Mixed Vegetables 3
Posted: July 22, 2009 Filed under: Mixed Vegetables 3 Comments »Ayumi Komura – Viz – 2009 – 8 volumes
This continues to be a sort of lukewarm, yet enjoyable series through this volume. It’s still mostly talk about Hanayu realizing her dream of becoming a sushi chef, and she takes the first steps of telling her family and apprenticing at Hayato’s place. There’s lots of drama involved with the former point, considering her father wants her to take over the family business, but you know how dreams are in shoujo manga… they always come through in the end.
Strangely, romance doesn’t actually come up until the end of the volume, and then it randomly hits Hanayu that she really does like Hayato. We get no hints as to whether the feeling’s mutual yet, but there’s the general direction for that. The moment where Hanayu realizes her feelings is very cute, I must admit. I also did like the minor plot point about her best friend being angry with her for ditching her as moral support in favor of Hayato. It’s rarely mentioned in shoujo manga when best friends are ditched in favor of boys, so it’s nice to see functioning friendships like this one.
Lamely, Hayato pushed so hard for Hanayu to tell her family, and then made absolutely no progress when it came to telling his own father about wanting to become a pastry chef. Unfortunately, I know exactly where all this is going (the two will wind up working in their respective shops and married, carrying on the businesses of their choice), and the characters and situations aren’t quite interesting enough at this point to make the story compelling. I’ve got one more volume though, so I’ll give the series another chance to see if perhaps there will be a bit more drama when Hayato’s time to break away from his family comes.
This series is also only the second manga I’ve read that’s invoked durian fruit (the first being Iron Wok Jan). Hilariously, durian candy is used as a prank and given to unsuspecting recipients as a gift in the author’s notes. That’s about the best joke I’ve ever heard. I note this only because I hate the fruit with such passion that my stomach tightens a bit just thinking about the smell. Alas, it was the strongest reaction I had while reading the volume.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
I used to occasionally drink durian drinks, though I can’t remember if I ever ate the fruit straight. Durian is not a favorite, but I don’t find the flavor revolting either. And I know what you mean about something like that being the strongest reaction the book got out of you. I’ve had moments like that when reading.
I’ve only ever eaten it raw. We ate one of the sections of the fruit after we opened it, and put the rest away later to make into a pudding. We threw it away after a couple hours though, because the smell was just revolting. It’s a pretty magnificent fruit, aside from the smell. It’s huge and hard to get the sections open to pull the fruit out.
Do the drinks still have the smell, out of curiosity? I imagine they must.
It’s been a long time, and I can’t remember. But the smell probably wasn’t very strong because the drinks came in a closed plastic container and had plenty of ice.