Akane-banashi (Japanese: あかね噺; "Akane's Story") is a Japanese manga series written by Yuki Suenaga and illustrated by Takamasa Moue. It follows teenager Akane Osaki as she aims to reach the highest rank in rakugo, partly to avenge her father, who was expelled from the profession six years earlier. The rakugo in the series is supervised by professional rakugoka Kikuhiko Hayashiya. Akane-banashi has been serialized in Shueisha's shōnen manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Jump since February 2022, with the chapters collected into 19 tankōbon volumes as of November 2025. Viz Media has licensed the series for English release in North America. An anime television series adaptation produced by Zexcs is set to premiere in 2026.

Akane-banashi has received a positive reception from reviewers and has been nominated for various awards.

Growing up, Akane admired her father and his rakugo, a traditional Japanese form of storytelling where a lone performer, called a rakugoka, depicts a long, complicated, and usually funny story involving multiple characters, who are distinguished by changes in pitch, tone, slight turns of the head, and hand movements, all while sitting in place. But when she was in elementary school, her father and all the other applicants were expelled from the Arakawa School during the promotional test to obtain rakugo's third and highest rank of shin'uchi. Six years later, Akane, who had been secretly receiving lessons from her father's former master, sets out to become a shin'uchi of the Arakawa School to avenge her father and prove rakugo is a legitimate profession.

Author Yuki Suenaga stated that Akane-banashi originated with Akane, a character he created but did not know what to do with. A fan of manzai and conte, he was interested in rakugo, but felt it was too difficult to get into. Suspecting there were many people who felt the same way, and that it would be unexpected of the character, he decided to have Akane perform rakugo. Suenaga stated that because he is new to rakugo, he is able to predict the things readers might not know, and can depict them in the manga in a way they will understand. The rakugo in the manga is supervised by professional rakugoka Kikuhiko Hayashiya. Hayashiya had first worked for Shueisha by writing columns analyzing the rakugo seen in One Piece for One Piece Magazine after they had seen his Tweets doing the same. Around November 2020, he was approached by the publisher about supervising a new rakugo manga. Thanks to help from Hayashiya, Suenaga interviewed more than 20 rakugoka, including Momoka Chokaroh and Miyaji Katsura. The serialization of Akane-banashi was proposed in the fall of 2021.

Artist Takamasa Moue said when he first heard about the series he found it interesting, but worried whether readers of Weekly Shōnen Jump would be interested in rakugo. Realizing it was his job to make them interested, he said he tried to get readers emotionally invested in the characters, and to broaden the scope to appeal to those unfamiliar with rakugo. Having previously only had a passing interest in rakugo, Moue said he had fun researching it for Akane-banashi. To draw the rakugo scenes in the manga, Moue listens to a performance of the relevant story and thinks about how to convey the speed and intonation.

Gendai Business columnist Kenichiro Horii wrote that Akane-banashi's Arakawa School is clearly modeled after the real-life Tatekawa School of rakugo, whose master, Danshi Tatekawa VII, expelled a group of zenza in 2002, after feeling that they were not showing enough effort to reach futatsume. Although Kazuhiro Ito of Good Life with Books also noted the similarities, he reported that Suenaga stated Issho Arakawa was instead modeled after Enshō Sanyūtei VI [ja]. Horii also pointed out that the Rakugo Cafe seen in the series is modeled after a real café with a similar name in Jinbōchō, Tokyo. According to Hayashiya, the Yasaka-tei and Edobashi-tei theaters in the manga were modeled after Suehiro-tei [ja] in Shinjuku and the Oedo Nihonbashi-tei in Nihonbashi, respectively. For the colored title page of chapter 29, Moue was inspired by The Breakfast Club. The Shikisai Festival seen in the manga was modeled after the Rakugo Association's Sharakusai Festival. The story "Giboshi" that is depicted in chapter 87 is a little-known rakugo story that was revived by Kyotaro Yanagiya [ja]. Suenaga stated that he received permission to use it in Akane-banashi.

Written by Yuki Suenaga and illustrated by Takamasa Moue, Akane-banashi began serialization in Shueisha's shōnen manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Jump on February 14, 2022. The rakugo in the series is supervised by professional rakugoka Kikuhiko Hayashiya. Publisher Shueisha is collecting the individual chapters into tankōbon volumes, with the first released on June 3, 2022.

Both Shueisha and Viz Media began releasing the series in English digitally the same day it began in Japan, the former on its Manga Plus website and application. Viz began publishing Akane-banashi in print in summer 2023.