Oishinbo 5: Vegetables
September 21, 2009
Tetsu Kariya / Akira Hanasaki – Viz – 2009 – 102+ volumes
The Viz edition is a thematically-arranged “best of” version of the series, with each volume featuring short stories focused on a different topic.
Once again, I found myself drawn into the volume despite not having any interest whatsoever in the topic (I do not eat vegetables). This time, I didn’t really find myself wanting to consume the dishes as I saw them prepared and described, but I was still fascinated with the preparation, the distinctions between good and bad dishes and veggies, and the strange environmentalist messages and frequent stories involving children turned on to vegetables due to Yamaoka’s excellent cooking.
One of the interesting things about these books is the variety of stories they contain. On one hand, I think the longer, multi-chapter stories are nice because their themes tend to be more developed and their descriptions more thorough. But I think my favorite stories are the single chapter non-sequitor stories that tend to cover topics further off the beaten path. I like that the topic of each volume has so far had so much variety that the stories have covered many aspects of whatever it is the volume is about. But frequently there tends to be focus on one type of dish or cuisine, especially with longer stories, with the one-shot stories thrown in for variety. I’m sure this is an issue with the series itself and the fact it can come back to revisit the exact same dishes and ingredients again and again since it is now over 100 volumes long. While it’s interesting to see the variety of ways the same thing can be handled, like I said, I think I like the variety better. This possible repetition-over-time theory of mine was mostly developed while reading this volume, which really does have A LOT of stories about the use of pesticides. Then again, almost all the stories seemed to take place before Yamaoka married his partner, so they couldn’t have been written that far apart. I think.
Anyway, after saying all that, it’s worth mentioning that this volume was better about variety of stories than the others I read were. Eggplant was covered a couple times, but the analysis of good and bad eggplant was very interesting both times. My favorite stories were a short one at the very end about organic vegetables and a little girl enjoying an old woman’s naturally-grown carrots and a longer story towards the beginning about a contest between Yamaoka and his father for preparing turnips and radishes. I liked the look at the different ingredients in that story a lot. There were stories that focused on the negative health issues surrounding the eating of pesticide-sprayed vegetables, ones that focused on organic gardens, and mostly they had a lot on a variety of vegetables in general. One chapter was on asparagus specifically, and one had a long scene where the preparation of spinach was discussed at length.
As I said, I do not eat vegetables and have no interest in preparing them whatsoever, but once again, volumes of this series make for fascinating reads. It’s not exactly entertaining, but I enjoy it for covering real topics with a level of detail not present in any other manga series.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
September 21, 2009 at 12:00 pm
*gasp* You mean you don’t go to the farmer’s market every week, building a rapport with Your Own Farmer while picking out in-season, local, organic produce in order to escape the evils of the agricultural-industrial complex which is poisoning humanity and the planet. The horror!
Actually, I don’t do the above either, at least not regularly. But I most certainly do eat vegetables, and I’ve been really looking forward to this volume because it’s dedicated to something I actually do eat.
September 22, 2009 at 2:24 am
Yeah, the parts where the characters constantly talk about organically grown vegetables and the chapters where bad things happen to people that eat mass-produced vegetables were a little ridiculous. I was hoping they’d talk about the cost comparison between the two and how well a corner store did after switching to organically-grown vegetables and alienating the customers with higher prices. Unfortunately, that never came up. I do go to local fruit markets whenever I visit my parents, but I don’t know that anything there is terribly organic in a Whole Foods kind of way.
So far, the Ramen and Gyoza volume has been the only one that’s covered something I eat. I think the next volume covers rice, which I’m looking forward to.
September 22, 2009 at 9:01 am
To be fair, the pricing of food in this country (and most of the world) is messed up because of agricultural subsidies, which are most likely to paid to large non-organic agribusinesses, and least likely to be paid to small organic farmers. However, I agree with you that it’s hard to ask people to eat all organic farmers’ market-style produce with such a price disparity. About 50% of my diet is organic, and that’s about as far as I’m willing to push it. Many poor people can’t even eat fruits and vegetables because stores in poor neighborhoods often either don’t carry produce or carry produce at significantly higher prices (partially because of … well, I won’t go political). For those people, even mass-produced fresh produce would be an improvement.
I also just ate some gyoza myself, but it’s been years since I’ve eaten ramen.
September 24, 2009 at 4:59 am
I just read this (having completely missed the first four – trying to track them down) and liked it, although the whole anti-pesticide thing came on strongly enough to make me want to send the author a large fruit basket covered in black spot and mildew.
The jumping all over the place was a bit confusing, especially as the opening made me think there’d be much more about the competition. Has Viz said how much they’re going to publish? A time-line or tagging the stories somehow would’ve been nice.
I also really liked the eggplant story. I want to try those recipes…
September 24, 2009 at 11:59 pm
Viz hasn’t really commented on how many volumes will come out as far as I know. I keep wondering how many topics the volumes will cover, though I suppose if the series is popular enough, there are probably lots of other vegetable stories and whatnot to compile into other volumes.
This volume was kind of weird in that the competition element was downplayed. Usually there are two or three storylines per volume where he has a food battle with his father, it was strange that there was only one story here. I kind of missed them when I didn’t have them.
There are similar messages in other volumes (watch where you buy your sashimi because some chefs don’t cut the fish right, buy privately made sake instead of mass-produced because big companies do it wrong, et cetera), but this was the hardest I’ve ever seen it hit those themes. It was a little tiring after awhile, and yeah, made me want to go and pick up a peck of blackberries from the corner store and pop them in my mouth, regardless of quality or whether or not they’d been washed.
September 25, 2009 at 9:17 pm
“…to make me want to send the author a large fruit basket covered in black spot and mildew.”
I can tell some personal stories about my experiences with organic vegetables that would be about as unpleasant. Though the strangest things can be blessings in disguise – in one case, it turned out to be a good thing that I had been vomiting all night. While I still think that, given equal prices and quality, organic is better, my experience contradicts a lot of the claims.
September 27, 2009 at 10:36 pm
You know, I can’t think of a single instance where it was a good thing I was vomiting all night.
September 27, 2009 at 11:42 pm
It started a chain of events which had a happy ending.
October 3, 2009 at 9:45 am
Viz has said they’re doing 7 volumes – the last, on Izakaya (pub food) will be out in January.
October 4, 2009 at 3:06 am
Oh, thanks for that! I had seen the solicitations out to the pub food volume, but I wasn’t sure how much came after that.