When it comes to Fumi Yoshinaga, I’m fairly used to excellent manga. You could make a convincing argument that Ooku: the Hidden Chambers is one of the best titles, if not the best title in Viz Media’s Sig IKKI line (I might argue that Children of the Sea is better, but I digress). Likewise All My Darling Daughters and Antique Bakery offer a lot of great stories from one of the best mangaka currently in print in English. By: Fumi Yoshinaga Publisher: Yen Press Age Rating: Older Teen Genre: Food Price: $10.99 Yoshinaga is also one of the few writers that is licensed by multiple publishers here in the US. Digital Manga Publishing was the first to pick up her work, while Viz followed shortly behind. Now, Yen Press has joined the crowd to bring us a one-shot volume of foodie manga titled Not Love But Delicious Foods Make Me So Happy. Not Love But Delicious Foods Make Me So Happy is part autobiography, part restaurant review.The main character, Y-naga (yes, really) is a mangaka who draws BL comics, and spends almost all the time she isn’t sleeping or working out eating food with friends. Her fellow mangaka, foodie friends, assistants, and previous roommates all…
Publisher’s description: In a savage world ruled by the pursuit of the most delicious foods, it’s either eat or be eaten! While searching for the tastiest foods imaginable, Gourmet Hunter Toriko and his bottomless stomach travel around the world facing every beast in his way. When Toriko is hired to capture the rare and delicious Puffer Whale, he’s going to require some help. In order to remove the Puffer Whale’s poison Toriko will need to track down his old friend and fellow gourmet hunter, Coco, but will this team be enough to beat the other dangerous hunters to the prized ingredient? By: Mutsutoshi Shimabukuro Publisher: Viz Media Age Rating: Teen Genre: Action/Food Price: $9.99 There’s two kinds of shows, for the most part, on the basic cable Food Network. From the beginning, it’s been a channel dominated by the cooking show as invented by Julia Childs: engaging, knowledgeable host makes cooking and recipes both fascinating and accessible at the same time. Then there’s the contest shows, in which various skilled chefs compete against themselves and each other to produce the most delicious, conceptually stunning food possible. Whether cozy or over-the-top (Sarah Moulton vs. Guy Fieri), crazy or deadly serious (Outrageous…
Leaving her internship at Sushi Hyuga to go on her family’s annual trip to France is the last thing Hanayu wants to do. On the other hand, a pastry-research trip in Europe is Hayato’s idea of a dream come true–can the two aspiring chefs ever catch a break? Plus, Hayato has become suspicious of patisserie assistant Maezawa, who has expressed an interest in Hanayu. As it turns out, both Hanayu and Hayato may have their wires crossed about what Maezawa is really after! By: Ayumi Komura Publisher: Viz Media Age Rating: Teen Genre: Romance/Food Price: $9.99 I read the first 2 preview chapters for this series back when Shojo Beat was still around, and wasn’t impressed. Further reviews from fellow reviewers didn’t inspire me to look further into the series, and I’m not a foodie, so this volume had three strikes against it going in. But it actually wasn’t so bad. There wasn’t anything great about it. It’s a fairly average title, but I didn’t regret the time I spent reading it. Hanaya and Hayato, the leads that I found so annoying in the preview chapters of volume 1, aren’t so bad by this volume. Hanaya no longer has to…
“I also highly recommend the strawberries-and-white-chocolate mousse. The strawberry compote filling will melt in your mouth as the genoise soaked in lime syrup sings in perfect harmony with the milky flavour of the white chocolate mousse.” By: Fumi Yoshinaga Publisher: Digital Manga Publishing Genre: Slice of life/drama/comedy/food Age Rating: YA/young adult/16+ Price: $12.95 What a joy! What a delight! What a treat! Like the cakes and pastries it depicts, Antique Bakery is so exquisite that it’s tempting to swallow it all in one go, but with enough layers that it’s worth lingering over, to savour the interplay of different elements and the way minor details later prove to be essential. It’s clear that it’s been crafted with care and loving attention, and the skill of an artist at the peak of her career. Set in and around a pâtisserie-café that opens late and features antique silver cutlery as well as an immensely skilled pastry chef, Antique Bakery comes across at first as an episodic, slice-of-life series; as with the bookshop in Kingyo Used Books, the bakery seems to be less the setting for an ongoing tale and more a focal point where a diverse cast of minor characters can have…
Like every volume of this series, this one draws from multiple stories across nearly three decades of the manga. Viz is looking at an ongoing manga with so much history they’ve given up any hope of reprinting it volume by volume here in the US. Instead, they’ve decided to collect various stories based on subject. This does two things: it at once intensifies the “foodie-ness” and dilutes the narrative flow. When a volume is entirely about certain aspects of Chinese cuisine and how these things affect everything from romance to international relations, you cannot help but see the world as entirely consumed with and by food. Written by Tetsu Kariya, Illustrated by Akira Hanasaki Publisher: Viz Media Age Rating: Teen Genre: Food Price: $12.99 On the other hand, when a volume leaps around through time, as this one does due to its having the double subjects of ramen and pot stickers, you lose any vital sense of the broader arcs of who the characters are and what their relationships are or where they are going. These are the obvious results of messing with the original format, but there’s subtle ways that this format skews the manga. But before I get…
Series Description: Azuma Kazuma, an energetic and dense young man, was introduced to the art of bread making when he was six. He decides to take the path of bread-making and become a baker right after graduating from middle school. Through his travels, he encounters many rivals and found work at the branch store of the most famous bread maker brand, the Pantasia. By: Takashi Hashiguchi Publisher: Viz Media Age Rating: Older Teen Genre: Food/Comedy Price: $9.99 Volume Description: Kazuma Azuma’s team Pantasia is one defeat away from losing their shop as they enter round six of the Yakitate 25 baking competition. Their opponent is Mokoyama, a man in a panda suit whose silly exterior belies his great baking power…and otherworldly baking powder. If that weren’t enough to bear, Azuma must teach a lesson to a spoiled mini-gourmand who insists on having his bread and eating it too. Will Team Pantasia rise to the occasion or run out of steam? November begins the holiday season, both here in the US and other countries around the world. As such, I’ve been undertaking a month of cooking manga reviews. Last time, I made this comment about cooking manga: When somebody tastes great…
Description: When an old antique shop re-opens as the hottest new bakery in an unsuspecting neighborhood, there’s no doubt that a few surprises are cooking. Love, rejection, old high school flames and the most delicious boy-to-boy affections all blend together to make a treat unlike any other. The Antique Bakery is now open…care for a dessert? Antique Bakery teases the palate with humor, fun flirtation and a host of sweet and sour moments. No matter what you crave, this is one shop you can’t pass up. By: Fumi Yoshinaga Publisher: Digital Manga Publishing Age Rating: 16+ Genre: Comedy Price: $12.95 As I said last week, for the month of November I’m going to review cooking manga. When I reviewed the first volume of Kitchen Princess, I said this about cooking manga: In my mind, cooking manga demonstrates everything that comics can be—all about great stories about something everyone does. I mean, let’s face it; everybody eats. Cooking manga is shonen, shojo, seinen, yaoi—it cuts across genres in ways that other types of stories don’t. I just think it’s cool how creators play with food and cooking to come up with so many different situations, characters, plots. Plus, there’s some inherent…
Because of our Thanksgiving holiday, American Football, and the Fall season, this is a big food month here in the States. So, for the month of November I’m going to review cooking manga. I love cooking manga. In my mind, cooking manga demonstrates everything that comics can be—all about great stories about something everyone does. I mean, let’s face it; everybody eats. We all do, and the popularity of television like Iron Chef and the Food Network, and books like , Eat, Pray, Love and In Defense of Food or Like Water for Chocolate, they all speak to something inherently dramatic and fascinating about food. Cooking manga is shonen, shojo, seinen, yaoi—it cuts across genres in ways that other types of stories don’t. I just think it’s cool how creators play with food and cooking to come up with so many different situations, characters, plots. Plus, there’s some inherent difficulties in representing food in comics—the visual pleasures of food are not easily re-created in black and white line drawings, and the obvious draws—smell and taste—are not available to the mangaka. Yet the best cooking manga make you hungry! For my first review, I’m talking about Kitchen Princess, volume 1: Publisher’s…
Yamaoka and his father Kaibara Yuzan, have never enjoyed an ideal father-son relationship. In fact, it’s about as far from ideal as possible, and when they start arguing about food–which they inevitably do–the sparks really fly. In this volume of Oishinbo, the subject of dispute is fish, starting with the question of whether mackerel can ever be truly good sashimi. Later, things come to a head during the “Salmon Match” which pits father against son in an epic contest to develop the best dish before a panel of judges. Will Yamaoka finally defeat Kaibara? Or will he once again be left in his father’s shadow? Written by Tetsu Kariya; Illustrated by Akira Hanasaki Publisher: Viz Media – Viz Signature Age Rating: Teen Genre: Food Price: $12.99 The overall premise of Oishinbo is that Yamaoka and his partner Kurita are compiling the “Ultimate Menu” of Japanese cuisine for the 100th anniversary of the publishers of Tozai News. Each volume of Viz’s compilation of this long running series is centered around a type of food. This volume is all about fish. The stories are episodic, and can be broken down into two types; Yamaoka helping someone out or putting someone in their…
Yamaoka and his father, Kaibara Yuzan, have never enjoyed an ideal father-son relationship. In fact, it’s about as far from ideal as possible, and when they start arguing about food–which they inevitably do–the sparks really fly. In this volume of Oishinbo the subject of dispute is fish, starting with the question of whether mackerel can ever be truly good sashimi. Later, things come to a head during the “Salmon Battle,” which pits father against son in an epic contest to develop the best dish before a panel of judges. Will Yamaoka finally defeat Kaibara? Or will he once again be left in his father’s shadow? Written by Tetsu Kariya; Illustrated by Akira Hanasaki Publisher: Viz Media Age Rating: Teen Genre: Food Price: $12.99 The overall premise of Oishinbo is that Yamaoka and his partner Kurita are compiling the “Ultimate Menu” of Japanese cuisine for the 100th anniversary of the publishers of Tozai News. Each volume of Viz’s compilation of this long running series is centered around a type of food. This volume is all about fish. The stories are episodic, and can be broken down into two types; Yamaoka helping someone out or putting someone in their place about food,…