Iron Wok Jan 9
Posted: December 26, 2007 Filed under: Iron Wok Jan Leave a comment »As I said, I prefer the shorter battles, but it kills me the way this volume slowly cracked through the goody-goody mask of Jan’s opponent to show he may be just as evil as Jan is. Jan’s working really hard to get the rest of the crowd to see the guy’s true nature. Of course, the crowd isn’t really appreciating his efforts, but he’s working on it all the same. The opponent is also not a real chef. It’s not revealed what his true nature is, but he’s likely some sort of herbalist or pharmacist. Jan can go blow for blow with him when it comes to making medicinal foods, but it’s amazing to me that the opponent can prepare food as delicious as Jan when he is not a chef. So it goes.
I didn’t quite understand that the battle was 5 rounds. I was worried after Jan lost one round, and I wasn’t sure how things stretched out as long as they did, but we pass the third round. Kiriko shows up after seeing Jan beaten so badly on TV at Gobancho, but Jan won’t let her swap places with him, so she winds up doing little more than Celine and the other trainee on the sidelines.
The series also provides some beautiful visuals. There’s a full-page illustration of Jan wielding a chainsaw like a maniac. There’s another compelling image which may be most of a page where Jan is holding a headless turtle and draining its blood into a little cup. Some of my personal favorites, which are not hard to slip in, include when Jan is waving his tongue at something, sometimes running it along a knife. He is truly an evil character.
This series is just beautiful.
