Forum - View topicJason Thompson's House of 1000 Manga - Iron Wok Jan
|
Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
| Author | Message | ||
|---|---|---|---|
|
momogoldfish
Posts: 135 Location: New Zealand |
|
||
|
As a Chinese I am afraid to say that I've actually heard of (and eaten) many of the food mentioned. Shark fin soup, salted pig's blood, snake soup, goose/pigs intestines are still very common in HK and things like fried cicadas and steamed eggs with insect is still fondly remembered by my dad's generation...Lets not mention the things they actually still eat in real life China (like the boiled pregnant nanny goat with an almost fully developed kid inside...)
|
|||
|
|||
Moonsaber
 Posts: 343 Location: USA |
|
||
Don't worry, it's not just the Chinese that eat 'disgusting' things. Americans do too! Fermented Cabbage (Sauerkraut), Chitlins (pig's intestines, usually stewed), Head cheese (The meat from a boiled pig's head, cooked and made into patte.. eyeballs and usually brains included), Sweet Bread (Which is just the pig's brain), Scrapple (Essentially head cheese with cornmeal, which forms a loaf and is sliced, fried, and served with breakfast), Rocky Mountain Oysters (Cow's testacles). The list goes on and on and on, and America tends to pick up all the wierd stuff from every culture that helped form it. |
|||
|
|||
|
Lord Geo
Posts: 2544 Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey |
|
||
|
Hell yeah! Frst BAOH and now Iron Wok Jan! !
I loved this manga when it was coming out and I defintely loved that Dr.Master finished this title. It's utter insanity, but it's the kind that you can read and 100% understand what's going on. How this manga never got an anime adaptation I just can't understand; for some reason, the only voice I can imagine Jan having is that of Nobuyuki Hiyama's! I have the first three volumes of Jan! R, tankouban's of course, and it is simply just more cooking insanity, but that's fine with me. When Ed Chavez was taking manga license requests a month ago, I requested Jan! R, and while he said that the bookscan numbers weren't encouraging, he pointed out that he has no idea how it did via Diamond and that he'd look through the tankoubans he has. It would be great if Vertical picked up Jan! R; Dr.Master once told me that they would only do Jan! R if it wasn't too long, but after it finished at 10 volumes the company went silent. |
|||
|
|||
|
dan_bellucci
Posts: 20 |
|
||
|
Oh Iron Wok Jan. I remember a library nearby to me had the first 10 volumes of it for some reason, but I only read the first one before the library got renovated, and I never saw the other tanks again.
I thought you might have mentioned the incredibly manly and insane manner and reason why Jan's grandfather died, but I suppose you didn't want to spoil the surprise. |
|||
|
|||
Treetastic
 Posts: 164 Location: Canada |
|
||
|
Oh no! The pigeons! That scene was horrifying, as I'm sure it was meant to be. I always find this column interesting, even (especially) for manga that aren't really my thing. I'm kind of reminded of the Yu-Gi-Oh story where they play hockey with frozen dynamite on an okonomiyaki grill. (Though I'm sure someone will resent that comparison.)
Speaking of odd food, I've had fried jellyfish courtesy of some Chinese friends, which was pretty tasty. Kind of like noodles. |
|||
|
|||
|
Fronzel
Posts: 1906 |
|
||
|
I eventually got slightly annoyed that this series became a succession of cooking contests, the boondoggle of any cooking-based series, but I have to admit that it kept the contests varied enough (professional tournaments, televised circuses, serial personal duels) to avoid stagnation.
I always thought that it was pretty interesting that Jan and Kiriko had an obvious "bickering love interests" set-up, but their commitment to defeating each other prevented it from developing (at least by volume 12, where I'm currently reading). There's one scene fairy early on when sympathy nearly overwhelms competition, but Jan chooses to reject it. Given the way token romance plots are usually shoe-horned into everything, it was neat seeing potential love subsumed by other emotions. I wouldn't mind a chance to get to read the sequel, especially if it's a more managable 10 volumes. |
|||
|
|||
|
erinfinnegan
ANN Columnist
 Posts: 598 |
|
||
|
I started reading the second half of this series when DrMaster started sending me review copies. I loved the ending, even though books in the second half were nearly 25% re-cap from chapter to chapter. I've been trying to collect back issues to complete the series ever since.
I tried cooking some recipes from Jan for my Cooking With Manga panel at Anime Boston (hopefully I'll get to run the panel again at New York Anime Fest this year). The latter half of the series gives recipes that aren't being prepared in the story. The recipes are not translated with perhaps the amount of attention to detail required. The Oishinbo editors did a much better job translating their recipes for an American audience. In fact, I'm still using the Oishinbo method to cook asparagus, because it's f--ing delicious (from the Vegetables volume in the US release). One of the Iron Wok dishes I made kind of turned out OK, but really, anything with that much bacon involved is going to be delicious. |
|||
|
|||
|
ptolemy18
Manga Reviewer/Creator/Taster
Posts: 357 Location: San Francisco |
|
||
I definitely wasn't trying to say that Chinese food is "weird." But Iron Wok Jan is trying for shock value, so they intentionally pick the dishes which are the most bizarre to Japanese (and, apparently, Western) audiences. |
|||
|
|||
gingi789
 Posts: 56 |
|
||
|
I love this series! Aside from being the first cooking manga that i've ever read, Jan is just an awesome main character. (the Iron Chef bit is my favorite part....probably because i like the real Iron Chef: America
 )
@ Erin: if you're talking about the original Iron Wok Jan series, have you tried rightstuf? They have 1-27 if you're looking for back issues. |
|||
|
|||
|
Rednal
Posts: 132 |
|
||
|
Y'know, to be totally honest, I'm not sure this review does justice to how crazy this series occasionally gets. Over-the-top shounen manga is good at defying description that way. On the other hand, I learned a whole lot about food and cooking from reading the series, with the caveat that different isn't necessarily bad, it just might need a few dozen variation attempts before you get it right...
... Man, now all sorts of crazy memories from this series are being brought back... |
|||
|
|||
simside
 Posts: 29 |
|
||
|
For a long time, I refused to believe a cooking manga could be even remotely interesting or as insane as the descriptions of this made it seem. It turns out that most descriptions of this series somehow understate the insanity, and I love that your article here is just a litany of some of the finer moments. Reading through this, I realized that some of those things seemed normal when I read them in the context of the series, which says something about how extreme Iron Wok Jan really is. As a lover of insane manga, and someone that hates cooking culture in general, this ranks very high on my list of all-time favorites.
Thinking about this is making me tear up a bit. It was just so beautiful, in its way. I think a lot more shounen series should have graphic puking scenes in their finale. Or "next volume preview" pages that feature rooms full of empty syringes with no comment or context. |
|||
|
|||
|
ptolemy18
Manga Reviewer/Creator/Taster
Posts: 357 Location: San Francisco |
|
||
|
Now that I think about it, I bet another one of the big influences on "Iron Wok Jan" was the 1995 movie "The Chinese Feast" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chinese_Feast). Although it's heartwarming where Jan is ghoulish, it came out earlier in the same year and it's all about exaggerated competitions of wok-cooking, including a climax involving various rare animals.
|
|||
|
|||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group