Yakumo-san wa Ezuke ga Shitai.
Beauty and the Feast

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How simple of an idea, having a warm meal back home. An entire manga made around the idea that you can suffer any level of mundane pain, if there's that meal when you're back.

Dipping my fingers into the slice of life genre, this story does the non-fresh aspect of the story, with slivers of a better story lying behind. The simple dynamic right on the synopsis, unchanging, unmoving, and all about looking at the slowest progression of the bonds we make from the smallest of coincidences. Everything that happens around the story centers around the food that's presented by Yakumo, a widow that's reminded ... of her husband by the very person eating her meals, a neighbor.

The story's as simple as that, days starts, both have problems around that day that stresses them out, they meet, eat a warm meal while bonding, rinse and repeat. The repetitiveness did start to grind at me. This is a series that works as a weekly watch, but not as a read from beginning to end. A pallet cleanser, but not a full course. Maybe the mistake was watching it constantly instead of alternating, but if it fails as a straight watch, it speaks volumes about how it doesn't work on some levels. I was bored constantly at the beginning of the midpoint. I couldn't bare again the same thing again and again without change or interesting moment. Sadly, there were parts that explored the grief, and the concept of toxic replacement, including that age gap the characters share, but it didn't lead anywhere. The great didn't try, and the normal stayed for far too long.

The characters had to be great for this to work, and even with them, the story needs compelling aspects. Only our protagonist shows the layers necessary to carry the story. A widow that longs for connection, and finds it in the people around her neighbor. She's the star, but we required something to foil her dynamic, and it didn't work for me. The minor characters had way better moments than the ones we spend most time in. I wish we had something more to cling to, since the great moments are far in between.

However, the art felt very cozy. Not a perfect feel, not an extremely polished nature, but diverse enough to keep my eyes on the pages. It manages to capture angles, expressions, focusing on the eyes and how they communicate feelings. I enjoyed it, as well as how the expressions on characters spoke more about them than the text itself. Again, there was care put into the ideas, but not enough interest and focus for the rest.

This manga had it all to be an extremely memorable Slice of life. It wasted its potential by focusing on the extremely mundane aspects of the story, and the last conflict wasn't even that interesting, except for the very end. I liked the ending it got, but it wasn't entirely worth it.

6/10, I wish it wasn't that long.

I picked up Yakumo-san because I was itching for an age-gap romance manga and then reading the synopsis got me somewhat interested in it.

I read it in a span of a couple days. It really is quite a wholesome manga about a widow (Yakumo) trying to move on from her past with this young baseball player (Yamato) who has quite an appetite. It made me happy while reading it of course but honestly it's not really a romance manga when I think about it (or at least not explicitly so)

I was hoping to see even more about Yakumo's past, how she battled with her loneliness, ... or even Yamato's feelings. To my perspective at least there's not any explicit showings of Yamato's and Yakumo's relationship being more intimate, it may seem like it's leading to something more but it's just the same thing all over again. Even after the ending, I still wished for "more", I'm not one to HC a lot so getting an ending like that is something that I struggle with.

For the characters themselves, while not bad in writing, Yamato in particular, the protagonist, just feels like he's there, he could probably be fleshed out more but seeing him devour food is still entertaining. Perhaps I'm biased because I like Yakumo-san's character, but I do think she's one of the better characters here (no duh) probably due to us learning of her past and constantly learning about her feelings and emotions.

Despite me feeling that the romance or emotional moments sometimes is a bit lacking, it shouldn't deter people from reading this sweet-savory Slice of Life Manga.

P.S, so I think this is probably not a romance manga (?) it's just that one of the artworks and a couple chapters just really lead you to believe that it is, but if it is a romance manga then it's very lacking in that regard. Still very cute though

It's a very cute 'romance' and slice of life manga. The titular heroine, Yakumo-san is adorable and likeable and the male protagonist, Yamato, while not very interesting, is at least somewhat quirky enough to be entertaining.

Well... regarding the story and the romance, it moves at an absurdly slow pace with almost no narrative or thematic intent justifying the pace. In fact, throughout my 60+ chapters read, I found this manga to be severely lacking strong character or story developments (there is some subtle character development, but it feels inconsequential because the main mechanics of the story has not at all changed or developed toward ... logical story beats). After being teased about Yakumo-san's melancholic backstory for about 60 chapters with little concrete story pushes toward a revelation, (as well as just what is Yakumo-san's job? Can insurance money last someone for this long?) I am of the opinion that the characters, the premise and the narrative itself are just superficial platforms for the author to draw and write about cooking food and wholesome interactions.

Not that there is anything wrong with such an approach. I certainly do enjoy a good mundane slice of life story about hobbies (e.g. Yuru Camp) and I am sure many others would as well. I just think that expectations in a story are incredibly important and sometimes allowing readers to have their expectations met or perhaps even subverted (with set-up of course) is something incredibly essential. I just wish that this manga was more blatant about what it wants to be.