Not Love But Delicious Foods Make Me So Happy!
Posted: December 20, 2010 Filed under: Not Love But Delicious Foods Make Me So Happy! 3 Comments »Fumi Yoshinaga – Yen Press – 2010 – 1 volume
I do love Fumi Yoshinaga, and I love every new volume of her work in English. Even the series I liked the least, The Moon and Sandals, was still pretty decent, and that was her debut work. She could write manga stock quotes and I would probably still like it.
Not being a “foodie,” that’s exactly what this is for me. I actually started skipping the middle parts of the chapters towards the end of the book because they stopped making dinner conversation and I just did not care about the food. There are still three Yoshinaga series unlicensed in English, and it’s quite strange that one of the ones that made it over here first is essentially a manga version of a Japanese restaurant guide.
Don’t get me wrong. I love that it’s semi-autobiographical. It stars mangaka “F-mi Y-naga” and her assistants and friends. Y-naga’s choice of manga genre is yaoi manga, as stated on the first page. Admittedly, it’s been awhile since Yoshinaga’s drawn a yaoi manga, unless Ooku sort of counts (I don’t think it does). There’s a disclaimer at the front that says all the people and events are fictitious, but it’s hard not to imagine the stories as little snapshots into Yoshinaga’s life. There are some really funny and awkward conversations among Y-naga’s dinner guests, and they cover topics from employment to marriage prospects to childhood memories and embarrassing outings. All the chapters are about eight pages long, and all consist of a page or two of introduction, then a meal shared among friends described in great detail, usually with a somewhat personal dinner conversation framing the story.
The stories are frequently funny, sometimes touching, and it is interesting to see all the character relationships and who knows who. But it’s mostly a food porn, and if you’re not into that part of it… well, it’s not really worth it. It’s almost entirely composed of talking heads with no backgrounds, and frequently the characters are drawn vaguely “cartoony.” And the talking heads just talk about food all the time. The only artistic quirk I got a kick out of was the complete transformation Y-naga went through when she went from frumpy manga artist to made-up dinner date.
If you’re interested in the restaurants the characters eat at, there’s information at the end of each chapter, along with price ranges and recommendations for groups. And the meals and food are described in exhaustive detail that almost puts Oishinbo to shame. Since I’m not going to be in Tokyo anytime soon, or ever, I suppose I just didn’t appreciate it.
The fact I finished this is a testament to just how much I like Fumi Yoshinaga, and how she can add a little charm to even uninteresting topics. And there’s plenty to like if you’re really into food. There’s a wide range of restaurants covered, including Western/pub-style, Japanese, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Korean.
But I’m not. Sadly, this is at the bottom of all the work I’ve read by Yoshinaga. I do like the ridiculously long title, though, and I do appreciate the fact Yen Press licensed it and published it in English. And that William Flanagan translated it, no less. It has a lot of end notes and just about everything you could want on food. It’s just… light on story. I’m going to pick Ooku back up now.
I am a little worried about how this volume bodes for Kinou Nabi Tabeta?, a current and as-of-yet unlicensed series of hers. I hope it’s more Antique Bakery than it is this.
Oh! Kinou Nabi Tabeta is a Kodansha title, so I’m feeling really good that it will get licensed since Kodansha USA announced a bunch of stuff just recently. I have high hopes for that one to be released since nobody can resist to release a Fumi Yoshinaga. Kodansha USA would be stupid not to. I mean, they’re re-releasing Gon for gosh sakes!
Gon baffles me, honestly. I’m sure it’s great for kids, and I’ve never read it myself… but three different English publishers? That’s really bizarre.
You’re probably right about Kinou Nabi Tabeta’s chances of getting licensed, too. I’m still pretty sure we’ll get to see A Child’s Temperature and the other Butler series that hasn’t been translated, too. I’d read anything by her, and I’m pretty sure she’s got a sizable enough fanbase that publishers keep picking up her stuff for English release, so the odds seem good.
I’m totally not a foodie either. However, I liked “Not Love But Delicious Foods” somewhat better than you did, if only for tidbits such as the chapter where Y-naga was amazed to discover that one of her old college friends was gay (which everyone else in the club they both belonged to back then had apparently figured out years ago), and her amusing apology to him for having made her living doing manga about gay men when “I don’t know the first thing about gay culture!” (If an artist like Yoshinaga, whose gay characters are three-dimensional individuals whose correlation with the often-stereotyped standard yaoi tropes is usually pretty fleeting, feels the need to apologize, the many yaoi mangaka who put much less effort into characterization and plausibility should be prostrating themselves in contrition in the heart of Nichome.)
And then there’s the fact that Y-naga’s old friend and live-in (albeit not terribly talented or diligent) assistant S-hara bears a striking resemblance in both looks and, especially, personality to the tactless resident know-it-all otaku from the high school manga club in “Flower of Life,” the later volumes of which could be somewhat truthfully described as Yoshinaga’s answer to “Genshiken.” True, S-hara doesn’t seem to be particularly otaku-ish about anything except retaining his freedom to tell people off when he thinks they’ve stepped out of line–an even more self-destructive trait for someone sporadically attempting to get a “regular” steady job in Japan than it would be in the U.S. But the way he casually tells Y-naga stuff like “This manga isn’t important enough to remember” to erase the pencil lines before applying the screen tones, when she’s not only one of his oldest friends, but his combination boss and meal ticket, was hilariously reminiscent of the way the arrogant manga-club character in “Flower of Life” behaves. At some points, I felt as if I were getting a behind-the-scenes view of how the “real” Yoshinaga came up with some of the “Flower of Life” scenes where the otaku busybody keeps telling the most promising artist in the club that she’s doing shoujo manga–and, eventually, even BL–all wrong.
Although I really liked volume one of “Kinou Nabi Tabeta” (which supposedly translates as “What Did You Eat Yesterday?”) when I read it in scanlations, on balance, I found “Not Love But Delicious Foods…” more consistently interesting. “Kinou Nabi Tabeta” ‘s central gay couple–Shiro, an arrogant, good-looking lawyer secretly obsessed with gourmet cooking, and his easygoing, rather schlumpy hairdresser lover, who at one point startles everyone by proudly announcing that he usually tops the seme-ishly haughty Shiro in bed–is interesting and expertly characterized. Unfortunately, as the series continues, it seems that more and more of each chapter is devoted to Shiro’s planning and cooking elaborate meals, with his boyfriend often making only a brief token appearance at the end to exclaim over the delicious results. A number of the chapters from volume two struck me as basically dramatized cooking sequences–less like Yoshinaga’s less food-focused work, or even the more balanced earlier installments of the same series, than “What if Julia Child were a gay male Japanese lawyer who occasionally had a conversation with his boyfriend or co-workers before and/or after coming up with some elaborately creative way to get three days’ worth of meals out of the burdock root that was on sale at the supermarket?” Since the chapters that are increasingly full of this not-much-fun-for-non-foodies stuff tend to be at least twice as long as the ones in “Not Love But Delicious Foods…” (in which the foodie characters at least interact and argue with each other somewhat even when they’re just going on and on about food), I can sort of see why English-language publishers might consider even an oddity like the one-volume “Not Love…” less of a commercial risk.