s performance was worthy of a Rakugo master. Akane points to the massive amount of applause he got for his Rakugo, but Issho rightly replies that applause is not a proper metric for judging the quality of art. He even gets Akane to admit that deep down she knows her father’s performance was flawed. Given that a big reason why Issho seemed like a villain was that his expulsion of Akane’s father seemed unfair, this completely changes the way he is seen, turning him from an unreasonable jerk to just a strict critic.

Issho questions Akane

Part of what makes this such an innovative twist is how much of it is based on Akane’s perception. The very first chapter of Akane-banashi focuses on Akane watching her father perform, and as such, his performance seems extremely impressive, with slight flaws that seem completely insignificant. This makes Issho’s harsh rejection of him seem completely unfair and cruel. But in reality, Issho’s act was just a judgment based on the objective quality of the performance that neither Akane nor the reader can see.

This is an innovative twist on the common tropes of manga. Oftentimes in Shonen manga, the villains are naturally cruel or evil, so it was very easy to believe that Issho was this way as well. But by basing his apparent cruelty in Akane’s own flawed perceptions, Akane-banashi calls into question whether the villains of other Shonen manga are actually as objectively evil as they appear to be.

Akane-banashi Chapter 27 is available to read from Viz Media.