SHOKU KING

DESCRIPTION

CHAPTERS

MANGA Slice of LifeSuper Shoku King

REVIEWS

• 

  Boreduser

  80/100
  Episodic food manga with a simple premise.

  Shoku King

  Episodic stories I've always found difficult to talk about. The general idea of a story being wiped clean after an initial conflict and characters and events not being able to be addressed later. It stifles character growth and ruins tension. There are upsides to episodic stories as well. Since the tension and characters aren't the focus, the story can focus on something else, such as world building and interpersonal character relationships. Shoku King is a pseudo-episodic story. It's similar to Lone Wolf and Cub in that the bulk of the story is episodic in nature, then the latter half tries to tie everything in the episodic portion together for one big finale.

  Shoku King is all about the culinary arts. Specifically what it means to be a chef. The main character, Toshizo Kitakata, is a restaurant revival specialist. He goes about to restaurants where he sees a spark of life left in the chef's food and helps them get back on their feet through seemingly ridiculous training. This short summary is pretty much the entirety of the 27 volumes of this manga. Toshizo Kitakata will go to a restaurant, eat some food, say how it's bad, berate the chef, and then help them somehow. Repeat until the near end. There truly isn't much beyond this extremely simple premise and formula. You would think then that this gets repetitive and boring. Maybe to some it does. However, I thought that the uniqueness of the ridiculous training and the drawings of the food kept this manga fresh enough. Toshizo himself is fine as a character. He's brash, abrasive, unafraid of his image being tarnished as long as whoever he is helping learns whatever he's trying to teach them. Toshizo doesn't really have an overall goal for 90% of the manga. He's just doing whatever.

  Since the manga is focused on what makes a good chef, a consequence of this is showing what local ingredients are in whatever area Toshizo finds himself in. Local fish, vegetables, fruit, and whatever else could be used. There is, of course, the classically known Japanese cuisine such as soba, ramen, curry, sukiyaki, and more. The process for making these foods is shown as well as what the ingredients are, but as for using the actual recipes, the manga doesn't provide any specific instructions. I don't think you could recreate any of the meals shown in this manga based on just what we're shown without having experience cooking already.

  If it isn't clear already, there just isn't much to say about this manga. It is perfectly fine. It does nothing especially egregious. It does nothing especially well. It is the most milquetoast manga you could imagine. It is a little on the longer side, 27 volumes as mentioned before, but those volumes go by so quickly. This manga isn't especially dialogue heavy due to it not really explaining much for any recipes shown, and the story being simple. The latter half does try to tie in the episodic nature of its beginning, but it does this by keeping the same episodic formula just for longer. If you want to get a general idea of what this manga is, read the first few volumes and then decide if it's for you, as the rest will be mostly the same all the way through.

  Continue on AniList

COMMENTS

SIMILAR MANGAS YOU MAY LIKE

• MANGA

  ActionBattles of the Wandering Chef
• MANGA

  ComedyThe Chef
• MANGA

  Slice of LifeSota's Knife