News

Kodoku no Gourmet Series Gets New Year's Special Episode

The staff of the live-action television series of Masayuki Kusumi and Jiro Taniguchi's Kodoku no Gourmet (Solitary Gourmet) manga announced last Thursday that the series will air a special episode on January 1 at 11:15 a.m. The episode will be set in Asahikawa in Hokkaido. TV Tokyo is streaming a commercial for the episode.

The television series is currently airing a fifth season, which premiered on October 2. The season finale aired on Friday. TV Tokyo is streaming a promotional video for the finale episode.

Both the series and the original manga follow a solitary salesman named Goro Inagashira as he travels all over Japan and samples the local cuisine found on street corners.

The 12-episode second season aired from October-December 2012, and the 10-episode third season aired from July-September 2013. The 12-episode fourth season aired in July-September 2014.

Kusumi and Taniguchi first serialized Kodoku no Gourmet from 1994 to 1996 in Fusosha's Monthly Panja magazine (now defunct). Kusumi handled the story, and Taniguchi drew the art. Fusosha published the first collected volume in 1997, and it ran for three print runs. Fusosha published a paperback print run in 2000, and in 2008, issued a reprint with new cover art. The first compiled volume has now sold over 200,000 copies. Kusumi announced in January that he will publish the manga's second volume this year after an 18-year hiatus. Fusosha published the second volume on September 27.

The manga has been translated in eight languages. The now-defunct online manga site JManga once licensed the manga for North America and published a part of it in English.

Source: Cinema Today via Hachima Kikō