by Yuto Tsukuda
Illustrated by Shun Saeki
Translated by Adrienne Beck
3.5 stars
Hilarious and weird. It’s an odd one to rate.
I’m not a huge fan service person, but I love the cooking aspect. I have watched the anime previously so I knew what I was getting into. For those unfamiliar with the series, there are exaggerated scenes of foodgasms in which people’s clothes fly off and they roll around in ecstasy (or absolutely horror) after tasting food. I will say again… hilarious and weird.
For the most part, the sexualization is played off for laughs in these over-the-top scenes. There is one up-skirt shot outside of the fantasy sequences.
Storywise, I love this. The cooking competitions are so interesting. I especially love when they go into detailed explanations about why a dish worked, the technique they used, and how they got their inspiration. That was also one of my favorite aspects of the show.
This volume includes a recipe for furikake rice.
These books are so weird but it’s easy to get caught up in the story. I didn’t find the fan service sequences quite as intense as in the anime because you can spend as little or as much time on those pages as you want. Odd border of funny and creepy.
I’ll definitely still keep reading these because I do love the story.