Ranked #1181

Hell's Kitchen (Manga)

I accidentally came across this because I loved the artist's other work; Uncassandra/Ann Cassandra. When looking at the cover art, you might think; "Looks like a manga about a bishie underworld guy who cooks or something," but what you get is something very, very different.

(Spoilers ahead!) It's really something when a manga is able to knock out every other favorite I have and achieve top rank. How can a manga about cooking be so great? Hell's Kitchen is about how the Earl of Poor Eating is tired of only consuming souls of experienced, but conceited, immoral chefs. So he comes up with the idea of possessing your most average and normal person; the protagonist. & so you embark on the wacky, but highly creative and well-thought adventures he has at a cooking academy for very talented teens. The techniques in this manga are REAL. They're so odd, but if you research them, you find out that they're actual skills that are used, and the cooking elements are in fact, fact. I figure I should stop here because I'd be spoiling more, though.

At the beginning, the art style for Hell's Kitchen is eh. Once you get into it, (which will be near the beginning) you disregard the art completely. The only way I realized that the art isn't that great, was that I re-read chapters when I got caught-up. (I purposely held this off for weeks because I didn't want to catch up) Even so, the art is decent and above average. You'll notice some mistakes if you look, but it's all right otherwise.

Oh, the characters. It's also a mystery of how an important supporting character also becomes a favorite. The fact that the ones in this manga are so original and creative is beyond me. They're all very lovable, even the main antagonists at times. I absolutely adore most of the characters. They're very colorful and have great personality for the story. It's hard not to love them.

If it wasn't obvious enough, I thoroughly enjoy this manga, and I really don't know what I did to keep myself from waiting for new chapters. It hasn't updated in a bit, but that's probably why. I'm really hoping that future chapters get uploaded very soon!

Give this manga a try! It doesn't matter if you're a shounen or shoujo fan- you might just love this. read more

A good-for-nothing child is chosen by a demon whose sole purpose is to consume the most delicious souls. The demon decides to "tutor" the said child and make him into the "soul of a true chef". The story focuses on the boy's journey as a budding chef, and all the eccentric characters he meets.

And he meets plenty of them. A fangirl whose only love is knives, a masked boy with an extreme dedication to spices, and many others.

The artwork is quite stunning. I take minor issue with the shading in some instances, but it still fetches an overall rating of 9. The food art is impeccable- I guarantee it will make you hungry. The character development is running quite smoothly, and the plot is well-paced.

All in all, this is a fun, if a bit outrageous, manga that I would recommend to just about anyone, especially foodies. read more