2 screenshot limit

If you had come up to me and told me a few years ago that cooking manga would actually be accepted and enjoyed here in the U.S., I would’ve figured you to be the most optimistic idealist. Manga about ninja, samurai, cute girls — sure, that’d work. But food? Good luck selling that.

But hey, I guess I underestimated the power of food AND manga. Oishinbo, one of the bestselling series in Japan, is being published in English and this volume, Oishinbo A La Carte: Japanese Cuisine, is the first one out.

Just a small note before I move on — Oishinbo has been running since 1983 and has been collected in 100+ tankoubon volumes. Viz has decided that its English release (the A La Carte volumes) compile the books thematically. This first volume covers the basics of Japanese cuisine (like dashi, tea, sashimi) and later volumes will cover sake, ramen & gyoza, etc. If you’re an experienced (or picky) manga reader, you’ll notice how the story seems to jump around all over the place, but otherwise, I think this was a good editorial decision on Viz’s part.

Why? Because in this manga, the plot is secondary. Shiro Yamaoka is a journalist who has to write about the “Ultimate Menu” for the newspaper’s anniversary. He’s extremely knowledgeable about food, but his greatest adversary is his father, Kaibara Yuzan, an acclaimed potter and the founder of the Gourmet Club, which is Japan’s foremost gourmet society. Even though they hate each other’s guts, their shared interest to food often finds them crossing paths and cross words with each other.

So, after multiple chapters where Shiro and Kaibara are just comparing their foodie skills/knowledge, I realize that what’s important to this manga are the expansive explanations of various food, notably Japanese cuisine.

I won’t lie to you; this manga’s talky. There’s a lot of explanations about even concepts that I would’ve thought would be common knowledge to an average Japanese reader. What sets it apart from other cooking manga that’s already out there (e.g. Yakitate Japan!!, Antique Bakery, etc.) is that the explanations seem to be more grounded in reality and in fact than the others. I wouldn’t rely on the information in the manga as encyclopedic fact, but it’s a good starting point for layman explanations of food and cuisine.

Also, this series goes to prove that a good number of Japanese were foodies, even before the word made its way into the public lexicon…

This entry was posted on Friday, July 10th, 2009 at 3:24 pm and is filed under manga & manhwa, viz. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.