The Manga Cookbook

The Manga University Culinary Institute. The Manga Cookbook. Recipes by Yoko Ishihara. Illustrated by Chihiro Hattori. Japanime Co. Ltd, 2007. Paperback $14.95 ISBN-13 978-4-921205-07-2

What’s it about?

Manga characters are often pictured eating cute and curious concoctions. The Manga Cookbook shows manga lovers how to recreate the recipes their favorite characters enjoy.

Find out more:

Fans of manga might wonder about what their favorite characters are eating, and be interested in creating dishes such as naruto rolls, onigiri, bento boxes, and udon. The Manga Cookbook satisfies readers’ curiosity with several simple recipes ranging from appetizers to desserts and notes about the cultural significance of each recipe.  The recipes are presented in a series of black and white cartoon panels, with instructions written as captions or in dialog bubbles.  The full color illustrations toward the front of the book are enticing, depicting adorable bento boxes (boxes lunches shaped into pictures of trains, gardens, cartoon characters and more),  appetizers including tamago tomodachi (hard boiled eggs designed to look like chicks), California rolls, rice balls, miso soup and more!

This book is informative and entertaining, especially for those whose interest in Japanese cooking developed because of their interest in manga. This book is definitely geared toward these manga fans, and the cartoon mascots and dialog bubbles may fall flat for those who are not into manga and Japanese culture.  I doubt the book would fall into the hands of many non-manga readers, though—the book is pretty clearly written for otaku. The recipes are fairly straightforward, but western readers may not be able to find some ingredients (such as the different types of rice flour and adzuki beans) easily.  The full-color illustrations are the highlight of the book, but the readers will want more than the few pages provided.  Information on Japanese terms and customs appears throughout this slim volume, so even manga fans who don’t do anything in the kitchen harder than microwaving a can of soup will find this an entertaining read.

Genre:  Nonfiction

Subjects: Cooking, Japanese cooking, bento boxes

Reading level/interest level: Grades 5-10

Read-alikes:

Salyer’s Face Food

Ogawa’s Yum-Yum Bento Box: Fresh Recipes for Adorable Lunches

Ito’s The Just Bento Cookbook: Everyday Lunches To Go

Awards: YALSA selected The Manga Cookbook as a “Top 10 Popular Paperback” for 2011