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Reviewed by Michael Aronson Variety. Western comic readers beg and complain for it, eastern comic readers bask in it. But even the average manga reader might pass up a series about competitive cooking. Yes, competitive cooking. It’s a cooking manga, perhaps the only one that’s been translated and published in the west. By all rights, it should only appeal to a restrictive audience – probably people who spend late night hours obsessed with the Food Network – and it can’t even be that good, can it? I mean, cooking, how can that be interesting reading material? Despite all logic, it is. It really, really is. Ask anyone who’s sampled the series and they’ll all tell you how great it is, and though they list reasons for why it’s so compelling, they still can’t quite figure it out. It’s just one of those crazy ideas that betray all formula and genre and work based on their own merits. This is Iron Wok Jan, and it’s insanely fun. Jan Akiyama is the title character. He’s the newest employee at Gabancho Restaurant, the most famed restaurant for Chinese cuisine. He joined the cooking staff there based on the dying wishes of his grandfather, once known as the Master of Chinese Cuisine. Except his employment isn’t exactly a typical application and interview – he walks right in as the restaurant is about to close one night, orders a meal, insults it and dumps it, gets out his cooking gear and shows up the entire staff with his supreme skill. And then rubs it in their faces. What makes IWJ so compelling is the extremism of the characters. Jan is remorselessly competitive and never has a nice thing to say about his coworkers. Kiriko is the granddaughter of the restaurant’s owner and Jan’s peer in age and rank, but she’s also nearly his equal in cooking skill. The two clash at every possible opportunity and might make a great couple if they weren’t so eager to dunk the other’s head in boiling water all the time. Okonogi, their other peer, is an amateur through and through, but he serves as a foil to the intensity of the other two. Now, I enjoy eating, but I hate cooking and know nothing about food. Whether or not the dishes described here are actually real (though I’m sure they are), Saijyo infuses so much detail into each recipe and the meticulous process by which the best results are achieved and names each and every ingredient. While this seems dull in theory, it’s utterly fascinating in execution. You WILL get hungry reading this book. This first volume sets the stage and background of the characters, though doesn’t quite give them a goal to work for yet. Each chapter involves a new trial through a different dish and a new customer to satisfy, ranging from a notorious food critic to the heads of the restaurant. The stakes aren’t as great as they become later in the series, but this impressive start nevertheless feels significant. The art is also much more detailed and expressive than the average manga style; it’s not so much realistic as it feels more fully rendered, almost like the quality of animation stills in black and white. There are a few manga conventions to the storytelling, but its execution is really unique and never inaccessible to westerners or non-gourmets. It’s a crime not to sample this series. I’ve only read a few volumes further, but the quality never deviates and the formula never gets old. Like I said, it’s unclear how and why it succeeds as well as it does, but the fact that it succeeds is all that matters. Comment on this review of Iron Wok Jan v1 on the Manga Life Forums. |
19 November 2008
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