Isekai Ryouridou
Cooking with Wild Game

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I’ve been following this series for years and each new translated volume release makes me feel like a kid on Christmas morning, eager to open his presents. There are several things about Cooking with Wild Game that make me appreciate it so much. These exact reasons may be dealbreakers for people with different tastes, however, and I can see how this series is not for everyone.

First of all, the pace is quite slow. I mean that both in a plot sense and in how much time passes in-universe each chapter. This also means that there is a lot of attention to detail. You can tell ... how much care the author takes with the world, characters and plot. It is all very well thought out. This zoomed-in, slower look at events really lends the series its charm.

The worldbuilding is excellent, especially when compared to most other isekai series. The writer touches on many different cultural differences such as food, religion, physical appearance as markers of ethnicity, as well as the differing values of each social group. There exist tensions between different peoples and this actually matters in the way characters from different backgrounds interact with each other. The main character Asuta not only tries to become a part of the forest tribe, he also helps that same tribe cross cultural barriers and form deeper connections with the nearby city folk. This is done mainly through his cooking. This struggle to bridge cultural barriers is in fact one of the main recurring themes in Cooking with Wild Game.

There are many different characters in Cooking with Wild Game, and most of them are quite impressive in terms of depth of personality and role in the overarching story. In fact, there are occasionally chapters from the point of view of side characters in order to elaborate on their perspective. This way you can also read about events that the main character was not directly involved with. Forging bonds with others is another of the main themes that you will see in Cooking with Wild Game and the way all of these characters are written makes that an interesting experience.

The main character, Asuta, is an ordinary guy. Even after he gets isekai’d he doesn’t gain any special powers. He’s just a teenage chef. He doesn’t become super powerful or gets cheat powers or anything of the sort. This is quite refreshing for isekai standards. But he is particularly skilled as a cook and a lot of my enjoyment comes from reading about him experimenting with local ingredients. If you like cooking and cooking techniques or simply descriptions of delicious food, you will definitely be interested in this aspect of the novel. I must admit that it can be tricky to remember the names of all the new ingredients he discovers in this new world, so in the end I just wrote them down because there ended up being too many to recall.

The artwork is quite good and gives you an idea of how the various people he interacts with look like. Many of them are, of course, beautiful women. But even ordinary folk and other men are depicted as well.

In any case, if you like slow pacing with detailed worldbuilding and very realistic characters, this might be the novel for you. Especially if you enjoy food or cooking and a main character who is just an ordinary guy.

The protagonist is a chef, and how can a chef remove a corrupt Lord from a position of power? He can't. A chef cooks food and let's someone else deal with politics.

The food gives no special effects, the protagonist won't randomly be allowed to cook for kings. This story is, in a word, "boring". It's a fairly realistic tale of how a man, educated in the culinary arts, joins a tribe of barbarians without any real food culture and tries to teach them the joy of truly good food. But the protagonist has no special powers, he's not "one of a kind". This really is ... just a story about a chef that just happens to move to an underdeveloped place. We have strong warriors and smart strategists. But the protagonist, he really is just a chef.

Story: Every civilization has some types of food that they refuse to eat, not due to religious beliefs, but simply because it's "weird and gross". In my country, we don't eat horse, eel, or rabbit, and the only reason is "we don't want to". The point is, this story is about trying to take one of those types of animals, and making people like eating it. It's a slow story with huge amount of world building. And when I say slow, I mean that the first full arc lasts 14 volumes. And yet I love it.

It's a surprisingly realistic story when it comes to the parts that characters have to play out in the story. The protagonist cooks food, and that's really all he's good for. Fighting bad guys, talking to nobels, figuring out the best path for the people to take, that's all done by other characters. Our protagonist simply feeds the important people and pray that everyone thinks it's delicious.

Characters: This author, he can describe characters in such a way that it feels like he's looking at a photo of someone, and tries to describe them as detailed as possible. Not only that, we have a huuuge cast here. And every personality is different, making it easy to connect with this story. Fat old people, sexy young women, strong well trained men, and cute 30 year old mothers. To put it simply, we have characters that seems real. Absolutely amazing. For example, my favorite character is a dark skinned merchant named Shumiral, he doesn't talk much, and he comes from a land where you are not allowed to show emotion, and yet I know he is surprisingly protective of his dear friends.

Art: The women can have minimal clothing, like typical "sexy barbarian girls". But the art somehow manages to make it look more beautiful and cool, rather than sexy. As someone who doesn't like too much ecchi, I really enjoy this art style. The darker skin + strong women, I like those type of girls. But we get illustrations for every type of character, beautiful girls, yes, but also of grown men, cute animals etc.

Overall. It's all about the writing style, and it's perfect. I enjoy the story, not because of the food plot. Not because it's isekai. I like this story only because it's written in a way that creates emotional connections to the characters and the world as a whole.

Of course I realize that people will think this story is boring. The descriptions are long. This author loves details. It almost feels exaggerated, but if you want a detailed world. A good mental image of what's happening, then you should give this story a try. You don't have to enjoy "gourmet stories", because I have no interest in food and yet I like this story anyway.

PS: This story is slow moving. 10 volumes cover about 70days. That's one week per book. And the "main antagonist" is always doing stupid stuff, but nothing ever happens. After all, this is a tale of a simple chef. Our protagonist is simply cooking his food, hoping for the best.