Anime Orbit is an irregular column where I summarize a stop along my journey through anime, manga, and the related spheres of popular culture over the past week. Expect spoilers for covered material, where relevant.

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Of the anime I wrote first impressions on at the top of the season, My Master Has No Tail was and remains the most obscure over here in the USA. Its charming but unflashy production values and art direction as well as its somewhat niche subject matter have meant that it was basically destined to fly under the radar since day one. I loathe this phrasing, so I tend to avoid it, but it really is hard to conceive of something more quintessentially Japanese than a show about a tanuki learning rakugo.

But that doesn’t mean it isn’t good. In fact, I’d actually put My Master Has No Tail ahead of several other “slice of life” anime this year. Partly, it’s simply that I’m a sucker for a good piece of art about the process of creating art itself. 2022 has felt light on those; anime that enshrine the creative and performative process itself as something worth valuing and holding on to. My Master Has No Tail is good enough that it’d stand out even in a year with more of them, but being the proverbial droplet in the desert has definitely made it mean more to me personally. (It’s not totally alone in this venture, mind. Earlier this year there was Healer Girls. This very season we have BOCCHI THE ROCK! Still, Master simply hasn’t picked up the fanbase that matches Bocchi, or even the more muted reception to Healer Girl.)

The anime’s tenth episode zeroes in on this to an even greater extent than the series previously has, as it heads into its final stretch. This episode focuses heavily on names, both in a general sense and several specific examples; that of the routine that features here, that of the previously-nameless Mameda herself, and on the tradition of name inheritance in rakugo as a field. In this way, it illuminates the importance of passing these artistic traditions on; from teacher to pupil, down through the generations. (The core conflict set up here is, in fact, about someone who doesn’t want that to happen.)

Mameda has, by this point in the series, been living with, and been the apprentice of, her master Bunko for some time. Except; the heads of Japan’s other major rakugo lineages aren’t having it. Mameda has to pass a test from all of them; the first was last week, and this week’s episode centers around the second. Her examiner, as it were, is Enshi Kirino, a cat-like rakugoka from a rich family who speaks in a dragging, laboriously slow monotone unless a metronome happens to be running nearby. (In which case, she can talk at normal speed. Though her tone is still informed by a sense of smug mischief.)

Perhaps not coincidentally, this is where the show finally makes use of “Jugemu”, probably the most well-known rakugo routine of all time, and certainly the only one that most western otaku are likely to be familiar with, if only because it’s referenced in anime, manga, and basically every other field of Japanese pop culture pretty often. The test put to Mameda is very simple; she merely has to memorize “Jugemu” from Enshi’s example (she has two opportunities to observe Enshi, in fact), and perform it perfectly. No mistakes allowed; not a single syllable out of place.

Enshi’s instructive performance is fairly interesting on its own; she puts a tightly-wound and almost mechanical spin on it, possibly in a deliberate attempt to psyche Mameda out, something her voice actress Ayana Taketatsu leans into quite well. Initially, Mameda just can’t commit the bit to memory. A problem when the entire premise of the routine is the title character thereof having a ludicrously long name.

Nothing helps until she thinks to meditate in the woods. There, for the first time, Mameda faces her fears in an honest way; she’s scared of failing the test, because failing would mean being kicked out. And she doesn’t want that because being under Bunko’s tutelage is the only place where she’s ever felt like she’s truly belonged. That realization is what makes the routine eventually click for her, and she recites it to Enshi, who in turn, is enraptured enough by Mameda’s performance—despite Mameda being totally exhausted at this point—to fall into reminiscence about her own master; the previous Daikokutei. Bunko‘s own master.

^{“Jugemu Jugemu Gokō-no Surikire Kaijarisuigyo-no Suigyōmatsu Unraimatsu Fūraimatsu Kūnerutokoro-ni Sumutokoro Yaburakōji-no Burakōji” – Mameda.}

The episode ends with Enshi presenting Mameda with a paper fan on which she’s written her own name. I do not actually know for certain if this is some sort of traditional gesture of esteem in rakugoka circles, but it wouldn’t surprise me to learn so. In small moments like this, My Master Has No Tail is as compelling an argument for the arts as any other that’s aired this year.

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