Back to Marleonka's Profile Marleonka's Profile

"She Loves to Cook, and She Loves to Eat" is a manga I feel a lot of queer women were waiting for. A realistic and grounded, but immensely hopeful outlook at the issues of women in modern day society.

Unlike a lot of other manga you can find under the GL label, this is a manga that's not afraid to be for and about women front and center. While a lot of the GL stories would often feature characters being extremely awkward, only dealing in implications, not being able to voice their feelings and/or very steamy kissing scenes, "She Loves to Cook, and She Loves ... to Eat" is unafraid to break the mold and be nonconformist.

This manga is unapologetically feminist and pro queer. While other GL manga might be afraid to talk about the role of women in society, as well as the oppression they face, this manga is full of the characters calling out the injustices in the world. The queer dictionary is also not taboo in this manga, the characters are able to say "I'm a lesbian" or "I'm asexual" and be proud of it. "She Loves to Cook, and She Loves to Eat" isn't another cookie cutter awkward romance that doesn't have anything to say and is fated to fade into the background. This work is not afraid to voice its message loud and clear. It's worth mentioning that the profits from the manga's merch are donated to an organization fighting for equal marriage rights for queer folk in Japan. To me, it shows a clear dedication for a cause and not just reaping the benefits.

"She Loves to Cook, and She Loves to Eat" wants to bring up the importance of mental health, LGBTQ+ rights, dealing with eating disorders and the importance of found family over blood family. It's honestly very refreshing to look at this manga and see a realistic depiction of society and not just a sugar coated version that only aims to be cutesy. This is a manga dead set on tearing right into the conservative society of Japan and calling it out for all its worst elements, even if it could alienate members of its audience.

The characters are all people who have their very realistic and well portrayed issues, such as cutting your toxic family out of your life without looking back, dealing with an eating disorder, renting a place together as a queer couple, finding out about your sexuality or being afraid to be who you are, because of what the world around you is. Every single issue is approach maturely and the characters aim to deal with it in a healthy way. The manga is beautifully honest about how the world is built for hetero men and women are only seen for what they can provide to a man. Even if Nomoto and Kasuga struggle navigating that world, they are always willing to go against the flow and to do it together.

The manga takes its romance very seriously and realistically as well. Kasuga and Nomoto take their time to realize how they are feeling for each other in a very organic and well thought out way, and when they eventually get to the point when they realize they are into each other, they willing to be open with each other. It even goes a step further and when there's any misunderstanding, they clear it up right away. This is again, such a refreshing look at romance, that isn't just all fluff and the characters continously ssaying "I think I love her, but I can't possibly tell her. She is the most important person in my life but not explicitly romantically". "She Loves to Cook, and She Loves to Eat" doesnt shy away from being honest and making its characters communicate and I think it deserves praise for that. Nomoto and Kasuga are allowed to be in love, they are allowed to be happy together and they are allowed to be healthy and good for each other.

It goes without saying, but especially if you love cooking, eating and food in general, this is also worth picking up. The art of the food is absolutely lovely and the attention to detail when it comes to how the characters prepare each dish is outstanding. The same way this manga objects to the patriarchal society of Japan, it also embraces the wonderful Japanese cuisine and culture around food. The only thing you need to be wary of is a lot of close ups at Kasuga's face as she's eating with teeth more detailed than you'd normally see in manga, I imagine it can be a bit offputting for some people.

Whenever I read those chapters I can definetly say that I feel seen. The most important part of this entire message is how there's always light at the end of the dark tunnel. You need to speak about injustice, if you want the world to be better. And there are always people that are gonna be by your side. The manga offers, as I mentioned, an extremely hopeful outlook into the future, that thing can and will be better. I cannot wait to read the next volume and I recommend this to everyone. In the meantime I might go and watch the TV Drama.

This manga is truly a gorgeously realistic tale of two women falling in love in the 21st century. It's one of those pieces of media that scream "never kill yourself".

It's not easy to be the first negative review for a series with such overwhelmingly positive reception, but I do believe I have a good reason to write this review.

First, let me say that the artwork at display is exceptional and is definetly a big part of why this series has become so popular. I can't deny that the series does look amazing. It's really unique and definetly stands out in the crowd of other GL manga.

However, I can't really recommend this manga in terms of the story. Every chapter is only 4 pages long which already makes it more difficult at telling complex stories, ... but I don't believe that to be the manga's biggest weakness. The pace of this manga is both extremely fast in smaller scale and extremely slow in the bigger scale at the same time. A lot of the chapters feel episodic and there isn't really a lot of arcs that would span multiple chapters. Because of this, every chapter is a little tidbit of the main characters' life. That is quite a good concept, but to get the point of the chapter across in just four pages, they have to rush a lot. Because of that, a lot of the chapters are over in a blink of an eye and the reader is left wondering what even happend in this chapter.

The dialogue can feel entirely disconnected and often becomes just a word salad that's vaguely related to any given subject. The series itself is also something one could consider a "slow burn". Because of that, and how rambly and fast the chapters are, this is a manga in which nothing ever happens and the little that is happening is often entirely incomprehensive. I honestly can't tell you much about the characters other that they are there. Their personalities are fairly standard in terms of what their archetypes are.

I can't deny that it has some cute moments and the general theme, of both characters growing closer together through their shared love of music is nice, it takes unbearably long to get off the ground. As the title implies, the main love interest, Aya, mistakes the protagonist, Koga, for a guy, and while the audience knows that Koga isn't a guy, it takes an extremely long time, for the women to be open with each other and for that misunderstanding to clear up. It's hard to call this a GL romance if it takes a good few dozen of chapters for the characters to even realize they are both women. In fairness, it's hard to call it romance at all, as they just enjoy each other's pressence but keep all the feelings bottled up and won't talk about being into each other, don't expect more than your standard GL "implied feelings" and "being extremely important for each other but never explicitly romantically".

I'm sure someone could come and say how realistic it is for people not to talk about their emotions because they are awkward, but in the year 2024, I'd love to finally see a series that isn't all about extremely awkward characters that are unable to voice their emotions as that's been plagueing the GL genre for years now. Koga and Aya are not blatantly toxic people, so that's at least a plus over a lot of the other GL series that would either be about unbalanced power dynamics, obssessions and jealousy, or just blatant abuse (the bar is on the floor!).

Ultimately I think this series has good vibes, but because of it's extremely slow pace, incomprehensive dialogue and tropey characters, I can't really recommend this to anybody who likes good romance stories. The GL community is somewhat infamous for hyping up everything that is born in this genre, because of how scarce good yuri is, but we do need to step up our standards in terms of the writing. If you do like cute pictures that you can turn off your brain to, you might enjoy it and I don't mean it in a derogatory way, just be sure you approach this series with the right mindset.

I wanted to like it but I just couldn't. I love slow romance and slice of life, so that's definetly not a problem for me. I feel like the series falls into a lot of tropes and doesn't do anything intersting with them. The way a few elements at the beginning make you go “okay, these characters have room to grow, so lets see how it evovles”, but when they don't do so is a bit frustrating. I feel that ultimately the main characters have a bit of an anti-dynamic, as they are sometimes horrible to each other in very subtle ways. One seems ... to be very openly into the other, who whether or purpose or not acts entirely oblivious. Shimamura I still don't quite understand what her character is, and the series doesn't want to explore that in any meaningful way. She sure thinks about stuff a lot, but that never really takes shape in her actions. I know her actions are supposed to be artificial, but there's no real distincton between how she acts towards Adachi. It ultimately feels like she doesn't actually care about her. The characters often say one thing (or rather think) and do a different thing. Ultimately nothing happens between them, so I have the feeling that it was going nowhere.

Especially since a lot of times the structure of the episodes is repeated and each time the effect is the same, that despite the fact that the characters talk about how much they mean to each other, there is a certain feeling that the status quo resets every night and ultimately this “change” of theirs is purely arbitrary, because nothing actively changes between episode 1 and 12, because they continue their relationship looks largely the same, and they continue to be unsure if they even like each other and distant which after the whole series is a bit of a slap in the face to the viewer. Especially since the insight into their personalities is so limited that it feels totally illogical at times how they behave relative to what we are shown they are thinking. I do enjoy the ideas the show wants to convey, because two girls coming out of their shells is lovely, but the way this show handles it doesnt really make it satisfying, because they ultimately dont want to open up to each other and talk about things.

Their flaws as humans are never addressed with each other. Adachi is morbidly jealous of everything, while Shimamura simply isolates herself emotionally from everyone and sends Adachi mixed signals the entire time. And well, of course they refuse to communicate. While at first its cute because Adachi's a bit awkward, as the series goes on, it really makes you dislike the two leads. Adachi being so horribly jealous she gives Shimamura the silent treatment for days because she talks to any other girl is definetly not a healthy way to approach their relationship, so I wish she at least acknowledged that she's doing something wrong rather than going "I guess Shimamura doesnt really care about me, because she talked to someone else for a few seconds." And the worst part is that she is somehow right! When we get to see Shimamura's POV, she often talks about how distant she is to everything and everyone and that maybe her relationship with Adachi is not gonna last. She has no desire ever fighting for Adachi and despite them being best friends, she doesnt treat her any different from people she seemigly doesnt care about. With how much she talks about being distant and not creating actual connections, it feels like wasted potential for her to never bring it up with Adachi or not to explore how she actually feels under that mask of being cheery. The series never wants to address who Shimamura is, who she wants to be and especially what she wants of Adachi. If they are supposed to be different than all the other artificial friendships Shimamura had in the past, doesnt seem to put the effort towards it, often making Adachi feel bad on purpose (like with questioning her on why she enjoys physical intimacy with her, despite knowing it makes her doubt herself)

The ending itself is also extremely unsatisfying. I feel like the series sets up like 5 mini-plots and none of them get resovled in any meanngful way. Adachi never kisses Shimamura as she wanted. Adachi never learns of Tarumi. Nagafuji and Hiro just stop appearing at a certain point (only to get a small cameo in the final ep). Somehow Nagafuji and Hiro had better chemistry than the two leads, but they just got tossed in the bin. Yashiro doesn't ultimately achieve anything (I dont want her origins explained, but just do something with her). The series just ends and it ultimately feels entirely pointless, as their relationship didnt grow in any significant way, so what was the story they were telling?

The technical side of things deserves praise. The music, voicework as well as the animation are lovely and make the experience a lot more bearable. The concepts of two very different people coming out of their shells through their mutual connection and ultimately love is a lovely subject, but this series doesn't do it any justice. The leads are infuriating at times and while their cute moments are definetly cute, them being terrible for each other makes it sour and prevents me from enjoying the series. If you seek a very similar story done right, I highly recommend the movie Doukyusei. It's pretty much the exact same in terms of premise, but universally better in every single aspect of the storytelling.

(Also. who decided to put a scene of a pedophile staring at kids at a pool? What purpose did it serve? That's the only male character in the show btw. So unnesecary and bizarre, please don't do it again.)

Uzumaki is definetly an interesting experience. I can't say I fell in love with it, but I can definetly see its merits.
It definetly feels like Junji Ito thought to himself one day "Spirals are kinda wacky", threw a lot of random ideas at the wall and drew them. Hence this manga was created.

I actually think the story, or rather the characters are this manga's biggest weakness. Kirie is just not a protagonist who's worth following. I understand how her actions arent always meant to be logical, because she's used to all this wack crap at this point, but its hard to really feel ... for her, since she's a bit of a cardboard cutout. Shuichi is the only reasonable character and at a certain point you start to question why everybody is doing what they are doing. He constantly mentions leaving the town, but never actually tries to do anything about it. And well, of course he can't because there would be no story then, but it's somewhat arbitraty that he doesn't even attempt it, since he did mention it.

There isn't a lot I can really say about the manga, maybe except that the ending, so the last 5 or so chapters feel a bit disconnected from everything else and feel like a bit of a different story. But it is at least a good pay off for Shuichi and Kirie.

Some chapters hit better than others. I honestly think the first three are probably the peak and it doesnt really get any better, mostly because it directly impacts the characters and the stakes still arent entirely blown out of proportion. That's the moment the manga succeds the most an being horror, because a lot of it is still the fear of the unknown. Once you get to know the mechanics of the manga, which are super simple, (Spiral bad, Kirie's always in danger, character of the chapter dies by the end), the tension is kinda gone. Especially since you're never really rooting for Kirie, you're just along for the ride to see the wacky stuff happening around her.

That being said I still believe its worth experiencing for the art alone and just the very fun concepts Uzumaki toys with. You might not get entirely invested in it, but the art more than makes up for it

Nagatoro-san is a manga that's been going for quite a while now and it's one of very polar opposite story directions.
Some people will say that is just gross and entirely about hummiliation of the main character for the sadistic enjoyment of the titular Nagatoro and others will say it's about two teenagers slowly, but surely falling for each other.
I think there is truth in both statements as the manga portrayes both of those polar opposite angles to their relationship.

The first half is heavily skewed towards the comedy angle with Nagatoro being the bully to Senpai. Whether or not you find that endearing is ... up to you, I can definetly see people being put off by this and writing it off as gross. It's definetly a deal breaker for many readers. Intentionally or not, it serves as an introduction to Nagatoro's and Senpai's flaws as people, more heavily emphasizing Nagatoro. She's a mean bully unable to show affection, because she's emotionally insecure. Senpai, while not a bad guy, is very timid and unable to stand up for himself, despite being older, so he's easy pickings for her. I don't want to victimblame, because she is definetly the one in the wrong, I just want to draw attention that he also has a place to grow from. The first half can feel directionless and only ever focusing on the gag comedy. The character growth is very miniscule and slow. About 80 chapters of that can be a bit jarring, but I still found it mildly enjoyable to go back to every now and again.

However, around chapter 80, the narrative is entirely flipped on its head. When Senpai gets the proper name introduction as Naoto Hachiouji, and decided to switch from glaesses to contant lenses. At that point, the story becomes a lot more character drvien and focuses on the two a lot more as people. New characters get introduced who serve a strong narrative purpose and the previously introduced friends of Nagatoro which didn't have much to do before are also put to good use. The series at that point focuses a lot more on the characters finally really growing closer together as people and sharing a lot more sincere moments. To fans of romance, this is definetly great and I think a lot of people would enjoy it.Those moments definetly weren't entirely absent in the first half, but in the second they do take center stage and the series definetly dialed down Nagatoro's mean levels and attempts to redeem her a little bit with multiple moments where she shows she truly cares for Hachiouji.

The question then remains, whether or not it's actually worth to read up to chapter 80 or so for the cute romance to actually start? That's for you to anwser. For me the anwser was "yes", but for you it might be different. It can be a little jarring to read many chapters based around the same ideas until it fully kicks into high gear, to watch a character actively be a bully and never really get her commupance for that. It definetly takes a lot of time investment to fully appreciate how the series has grown and see those characters evolve (which I think is nessecary to watch them at their lowest points in the first half). Seeing the story evolve and become a lot more character driven has kept me going back to it and I do believe the direction of many of its latest arcs is truly stellar for what it once was. One thing that I think is also worth mentioning that the art is absolutely wonderful and definetly a high point for the series.