Iron Wok Jan 25
July 24, 2009
Shinji Saijyo – DrMaster – 2007 – 27 volumes
This volume was kind of a downer, but I knew it would be composed entirely of exposition leading up to the final judging of the competition. The real problem I had was with all the recaps. It is in the nature of a weekly series to want to remind the reader what’s going on, but there are literally two things that happen in this volume. Ransei Koh reveals his approach to 21st century cuisine (Kiriko and Jan having already done so last volume), and then we see how the three of them are preparing the meat. There’s one or two other revelations in there (the Ransei Koh part at the beginning takes a lot longer look at him than I give it credit for), but for the most part, amid all this, we are reminded again and again what everyone’s approach is, and how each is preparing the meat after every single character sequence. This has been going on all series, and it can be annoying when you get a slow volume like this, but I don’t think it’s ever been this bad.
The volume ends with Jan realizing that he’s made a horrible mistake in not making sure he was the first to serve his dish. I secretly suspect his technique is setting a group of flies to the meat so that what looks like fat deposits are actually maggots, or fly eggs, or something. I guess we’ll see.
Also, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the bizarre slang and pop culture references that entered this volume of the manga. Aside from the slang, the beginning of the volume was stuck on an analogy that kept comparing the various styles of cooking to the show “Extreme Makeover.”
July 27, 2009 at 7:00 am
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