Warning! Contains spoilers for Akane-Banashi Chapter 47!Manga has a long history of distasteful fanservice, but one Shonen Jump series is turning that on its head, using its main female character for a hilariously perfect instance of fan disservice. That series is Akane-Banashi, by Yuki Suenaga and Takamasa Moue, and it follows a girl named Akane as she attempts to master the Japanese performance art of Rakugo. Rakugo involves a single performer telling one of a variety of stock comedic tales largely without props. While this isn't a typical plot for a Shonen story, the manga has done a great job at adapting and subverting common tropes to fit its narrative, as the latest chapter shows.
In chapter 47 of Shonen Jump's Akane Banashi, Akane takes the stage to perform a story that she has been struggling with called Fetching Tea. The story revolves around some men attempting to hire the services of a courtesan. While Akane's mentor for this story would always play the part of the courtesan very lasciviously, Akane being a girl right out of high school can't really pull off that type of performance convincingly. So instead she goes in the opposite direction, exaggerating her lack of sex appeal to make it comical how the men in the story lust after the courtesan. It's a clever technique both in the context of the story and in the context of Shonen Jump as a whole.
Akane-Banashi's Akane Might Be Shonen Jump's Best Female Hero
Most Shonen Jump series star male leads, which makes sense given the main demographic the magazine caters towards are young boys. This has of course not prevented the magazine from publishing popular series with female protagonists like The Promised Neverland, but generally female characters have been relegated to supporting roles or used for fanservice. Many recent series have taken steps to address this, with Chainsaw Man even proving through Denji that typical fanservice moments aren't actually meaningful and shifting focus to a female protagonist in Part 2. And now Akane-Banashi has subtly commented on it as well.
Akane-Banashi Weaponizes Fan Disservice
Shonen series of the past may have tried to get their audience to see Akane as an object of sex appeal despite it potentially lessening her character. But Akane now canonically has negative sex appeal, as she weaponized this fact to make her performance even more hilarious. After seeing her performance, readers are likely to be hard-pressed to ever view her as a source of fanservice in the future.
This is a big relief given how oversaturated the genre is with awkward fanservice. Luckily, many other series currently in Shonen Jump’s line-up take this philosophy as well, eschewing fanservice in favor of interesting female characters. Hopefully, this is a sign that future Shonen Jump manga will follow Akane-Banashi's example as well and do away with fanservice in favor of compelling characters and a good plot.
Akane-Banashi Chapter 47 is available to read from Viz Media.