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Where the ne'er-do-wells dwell.
Probably hell, eventually...
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Jul 7, 2024
The fairytale collections of the Brothers Grimm, yassified for the modern audience of anime fans to whom the aesthetics of "anime" have become a selling point far greater than any adherence to authenticity.
Each episode starts with a short framing device depicting handsome anime hunk versions of the Grimm Brothers, the 17th century German scholars that they are, because of course, about to tell their sister one of the stories. This then leads to the episode proper.
The stories themselves are loosely based, although they're anything but, on their respective fairy tales; although, vaguely reminiscent would be a much more fitting way to describe their relation to
...
the original tales.
#1 Cinderella
Set in early 20th century Japan with "Cinderella" as the villain of the story, a generic spooky anime girl. It's pretty lame.
#2 Little Red Riding Hood
A futuristic cyberpunk murder thriller whose relation to the original story is a mere reference to it, which merely exists as a known tale in this world the same as ours. Like a futuristic American Psycho but edgy, lame and lacking any greater meaning.
#3 Hansel and Gretel.
This one just takes the framework of Hansel and Gretel and reworks it into what is essentially just Promised Neverland.
#4 The Elves and the Shoemaker
There are no elves, just a strange little girl; the ending is radically different, to the point of completely reversing the moral of the original story; and it's about a modern day author, instead of a shoemaker.
#5 Town Musicians of Bremen
This one's basically just the original story told as a human western; which works quite well, as the original story is basically the plot of every other western already: A stranger comes into town and ends up taking care of the ruffians terrorizing it. Yojimbo style. And funnily enough, not the first loose anime adaptation of this story either.
#6 Pied Piper of Hamelin
Story about a teacher wanting to fuck his student, who're living in an isolated cult-town. There is a piper, but she doesn't really perform the same role. It's weird, dark, and arguably fucked up, but so are many of the folktale classics. Though it's similarity to the Pied Piper of Hamelin is pretty much just in the time and setting, I like this one the most, as it feels most like an old fairy tale, rather than a sci-fi anime...
Or so I would've liked to have felt, but the final scene, and I mean literally the last 30 seconds or so, completely ruins that feeling.
It's still the best one, or maybe #5, mind you they're neither good, just the least bad. #2 is complete and utter garbage, the others are just rather forgettable; though perhaps that'll be the case for the whole series in about a week's time.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Feb 9, 2022
Kyuukyoku no Chef wa Oishinbo Papa is an unprecedented mess of a production, but that's what also makes it one of the funniest goddamn things I've seen. It's a comedy by design, but not a particularly funny one, the primary source of laughs comes from the baffling production. The film's absolutely littered with tiny animation mistakes and completely missing textures, perhaps only made funnier by how easy most of them would've been to fix, had anyone given a fuck.
The film follows a man and a young woman, who run a restaurant by day, and hunt sex offenders by night, figuratively speaking anyway. The main characters
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are easy to mistake as a father and daughter, what with the whole "papa" thing, but they're not. The film's labeled as a hentai, but you'd really have to be a next level prude to consider it more than an erotic comedy; it barely features any sex, and what little of it there is, is hardly titillating to any but those most sexually deprived of civilized society. I mean however it is that Myanimelists rating system works, it's rated R+ for "mild nudity," as opposed to Rx anyway, which is what they use for pornography.
The only available English translation for this is a rather poor one by Kingmenu. Of course "rather poor" by Kingmenu standards is fucking horrendous for those with a fully developed brain, but at least it's better than no subtitles at all, which some Kingmenu works most certainly call for.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Oct 15, 2019
My feelings for this anime are quite complicated so I just had to write a review for this series.
I will focus on two things about this series that I feel are most prominent and want to talk about, the characters, structure and the story arcs and their internal structure.
But first I will quickly breeze through all the points that don't really matter:
Story: The story of Cooking Master Boy is exactly what one would expect for a shounen of this ilk. Defeat comically evil opponents in cooking battles and make friends.
Art: Totally average and passable for it's time, and still looks nice enough.
Music:
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What music? Oh right, yeah I guess there's some playing in the back every now and then.
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********* Slight spoilers ahead but if you've ever seen a shounen before you'll be fine. **********
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And now, characters.
I will focus on the main 3 individually and the rest in one go.
The protagonist, Liu Mao Xing:
Our protagonist for this adventure is a 13 year old boy whose mother was one of the greatest and most renowned chefs in China. At the beginning of the series an evil villain comes to take over his mothers restaurant but out the kitchen steps up Liu Mao Xing, never having cooked before apparently he takes on the villain to the horror of his fellow restaurant workers and wins, after which he sets out to an adventure to become a great chef.
The girl, Mei Li:
Mei Li is the series main heroine whose only, and I'm not exaggerating here, purpose is to constantly question everything the Protagonist and others around do. She is supposedly a chef, a daughter of the head chef of the best restaurant in Canton no less; however, that is never shown to be the case, for all the viewer knows she may not be able to cook at all. During the series she tags along the protagonist and questions the methods to his madness, and despite witnessing his continuous, unbroken streak of success, she never gives thought to the idea that maybe the Protagonist knows what he's doing.
I cannot for the life of me understand why she is there. Shounen series usually have a female character tagging along as either one the female viewers can relate to in order to pull in a bit of that crowd, or as the male viewers to swoon over. But Mei Li is so useless, incompetent and irritating I can't imagine any girl wanting to be her, or any boy wanting to be with her. She has no character or development there of.
The Loudmouth, Zhi Lou (Shilou):
During the first arc they introduce what is possibly my favorite character of the series, we have a lot of characterization for him, backstory and character development, and logically we believe to typical shounen fashion this'll be our secondary main character of the series. He is not. Instead he just leaves at after all we been through with him and much later at the beginning of the second arc, over 15 episodes later, we are introduced to Zhi Lou. Zhi Lou has nothing to him but that he's a loud and incompetent chef (at least we know he can cook something, unlike Mei Li) that just tags along against anyone's wishes. For the rest of the show he causes trouble by not thinking before speaking or doing something stupid.
And now, the good characters:
Chouyu & Ruoh: These are the two mentor Characters to Mao. Mei Li's father and the Vice chef of the greatest restaurant in Canton, Chouyu and the Master Chef of that same restaurant, Ruoh. However, despite them being said to be far superior to Mao, whenever they ought to cook, something happens which puts Mao in the spotlight, never truly showing us how or why they're better than Mao.
Xi Er (Shell) & Li Wen (Leon): These two characters are villains who challenge Mao somewhere during the second arc, but turn out allies and join him and the two incompetent sidekicks for the last arc's adventure. These two are by far the best characters of the series, they get the most character development, are shown to be excellent chefs and during the last arc duke it out with villains getting more screen time than even Mao it feels like. They're also adults who behave as such.
Sanche: Sanche is the character I talked about in Shi Lou's section, and despite him leaving during the first arc he makes a return during the last arc and proves himself as an excellent character that should've been the sidekick of the series instead of Zhi Lou.
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********* Major Spoilers ahead for the 3 upcoming arc segments ***********
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Next I want to talk about the three main arcs of this series, these are the original reason I had to write this review, because it's just something else. I do try to be brief though so I may not convey the full scope of these arcs and why they're so odd.
Arc 1: episodes 1-14
These 14 episodes are so incredibly fast paced, I've never seen a series breeze through this much content in just 14 episodes. Hell, a lesser series would've made this arc last the whole 52 episodes of the series allotted run time. So I'll breeze thorough this segment as fast as the series does.
We get introduced to our main character who is said to never have cooked before, after which he defeats a villain trying to take over the restaurant his deceased mother possessed, after which the admiral of the imperial kitchen is so impressed with his talent he sends him out to study in the best restaurant of Canton, Yonsen Suka. Once he gets to the restaurant he is shown to fail to cook a worthy meal and banished from it, afterwards he finds out the problem, get's the meal done and is congratulated buy the restaurant owners and given a job there. After overcoming this small bump they immediately send him to a tournament to get the title of a Super Chef, a title only a select few of the greatest chefs in China posses. He wins, the end.
Now one of the greatest chefs in China one would think the series may end, where is there to go? Well an adventure of course.
Arc 2: episodes 15-33
these 19 episodes consist of the worst arc, in my opinion, of Chuuka Ichiban!
During the first 6 episodes Mao goes on a journey across China, we are shown 6 episodic episodes where he arrives in a new town and out-cooks some bad guy, this is also where he meets Zhi Lou. After these he is back in Canton again and back to the Yonsen Suka, where we see the rest of the arc play out in few episode long cook-offs where Mao defeats a bad guy. Of these bad guys two of them are the previously mention Shell and Leon.
The last bout of the arc is against Leon, where Mao acquires a legendary knife, which turns out to be one of 8, and now it's time to go across China again in search of these treasures before the COOKING UNDERWORLD can get them first, which is a conglomerate of super evil cartoon villains that want to take over the world. Because that's what a cooking show needed.
At the end of the last episode of this arc they tease that Mei Li and Zhi Lou would leave the gang and be replaced by Shell and Leon, however this is shown to be but a sad Sike in THE MOST BAFFLING scene I have ever seen, period. I have no idea what the idea behind it was but I think it might just be a scene
worth watching the whole damn series for, it is unbelievable, absolutely unfathomably confusing. I simply don't have the words to explain my utter bewilderment.
Arc 3: episodes 34-52
As if the pacing of this show couldn't be confusing enough with the speed of sound of the first arc, and the episodic shenanigans of second. This third and last arc is quite the opposite of the first. This is actually my favorite part of the whole series and I watched these 19 episodes in one sitting raising the score of the show from what I had as 5 to the 7 it is now.
The first 12 episodes of this series are one single cooking match against the underworld for the second legendary cookware similar to the Super Chef exam of the first arc which only takes a few episodes. The remaining 7 episodes cover quite a few things in the vein of the second arc but these events despite somewhat episodic are much more fun than the events of the second arc.
And so the series ends, there is no real conclusion they only acquire 3 of the legendary cookware but whatever, I had fun.
EXCEPT THAT IN 2019 THEY ANNOUNCED A SEQUEL SERIES, 21 YEARS LATER THIS SHOW MOST PEOPLE HAVEN'T EVEN HEARD OF WILL CONTINUE.
- edit: The new series is a remake, not a sequel, so it's redundant if you've seen this, additionally it doesn't cover the first 20 episodes, so it's not even a proper place to start for those who haven't seen this one or read the manga.
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********* END OF SPOILERS ***********
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To end, a few addenda.
- This series is very non sexual overall but there are a couple ass shots that are just not very sexy at all.
- Despite generally decent animation work for it's time there are a few odd continuation errors that are just subtle enough to miss.
- For whatever reason of all the vile and horrible villains of the series, it's always the female villains that are the most disgustingly evil.
- This series uses flashy non-diegetic effects to accentuate the food but sometimes the characters react to them as if they were all real and there.
The end, whoever read this far is a madman, who even cares about this show? Why did I write this for 2 hours? Fuck... 2 hours? what's wrong with me?
Watch "Yakitate! Japan" instead, it's essentially the same show but about bread and better in every single way possible.
Go home it's over.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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