▪	RELEASED BY:		VIZ MEDIA
		▪	AUTHOR / ART:		TETSU KARIYA / AKIRA HANASAKI
		▪	FORMAT:		JAPANESE/ B&W
		▪	PAGES:		268
		▪	RATING:		T
		▪	RELEASE DATE:		11/17/2009
		▪	REVIEW DATE:		11/11/2009
		▪	REVIEWED BY:		SCOTT CAMPBELL

The story behind this volume of Oishinbo centers on the Japanese art of cooking rice. As part of the celebrations for its 100th anniversary, the publishers of the Tozai News have decided to commission the creation of the 'Ultimate Menu," a model meal embodying the pinnacle of Japanese cuisine. This all-important task has been entrusted to journalist Shiro Yamaoka, an inveterate cynic who possesses no initiative, but does have an incredibly refined palate and an encyclopaedic knowledge of food. Each volume of Oishinbo follows Yamaoka and his colleagues through another adventure on their quest for the Ultimate Menu. Now, the best stories from the hundred-plus volume series have been selected and compiled into A la Carte editions, arranged by subject.

In this volume of Oishinbo, the focus shifts yet again, and this time it’s all about rice! Yamaoka and company look into the single most essential food in Japanese cuisine, and what can be done with it to create delicious meals. Cultivated for millennia, a staple meal in itself and the basis of countless other dishes, rice is an important component not only of the Japanese kitchen but also of Japanese culture. When Yamaoka is asked by TMzai's head chef for help in coming up with a new rice dish, what starts out as a simple culinary request rapidly grows into a disquisition into the past, present and future of Japan's food culture. Who knew so many inventive stories could be born out of nothing but a trip to the kitchen? These stories and more are all coming at you with this new volume of the ever-popular Oishinbo!

As usual with this interesting (and unique) series, the mixture of culinary arts and the teaching of history make for a very good read. As with a lot of manga, you can learn something cultural about the Japanese from reading Oishinbo – but the amount you learn in this series is tenfold on most other manga. There are few other manga that I can think of that are so educational and interesting, and teach you as much about recent and very old Japanese history through such a unique subject matter. It just goes to show that the culinary arts of the Japanese is indeed a large part of their culture – food can be a very defining part of any society’s culture. The fact that food, eating, and the preparation of edible materials could actually be used as a basis for constructing an entertaining manga series may baffle some – but only until they read a volume of this fine series. The short of it is that this is a great book that doesn’t just entertain, it teaches while it entertains!

While the subject matter is one thing, it’s not the only great thing about this manga. The art style and visuals of this series are really quite quirky and interesting – they have a really cartoony 80’s manga feel to them that is hard to find nowadays (since it isn’t the 80’s anymore!). It’s very detailed, with a large number of frames per page, but also has a lot of fun being “cartoon-ish” (quite over-exaggerated with some character’s features, ie: big noses, strange body-types) to differentiate between characters, etc. and it doesn’t look like any other manga out there. It’s sort of hard to explain unless you can compare it to something else from times past. Take Parasyte for example – Oishinbo is much like Parasyte stylistically, except it is more detailed, but less serious. If you liked Parasyte (which you should have, unless you haven’t read it yet! Go read it!), then you may too enjoy the artistic style of Oishinbo.

With any manga, it is important to know who has created it so that we can have some further insight into where it came from. Manga writer and essayist extraordinaire Tetsu Kariya graduated from prestigious Tokyo University. Kariya was employed with a major advertising agency before making his debut as a manga writer in 1974 when he teamed up with legendary manga artist Ryoichi Ikegami to create Otoko Gumi (Male Gang). The worlds of food and manga were forever changed in 1983 when Kariya, together with artist Akira Hanasaki, created the immensely popular and critically acclaimed Oishinbo.
Akira Hanasaki, on the other hand, is the manga artist for the culturally significant series Oishinbo, which has been continuously serialized in Big Comic Spirits since 1983. Kariya and Hanasaki won the 32nd Shogakukan Manga Award in 1987 for Oishinbo.

IN SUMMARY:
Oishinbo is a rare treat – a very well researched piece on a fascinating subject matter, processed into involving manga! If everything else were so fun to learn about, perhaps every book teaching a subject would be created in a manga format!