Not Love But Delicious Foods

 Not Love But Delicious Foods 

by Yoshinaga Fumi

https://yenpress.com/not-love-but-delicious-foods-make-me-so-happy/

Yoshinaga Fumi is one of my favorite mangaka. I don't care what the subject matter is, if she wrote it I will buy it. While her range of stories has broadened Yoshinaga started out as a writer of Boys Love (BL) works and that history is folded into this title. The protagonist of Not Love But Delicious Foods makes a living writing BL. Each chapter is her and her assistant going about their daily work and ends with a meal at a restaurant where they discuss the food. The final page is information as to the location of the restaurant. Manga where a real restaurant is part of each story is not unique to this title but this is the first such work to be translated into English. Once Japan starts allowing tourists in again I'll try to check some of these places out.

Wakako Zake

Wakako Zake

When Wakako gets off work she loves to find a place to eat and have a drink to unwind from the day. She carefully makes her choices as the food and drink must be paired well. However this is not pretentious high cuisine, she eats at neighborhood places, the kind you can drop into on a whim. Each chapter of the manga is short, only a few pages, but manages to fold in a good story without any fluff.

Then there is an anime, which is also short, each episode is just a few minutes of delight.

Then there is the live action drama, the episodes are regular length but still preserve the fun of the original manga. There are six seasons of the drama, I hope to see all of it.

The manga is distributed by Media Do and is available as an e-book on several sites, I get mine from Apple.

The anime is on Crunchyroll:

https://beta.crunchyroll.com/series/GRGG9K1PR/wakakozake

The drama is also on Crunchyroll:

https://beta.crunchyroll.com/series/GYK5X214R/wakakozake-drama

Thanks go to to Deb Aoki who recommended this title in the Mangasplaining podcast. Without that recommendation I may have never seen it.

For more on the podcast see:

https://www.mangasplaining.com

mystery + mystery + manga + mystery/manga = 5

I have just added three mysteries plus two manga, however one manga is an adaptation of one of the mysteries. I hope these provide interesting entertainment for readers.

Edogawa Rampo
- Strange Tale of Panorama Island [novel]

Maruo Suehiro
- Strange Tale of Panorama Island [manga]

Matsumoto Seicho
- Pro Bono (novel)

Yasuhiko Yoshikazu
- Mobile Suit Gundam The Origin (Manga)

Yokomizo Seishi
- The Inugami Clan (Novel)

We have lost one of our best

Manga Translation Pioneer Toren Smith Passes Away

Toren was always helpful when I had a question or wanted feedback on something I was writing. He gave me a generous, and he insisted honest, blurb for my first book The Anime Companion.

His name on a translation was enough to make me buy it, he chose what he translated and the choices were excellent.

Toren was also instrumental in showing anime to many San Francisco Bay Area science fiction fans at BayCon.

Yasuhiro Takeda in his The Notenki Memoirs has an amusing tale regarding Toren staying at a Gainax staff residence. One day the other occupants of this all male enclave were started to see something that had never happened before, an attractive young woman leave Toren's room in the morning.

For a list of what he worked on see the entry on him in the Anime News Network Encyclopedia.

Ôoku

Recently read volume 2 of Ôoku.

This is an alternative history of Edo Period Japan in which a severe disease has hit the country that kills most males during their adolescence. Japan is able to close it's borders before the Europeans find out and a new society grows where women take a dominant role and men are treated with great care. In this Japan the shogun is now a woman.

In the first volume you are introduced to this Japan, in the second it goes back to the early history when the red pox was fairly new. What's fun for me is that many of the characters are from history and the author has done considerable research on the persons and customs of the times.

Oishinbo A La Carte

Oishinbo A La Carte is a manga series being published in translation by Viz Media. The basic story is about Yamaoka Shirô, and Kurita Yûko who have been assigned to a special anniversary project for the newspaper they work for. Their assignment is called The Ultimate Menu and their job is to research food and write about it. Add Shirô's knowledge of food and drink plus a years long conflict with his father and a variety of interesting situations and this is one interesting manga.

What they are doing which is unusual is they are not issuing the volumes in order, rather they are picking individual chapters and story arcs related to a theme and putting them together. This may sound dubious but it works as the reader gets to focus on one aspect of Japanese cuisine at a time. Hopefully some day we shall see a translation in the regular order but until then we have one interesting series to enjoy.

The first volume is devoted in general to Japanese cuisine so we get to see a variety to get us into the swing of things, then comes the second volume Sake. The sake volume is not exactly what many Westerners would expect as sake to the Japanese means any alcoholic beverage rather than Nihonshu, the brewed traditional alcoholic beverage of Japan. But don't let that put you off there is plenty about Nihonshu as well as other Japanese alcoholic beverages. You will even learn about proper storage and use with foods.

This is a title I think would work well with any adult manga collection, and would be popular with some younger readers.

Volume 3 will be Ramen & Gyoza (due May 19), and 4 will be Fish, Sushi,& Sashimi (due July 14)

Used manga in Berkeley

Occasionally I post on the state of used manga in some shops in Berkeley California.

Moe's Book on Telegraph has added a large amount of titles recently as has Half Price Books on Shattuck. In both stores the shelves are overflowing.

Moe's is about 4 blocks from the University of California Berkeley and Half Price is one block from the Berkeley BART station near The Other Change of Hobbit science fiction book shop, Anime V and Comic Relief.

Also on Telegraph is Shakespeare and Company which has a growing selection.

So check these out for good prices, you may find something you had not checked out as worthy of buying.

New Barefoot Gen volumes

Last Gasp has been publishing the new translation of Barefoot Gen. Yesterday I picked up the two latest volumes, 5 ands 6, at their booth at WonderCon in San Francisco.

These two volumes have never before been translated into English. There will be ten volumes in all when the series is over.

It will be a little while before they hit stores so dig out your copies of volumes 1-4 and re-read them, then get the newer ones.