Title: Food Wars! Volume 1
Author: Yuto Tsukuda
Artist: Shun Saeki
Genre: Action / Cooking / Comedy / School
Year Published: 2012
Year Read: 2017
Series: Food Wars! #1
Publisher: VIZ Media
Source: Library
Content Rating: Ages 16+ (Sexual Imagery)
Buy on: Amazon // Book Depository
Now, I have been a huge fan of anime that deals with cooking and I had
decided that I wanted to try my hand into a manga series that deals with food! What luck I had when I picked up this popular
manga series called “Food Wars! Volume One” by Yuto Tsukuda along with artwork by Shun
Saeki and I was quite impressed with the bizarre creativity of this manga!
The story starts off with a young teenage boy named Soma Yukihira who
works at his father’s family restaurant in a poor part of town and yet, the
family restaurant is well known for their extremely tasty dishes. One day however, Soma’s father decided to
sell the family restaurant and send Soma to a classy culinary school. At first, Soma is skeptical about all this
since his major goal in life is to surpass his father in cooking. But, when Soma’s father mentions that if he
passes this school, then Soma might have a chance at surpassing him, Soma
decides to give this high class culinary school a chance!
Can Soma graduate
from this high class culinary school?
Read this
volume to find out!
Wow! I have to admit that this was one of the most unusual yet creative
manga that I had read that dealt with cooking!
Yuto Tsukuda had done a great job at writing this story as I
found myself being immersed with the bizarre cooking world established in this
volume and how each character treats graduating from this high class culinary
school as serious business. I also loved
the fact that we get some kind of “Toriko” vibe here as this series
may not be as action heavy as “Toriko,” but it still treats the
cooking scenes as scenes you would get out of an action movie!
I really loved the way that Yuto Tsukuda wrote each character,
especially Soma Yukihira, who is probably one of the most interesting
characters in this story! Even though
Soma can be a little rude towards other people at times, he is always
determined to make the best dishes no matter how much the odds are stacked up
against him and I always enjoyed this determined attiude that Soma possesses
since it makes him a really likable character.
Shun Saeki’s artwork is fantastic to look at as the characters
are gorgeously drawn and I loved seeing some of the lighting around the
characters as it makes them glow on the pages.
I also enjoyed seeing the various tasty dishes that are shown in this
volume, such as the image of Soma making a bacon wrapped potato dish, which
looked quite tasty and unique!
The reason why I took off half a star from the rating was because of the
sexual imagery that came up whenever the characters are experiencing Soma’s
cooking and you can see images of the characters imagining themselves halfway
naked whenever they are describing the taste of the foods they sampled. Now, I usually don’t mind seeing sexual
imagery depending on whether or not the story is a romance or something of the
sort, but because this is a series about cooking, it just felt a bit too out of
place in this setting and I sometimes cringed a bit whenever the sexual images
come up in the story.
Overall, “Food Wars! Volume One” is a fun volume for anyone who loves manga
that deals with cooking and action and I am definitely going to try to check
out the next volume in this series!
You might also like:
Black Cat: A Carefree Tomorrow Volume 20 by Kentaro Yabuki
