By Tetsu Kariya & Akira Hanasaki
Published by Viz
Rating: Teen

This is a biased review. I’m convinced someone at Viz looked into my brain and saw how badly I wanted to read Oishinbo in English. I purchased several books out of the 102 volume series in Japanese and marveled at the detailed renderings of food. “Check it out!” I squealed to my mildly disinterested coworkers in 2005, “There’s manga about everything! This is practically food porn!” I had zero hope anyone would ever bring the series to the U.S.—it was just too long, and who besides me would ever buy it?

In Japan, Oishinbo was republished into a 40+ volume series “A La Carte,” arranging the story not chronologically, but thematically by cuisine (Italian, French, etc.). Viz hand-picked seven volumes from the Japanese A La Carte editions for the U.S. market.

Oishinbo is part of Viz’s Signature series, and as such, the books are larger than the regular trim size, cost about $4 more, and are presented with French flaps and two color pages featuring recipes from the volume. Each book has a bonus essay by author Tetsu Kariya.

The French flaps and a quick summary at the beginning of each book help catch us up to the plot; Yamaoka Shiro and Kurita Yuko are two newspaper writers faced with the task of writing the “Ultimate Menu” for the 100th anniversary of the Tozai News. The “Ultimate Menu” is as confusing to me as “The Hand of God” in Hikaru No Go. Will it be an actual meal which is eventually served or just a list of fancy foods in the newspaper? Are Shiro and Yuko writing a series of columns about their search? Occasionally someone higher up at the newspaper yells at them for wasting the newspaper’s money on expensive meals.

Shiro and Yuko go from one delicious meal to the next, making bets with chefs and gourmands and settling various culinary scores. In one chapter, a food critic who’s lived abroad too long claims that sashimi isn’t really “cooking” because almost nothing is done to the food—and therefore Japanese cuisine can’t be taken seriously. Shiro and Yuko manage to set him straight over some pine-skinned seabream. In another story, an American named Jeff insults a sushi restaurant, and Shiro claims that in one week Jeff will be able to make better sashimi himself. After a great training montage, it turns out even a foreigner can cook Japanese food. One particularly dull chapter glorifies chopsticks—again, to a Japanese person who’s lived abroad for too long.

Volume one covers “Japanese cuisine,” which is a bit broad of a topic for one volume. Volume two hangs together a bit better thematically. “Sake” is Japanese for “alcohol,” so volume two covers all alcohol and not just Japanese rice wine/sake/nihonsou. In one story, a coworker from Tozai won’t transfer to France because he’s afraid to drink champagne. An alcoholic liquor connoisseur gets a humorous attitude adjustment involving Okinawan awamori liquor. In the last and most serious chapter Shiro puts an unfunny alcoholic on the wagon.

Characters who have become too “Westernized” and are disparaging of all things Japanese are a recurring theme, particularly in volume one. Volume two contains a lot of Japanese shame—tax laws and sake labeling standards seem to have put the entire sake market in peril. Fortunately, it ends on a positive note.

Oishinbo has been published continually since 1983, so some of the stories seem dated. Part of volume two happens during the Japanese recession of the 1990s, but reading it now, in the current global recession, it seems more fresh and relevant than it would have one year ago.

I absolutely adore the translators notes, but there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. I finished volume one without noticing the translation notes and read them all at once, which was tedious. Reading volume two I flipped back and forth for the notes, but this marred my reading experience. I would prefer to have the notes presented at the end of each chapter.

When I go to Japan it’s primarily to eat Japanese food. I may have become a foodie, and as such, Oishinbo combines my interest in tasty food, Japanese cuisine, and manga. I’m biased.

I am learning Japanese, but I’m worried I’ll never know enough kanji to read Oishinbo in its original language. I’m willing to forgive a lot to be able to read this right now in English. I can forgive Viz’s unattractive black and white covers, for example. Not only am I willing to shell out the extra $4, I’m even buying extra “loaner” copies of each volume—someone else needs to read this so we can talk about it!

Volumes one and two of Oishinbo are available now.