Five Food Manga To Binge After Your Thanksgiving Feast
Just because Thanksgiving is over doesn’t mean we’re done thinking about food. And these five series are never done thinking about food.
Thanksgiving is officially over! Did you eat too much? Could you have eaten more? Did you eat too much but somehow forgot and are making a big sandwich of leftovers as you read this? Well, these food-centric animes will join you in the spirit of wanting to munch.
1. Food Wars
Soma’s dad runs a small family restaurant, but Soma wants more and enrolls in a big fancy culinary school to learn cuisine. School is brutal, boasting a ten percent graduation rate, and everyone else attending and teaching is… y’know… a lot. This series is buck-wild because it has a ton of love and reverence for food and cooking… but it’s also one of those fan-service heavy shows that you’d have a hard time explaining to your mom. That said, it’s weirdly great.
2. Yakitate!! Japan
We’re going a little old-school for the just about twenty-years-old Yakitate!! Japan. This one was surprisingly popular in my high-school anime heyday, but once you actually sat down at watched or read a little bit, it was easy to see why the anime about making bread was drawing an audience. Kazuma has special powers for baking bread- namely, his unusually warm hands (no, it doesn’t make sense, roll with it), that’s going to help him create the official national bread of Japan. Honestly, this series is just surprisingly charming.
3. Toriko
You know how most food animes are mostly slice-of-life series that take place in kitchens? Toriko throws all of that out the window and makes a hard shonen series about a “food hunter” hired by restaurants to find the rarest and most gourmet ingredients. There are quests, there are monsters, and there is illustrated food that looks good enough to eat.
4. Golden Kamuy
Golden Kamuy is the epitome of that “no… but maybe” meme for me. And before anybody else tries to tell me, no, it’s not actually a food anime. This is a historical fiction during the Russo-Japanese War, and it’s wild. If you’re more into slice-of-life food shows, this probably isn’t one for you because Golden Kamuy gets brutal. But then it will veer into an unexpectedly domestic world of campfires, cooking, and recipes that actually make sense. It’s one of the fandom’s biggest jokes that this is a secret food anime. It’s not… but it sort of is…
5. Delicious in Dungeon
You know when you’re playing D&D, and half of your party wants to adopt the weird monster and keep it forever as a pet? This is a lot like that; only your party members see food, not friends. Honesty, it makes sense. If you’re an adventurer on a budget, sometimes buying your groceries isn’t in the cards. But there are lots of monsters in those dungeons, and some of them look downright delicious edible.
Oh hey! BoLS might make a little dolla-dolla if you decide to buy these items. We need that money to buy all of these manga about food!
