Publisher: Yen Press
Volumes: 1/1 (Complete), OOP but not hard to find
Josei, Yaoi Interest
Genre: Food, Memoirs
Summary: When Fumi Yoshinaga isn’t working her intense life of constant manga deadlines or catching up on sleep, the one thing she lives for is food. Particularly luxurious fine dining. She gets a side job drawing this series of short manga introducing restaurants around the Tokyo area, including ones she knows and loves. The main focus of the restaurant recommendations are Asian cuisine like Sushi, Korean food, Chinese Dim Sum and Vietnamese food, but there’s also some French and Italian cuisine and French pastries as well. The other half of the story is about the life of Fumi Yoshinaga, and her conversations with her manga assistants, friends and other acquaintances while they talk about the food, and their lives.
Review: This manga isn’t at all what I had thought it would be, I was hoping for more of an Antique Bakery-like story that centers around food but also has its own story too. Instead this manga is predominantly a series of rave reviews of Ms. Yoshinaga’s favorite fine dining restaurants with a few more casual eateries mixed in, such as a bagel shop and a bakery. While the various foods are drawn with lavish detail and the descriptions of the foods sound really delicious, the obvious downside is that all the places she recommends are in Tokyo. And the original manga was published in Japan in 2005, so by now many of those places will have closed or changed menu or dropped in quality and etc. etc. And that aside many of the places she recommends are very expensive menu courses as well. Which is kind of unfortunately not going to be interesting to a lot of readers.
The other side of the story is an interesting glimpse into the life of a manga artist and Ms. Yoshinaga’s life in particular. I think the most interesting short chapter is where she apologizes to a friend of hers who she just found out is a real gay man. She apologizes for making a living drawing manga with gay themes but not actual real gay themes that have nothing to do with real gay culture. But he doesn’t mind. And a lot of the rest of the manga has a sort of unintentional theme of marriage as she is in her early 30’s and a lot of her friends are getting married or talking about wanting to get married. She draws herself and depicts herself in a very self-deprecating way, and with a sense of humor, but sometimes I found it too self-deprecating. Especially when she draws herself looking like a troll without makeup or compares herself to a middle aged man and so on.
The closest thing to a story this manga has is probably the focus on one of her assistants, S-hara. They live together, but are just friends and roommates. There’s a sort of a minor side plot about him moving out and trying to find another job, but things don’t go the way they planned.
Recommended: All in all, this one volume collection of restaurant reviews by famous Yaoi mangaka Fumi Yoshinaga will probably not be of interest to most readers, unless they are interested in a glimpse of her life. Also like one review I read said, these stories are more enjoyable if you read one short chapter once in a while. If you binge them all they’re all kind of very alike.
Age Rating: PG
Other Works from this Mangaka (from Most to Least Popular):
- Gerard and Jacques (Yaoi)
- Antique Bakery (Shoujo/Josei)
- Ichigenme - The First Class is Civil Law (Yaoi)
- Ooku (Josei)
- What Did You Eat Yesterday? (Yaoi)
- Lovers in the Night (Yaoi)
- Moon and Sandals (Yaoi)
- Don't Say Anything More, Darling (Yaoi)
- Truly, Kindly (Yaoi)
- Solfege (Yaoi)
- Flower of Life (Shoujo/Josei)
- All My Darling Daughters (Josei)
- Garden Dreams (Josei)
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