Tetsu Kariya

Listen, the characters are one-note and so are the stories - so what? It's fun and silly and entertaining, plus it goes into surprising depth about Japanese food and food culture. The drawings are an interesting mix, with the main characters looking very anime and the others drawn in a more realistic style. The scenery and especially the food are likewise very realistically drawn.

I think that manga isn't really my thing because drawing doesn't mean much to me. As it stands, I enjoyed this book just fine, and found several parcels of information very useful during my travels in Japan. However, the art really does play a large part in the story and that's just not interesting to me. If you are into drawing/manga, this will probably register at least one extra star for you.

A highly educational, if dated dive into Japanese cuisine. The protagonist is an unsympathetic, abrasive, mansplaining, misogynist so that is off-putting. Besides that, the content is well researched and fascinating. Unless you are a chef or a serious Japanophile, the information will likely be too obscure to be useful. This volume has some highly nationalistic views, especially a bizarre editorial about Chinese and Korean ways of eating rice.

graphic fiction/japanese cuisine. Like a cooking show in a book, sit down for an hour and be entertained as well as educated. Each volume stands alone/doesn't have to be read in order.