I have a new top anime to watch in 2026 as the adaptation for one of my favorite manga, with one of Shonen Jump's best-ever female leads, already looks incredible and I've only seen 100 seconds

(Image credit: TV Asahi / Shonen Jump)

I need to start aggressively wishing for world peace or something, because a lot of my anime wishes have been coming true lately. The latest beloved manga to score an anime adaptation is Akane-banashi, an offbeat Shonen Jump series about the art of rakugo, starring one of the best female leads the storied magazine has ever seen.

A trailer for the Akane-banashi anime adaptation arrived this week, introducing the central art and a smattering of characters. Rakugo is basically a solo performance where one person acts out an entire story on their own, doing all the characters and voices themselves.

As Anime News Network notes, Akane-banashi follows Akane Osaki (played by Anna Nagase, heard in this season's dark hit Takopi's Original Sin) in her quest to make her mark on the world of rakugo and demonstrate the appeal of the performance style she learned from her father.

We've also gotten casting for rakugo champion Karashi Nerimaya (Takuya Eguchi, heard in Demon Slayer, Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, and plenty of others) and in-universe voice actor Hikaru Koragi (Rie Takashi, of Re: Zero, Oshi No Ko, Konosuba, and many more).

Akane-banashi reads like a sports manga in many ways, with rivalries and practice and personal breakthroughs, but with the artistic standing in for the athletic. The closest comparison in my mind is Chihayafuru, a sports series about a poetry card game. I said as much when Akane-banashi became one of our top manga of 2023. The two series that ranked above it, Oshi No Ko and Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, already have stellar anime adaptations. (It's also one of the best manga you can read right now.) I'm not kidding when I say that if you like modern sports anime like Haikyu or Blue Lock, this adaptation is one to bookmark for 2026.

Akane herself is the highlight of the series, with the love and detail lavished on rakugo itself being a close second. She's clever and charismatic, and it's a joy to watch her on stage. As a reader of the manga, you end up slipping into the role of an audience member at her rakugo performances, only for the series to yank you back to reality and get you hooked on the orbiting interpersonal relationships that really make sports manga.

It's an enthralling blend of stories in stories, and judging from this teaser, the Akane-banashi anime ought to be every bit as gripping on-screen.

If you're tired of romance anime about school kids afraid to hold hands, I've got good news: one of my favorite manga is getting an anime, and the main characters are exhausted adults.

Austin has been a game journalist for 12 years, having freelanced for the likes of PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism degree. He's been with GamesRadar+ since 2019. They've yet to realize his position is a cover for his career-spanning Destiny column, and he's kept the ruse going with a lot of news and the occasional feature, all while playing as many roguelikes as possible.

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