Koufuku Graffiti

The path to becoming a fine wife begins with being an accomplished cook—at least, that is what Ryou Machiko's late grandmother had led her to believe. For a middle schooler, Ryou's cooking skills are incomparable; but recently, though Ryou's food looks appetizing and smells inviting, the taste has not been delicious. Just when the dejected art student comes to terms with the possibility that she might continue living alone for the rest of her life, her aunt tells her that Kirin Morino—Ryou's second cousin—will begin staying with her every weekend since the younger girl has joined a cram school in Tokyo and aims to attend the same school as Ryou.

Surprisingly, with her cousin's arrival, Ryou finds that her cooking has vastly improved—apparently, it is not her prowess in the kitchen, but the sharing of the experience with those closest to her that seems to make the flavors shine.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Machiko, Ryou Main

Satou, Rina Japanese

Shiina Main

Komatsu, Mikako Japanese

Morino, Kirin Main

Oogame, Asuka Japanese

Uchiki, Yuki Supporting

Iguchi, Yuka Japanese

Tsuyuko Supporting

Kobayashi, Yuu Japanese

Shiina, Mother Supporting

Matsuki, Miyu Japanese

Yonetani, Misaki Supporting

Nishi, Asuka Japanese

Morino, Rin Supporting

Hirohashi, Ryou Japanese

Machiko, Akira Supporting

Nonaka, Ai Japanese

Itsuki Supporting

Nishi, Asuka Japanese

Ooshima, Miku Producer

Itou, Shousei Producer

Kawamoto, Sachi Producer

Kobayashi, Hiroyuki Producer

Reviews

Feb 6, 2015

Genesisis

Recommended

Well, Koufuku Graffiti is one of those anime with Cute girls doing cute things under the "moe" genre, one of those refreshing anime where you can sit back relax and enjoy. Koufuku Graffiti is your Slice of Life Anime about food, nothing too out of the ordinary, but you will either really enjoy it or think watching it will be a chore. Just watch the first episode whatever you experienced that how it will be throughout the rest of the anime. The quality of the backgrounds and food are gorgeous and the way the trio bound is very heartwarming its what really brings the anime ... together.

Plot: 6/10
Koufuku Graffiti main subject is about food, incorporated with your average other subjects such as friendship, daily life, and cute characters. The character development will evolve around bonds with food built by our main characters Ryou, Kirin, and Shiina and their time spent together.

The fan service scenes are quite erotic in this anime it isn't your typical boob and pantie shots. In this they REALLY emphasize eating with close up shots of the mouth, sensual expressions, and blushies while eating the delicate drawn food it has the most well drawn omelet roll I've ever seen this anime is literally "food porn" everything revolves around food.

Soundtrack: 9/10
The opening and ending is so enjoyable especially the soundtrack and the scenes it is very appealing and catchy it gives a good vibe and relaxing mind set when about to watch an episode or finishing. Make sure to watch the outro of the outro there is a very catchy song with small chibi characters talking about food giving small tips of information.

Art: 8/10
Really enjoy the art style and lighting of Koufuku Graffiti with its bright lighting, fluent drawings, vivid colors, and contrast with characters they fit really smoothly together. If you love vivid colors this show has it.

Enjoyment: 8/10
This anime is quite enjoyable to watch when there is nothing else much to do it give me a complete good laughs and smiles while making me extremely hungry due to the fact the food looks way too tasty this anime is food porn. Everything looks delicious and the characters expressions make it even better.

I would recommend Koufuku Graffiti to anyone who is interested in Slice of Life, food, good art, cute characters doing cute things, and anyone who is just looking for a fun enjoyable experience.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Feb 18, 2015

Lancehot

Mixed Feelings

SHAFT!

Koufuku Graffiti is a show about girls eating. It's produced by SHAFT.

SHAFT SHINBOU!

Directed by Akiyuki Shinbou, SHAFT's unofficially official director in residence, it contains all the visual quirks, art direction, fourth wall breaking, self-aware fanservice & everything else we've become all too accustomed to expect from SHAFTs output since he directed Zetsubou Sensei way back in 2007.

SHAFT SUGGESTIVE EATING!

The story, so much as there is one, focuses on Ryou Machiko, a 16 year old girl living alone after the death of her grandmother. She has a talent for cooking, but her dreams extend no further than being a housewife at this point in her life. ... Saddened by the loneliness of living alone, she finds sudden comfort in the arrival of Kirino, her younger cousin who, as it were, brings the spark back into Ryou's life through her enthusiasm for Ryou's cooking & her companionship filling the void in Ryou's otherwise lonely soul.

Ryou also has other friends, most notably Shiina who for the most part plays the role of foil to the antics of Ryou & Kirin. That Ryou has other friends kind of makes you wonder why she didn't do anything with them before Kirin showed up, but lets not sweat the small stuff. As the show progresses, we follow Ryou & her friends as they eat their way through life, discovering how the right meal in the right company can bring back memories, help create new ones, & make life that little bit more worth living.

SHAFT CONTORTED BODY POSE!

If there is one thing Koufuku Graffiti does well, it is presenting the simple act of eating at its most pleasurable without, for the most part, resorting to crude sexual innuendo. It is the food itself, the act of eating it & the people they're with while eating that makes them react in the exaggerated, almost orgasmic way they do; not that what they're eating looks like a penis. Each episode generally has two of these choreographed meals, & it is the shows credit that all of them manage to be entertaining pieces of animation.

The one exception to there being no real sexual innuendo is the genre mandated bath scene, where Ryou & Kirin indulge in sharing a bath while eating fast melting ice lolis. In the hands of another director, I'd have expected this to just be a straight up fan service scene. Shinbou, however, has a way of framing such scenes that make it clear the show is acutely aware of the viewers gaze to the point you can't help but feel like you're the deviant for viewing it as something titillating. Cooking is hardly an unusual topic in anime or other media, but I can't think of any shows that really capture the feeling of taking the first bite out of something delicious quite as well as Koufuku Graffiti does.


Perhaps the best illustration of Koufuku Graffiti at its best are the opening & end credits. These both emphasize the shows more whimsical & fantasy elements. The openinghas an Alice in Wonderland quality to it, where Ryou & Kirin skip their way through a fairytale kingdom of food. The music adds to the whimsy, with a dance track by Swedish producer Rasmus Faber combining a thumping 4/4 beat with a more ethereal arrangement of synths, well complimented by Maaya Sakamoto's singing. The only problem is that, like the best parts of the show, the OP & ED are all too short.

SHAFT BATH SCENE!

In a way it's kind of like Sakura Trick, except they're eating food instead of each other.

SHAFT HEAD TILT!

However, once you get past what Shinbou & SHAFT bring to the table, you start to realise that there really isn't much to Koufuku Graffiti beyond watching girls eat food. Ryou likes to cook. Kirin likes to eat. Shiina likes to watch? That's really it. Yes we learn a bit about the backgrounds of the three main characters & meet a few others, but really such information only serve to depict eating food outside of Ryou's apartment or how different foods mean different things to different people. There's nothing wrong with this, per se, but it is noticeable that when the cast aren't eating, they're not doing much else.

Speaking of Ryou, it has to be said that for me she is the weakest part of the series. To be frank, she is one of the most vapid main character I think I've yet come across, even making Sakano's intentionally "boring" Megumi Kato seem like an exciting presence by comparison. It's not unusual for nominally main characters to seem uninteresting compared to their companions (Akari syndrome is a thing for a reason), but when the series focuses on Ryou alone, it feels more like watching a cloud than a person.

There's also a slightly unpleasant undertone to the whole thing - that Ryou is being held up to the audience as an ideal housewife. She cooks. She cleans. She's eager to please & keeps quiet when not spoken to. Before Kirin arrives, Ryou imagines herself as waiting to be a housewife & when she does, Ryou at first wants to think of her as a husband/daughter, to Kirin's slight annoyance. There is also an adult neighbor of Ryou's who we aren't actually introduced to for ten episodes, but she shows up in the background, usually to contrast her apparent loneliness with Ryou's new happiness with Kirin in a "there but for the grace of god" kind of way. Fortunately, it's never really made an explicit part of the show, but the implication is there none the less.

SHAFT FORTH WALL!

All things said, I enjoyed Koufuku Graffiti. The Shinbou effect does wear off as the series progresses, & it's hard not to notice that all the clever directing in the world can't hide how inane some of the dialogue & events are. But it never fails to nail what ultimately Koufuku Graffiti is about, a group of girls finding friendship & living life through the magic of a good meal. & hey, watching cartoon Japanese girls eat together is a lot better than watching South Koreans eat on a webcam alone.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Mar 28, 2015

ZephSilver

Not Recommended

Thank you Shaft for sharting out this forgettable pile of "meh."

You know you've stepped waist deep in low-tier storytelling territory when the only highlight of a show is girls eating food. This review will be relatively short, not because I don't want to write more about the title, but because the show itself lacks any kind of content to warrant any form of discussion or analysis.

It should go without saying that the "cute girls doing cute things" trend has become something of its own entity in the past decade. Due to the overwhelming success of titles like K-On, Hidamari Sketch, Lucky☆Star, Azumanga Daioh and ... much more, this trend has spawned a quasi-subgenre within the quarters it would usually reside in, regardless of the material being covered. The popularity of the "moe" craze only grows each year, with no sign of slowing down in the foreseeable future, thanks in large part to the increasing demand for more self-indulgent works. With so many infatuated with this niche appeal, it was only a matter of time before opposing viewpoints fought against it. With some even going as far as labeling it as "the cancer of the community." And while I think that proclamation is a bit overstated, I think my score speaks for itself regarding what side of this feud I stand on.

Now, this isn't to say "cute girls" anime can't work, I myself have seen a few that I personally enjoyed. It's just that the problem with Koufuku Graffiti, and by extension, any other show guilty of this, is that it has nothing outside of one gimmick to support it. Being genre specific or serving a niche audience isn't an excuse to lack subject matter. Case in point, the Gundam franchise. Had it only been about displaying mecha, the franchise wouldn't have lasted for so many decades. It serves its niche market with mecha porn to fawn over but still provide content with its themes of political warfare and human ethics to keep it anchored. Even genres with divisive reception, such as ecchi, abide by this common unspoken rule. With titles such as Queen's Blade and High school DxD understanding that serving "plot" with a plot would allow it a longer shelf-life in the competitive viewer market. Hell, we don't even have to travel out that far, within this very moe playing field, one of the patriarchs responsible for creating the trend, K-On, even understands this; a show that balances school activities, the girls' hobbies, and friendships simultaneously to maintain viewer interest.

And where other genres and niche appeals flourish, Koufuku Graffiti falls short of the mark. With nothing else to offer content-wise besides its hyper-sexualized foodgasm shtick, the novelty of this show wanes considerably after just one episode.

The setup for bottom-rung content like this usually follows a cast of girls centered around a particular subject or activity and does nothing else. And when I say nothing else, I mean that quite literally, as nothing of significance ever happens throughout Koufuku Graffiti's run-time. Each episode follows the same monotonous setup:
Cute girls converse--> some tension-less conflict arises (mostly involving a moeblob being lonely)--> girls make food and have a foodgasm--> rinse and repeat.

With such a simplistic and predictable setup, you can basically just watch the 1st episode and get the same general picture as someone who bothered to sit through all 12. That's the epitome of lazy writing. This show takes pandering to a whole new level; it doesn't even try to mask it. It's mundanity that aims to do nothing. Watching paint dry would be a far more productive activity.

Seeing that everything revolves around girls eating and having foodgasms, you'd at least expect high-quality animation for those scenes, but what we got instead was poorly rendered CGI food that looks plastic, slow motion with above average frame-rate and sparkles... again, THIS is supposed to be the show's highlight. Everything else fell below normal standards with stiff, often inconsistent animation and very bare-bones presentation. If animated foodgasms are all you want, just watch Food Wars instead. It's a show that far exceeds Graffiti regarding quality and general entertainment value. Everything about Graffiti just feels flat by comparison to everything else in its playing field. From the cookie cutter characters to the nonexistent storyline, Graffiti is just a lifeless husk masquerading as a show that cares.

Koufuku Graffiti was not made with the general populace in mind. This was an anime made for those still fascinated with the "moe" craze. And you know what? That's fine. If there's an audience out there for this, despite what little value I could find in it, so be it. But if after watching the 1st episode you're not impressed, then skip this one because that's about as good as the show gets.

Reviewer’s Rating: 2

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