Crazy Food Truck

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TLDR; 90's action movies + road trips + good food = Great manga imo.

This was an extremely nice short manga you can read within a day and enjoy every minute of it. I love the simplicity of the writing where you can enjoy anything and everything with the beautiful backgrounds, the cool and cute characters and with what little information you are told, you can piece together things yourself.

There's a good amount of absurdity to keep you second-guessing, and asking "How will they get through this?!" throughout the chapters, and you know two things are constant;

-"I'm hungry".
-Great food.

So buckle up ... and fire up the grills. Crazy Food Truck is definitely worth your time.

There are two ways I find myself describing Crazy Food Truck. The first is that it reads like the manga equivalent to an airport novel. The second (and my preferred one) is that it reads like a segment from Heavy Metal or an episode of Love, Death and Robots that was made into its own series. Neither description makes this a bad read by any means. If anything, it can help sell this series to those wanting some light reading or are looking for some decent fun. Crazy Food Truck hardly feels that extraordinary contrary to what the title suggests, but it's also much better ... than you'd expect it to be. At a surprisingly short length of sixteen chapters and three volumes, Crazy Food Truck never overstays its welcome, which works very well in its favor.

Character-wise, the cast of CFT aren't really that memorable, but mangaka Rokugou Ogaki does give some of them enough distinct aspects that make them somewhat interesting. Our leading duo, Gordon and Arisa, play off each other in a way that's familiar yet endearing; Gordon being the straight man while Arisa acts as the comic relief (and source of fan service). Their dynamic could've been potentially toxic, since the potential for the dreaded "born sexy yesterday" trope could've reared its ugly head. But thankfully, Ogaki dodges that trope and makes Gordon and Arisa's dynamic more wholesome. And while Arisa is the subject of fan service, Ogaki doesn't ever overdo it; most of these moments occur in the first few chapters and it’s virtually absent in subsequent chapters once the plot really gets going. The antagonists are also not what you'd expect, either. Major Kyle, for example, could've easily been a typical ruthless villain scorching earth in order to capture our heroes, but instead, he's calmer and more tactful in his actions; only resorting to violence when more reasonable options fail him. And plot-wise, CFT seems to wear its Mad Max influence on its sleeve, but it sprinkles in some Heavy Metal-esque weirdness with its world-building to spice it up. It's also pretty decently paced; keeping its primary storyline going with a few more episodic chapters included to give some time to wind down and explore the world a bit more, but never to excess or at the expense of the pacing. It's honestly kind of impressive how Ogaki compiled a solid story that never feels like it's leaving anything out in such a small package, even if it's nothing groundbreaking.

Ogaki's artwork is solid, too, but hardly much to write home about. Where it does shine, however, is in his rending of the food throughout. I’m sure may be tempted to jokingly say that food in manga and anime looks amazing already, but Ogaki makes the food in this series look like heaven (even the food I don’t personally care for).

Had this series been a much longer one, I’d’ve been tempted to have a more lukewarm opinion of it. But as it is, I don’t. Ogaki seems to understand that the premise of this series could only go on for so long, so rather than dragging out the series, he keeps things short, sweet and to the point. While the lasting impact of this series may be muted in the long run, that doesn’t make Crazy Food Truck worthless. As stated before, it’s perfect light-reading and it makes for a fun read for those wanting a fun, weird story that’s entirely unpretentious.

Decent manga, unfortunate that it got axed.

A weird crossover between Mad Max and something you’d see on Food Network doesn’t seem like it would go well but it did. This series could’ve evolved into something bigger, as it had an interesting post-apocalyptic setting, two likable main characters, and an interesting cast of antagonists, but I guess we’ll never know.

As far as the story goes, it was great until its cancellation. The dynamic between Gordon, the ex-general turned food truck owner, and Arisa, the escaped military asset was very good up until the finale, where it transformed from more of a father-daughter relationship to a romantic ... one, which feels even weirder considering the fact that Gordon is a late-middle aged man, and Arisa being no older than 21 with an even younger level of maturity. Their final moment together, being gunned down by the army sent after them, felt incredibly rushed, and the two of them embracing considering that they had confessed around one chapter earlier made things weirder. Despite all this, the ending with Gordon’s former subordinates opening a food truck in their name was a nice touch which salvaged a poorly executed ending.

Aside from the ending being rushed and the somewhat-tarnished dynamic between the two main characters, the only other complaint that I have was the excessive amount of fanservice, almost every chapter had Gordon working on something only for him to turn around to see Arisa wearing nothing, followed by Gordon telling her to put something on.

Overall: The first 80% of this manga is pretty good, and if it was never cancelled, it could have been even better.