Anime Review: Restaurant To Another World
Apr. 22nd, 2023 04:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jennariaRESTAURANT TO ANOTHER WORLD/ISEKAI SHOKUDO - 2017 & 2021 (Japan), available on Crunchyroll and Funimation
Amount watched: Season 1 (12 episodes)
Official description: (From Crunchyroll) There is a certain restaurant in the first basement level of a multi-tenant building in one corner of a shopping street near the office district. The historical restaurant, marked by a sign with a picture of a cat, is called "Western Cuisine Nekoya." This restaurant looks completely normal through the week, but on Saturdays, it opens in secret exclusively to some very unique guests. During these hours, doors in various areas of a parallel world open to allow customers of many different races and cultures into the restaurant.
Weeb rating: 5/10, because this is all about Japanese food, or Japanese takes on 'Western' (=non-Japanese) food, and how clearly awesome they are. With occasional sidetracks onto anime or fantasy tropes, although the fantasy tropes are likewise filtered through a thoroughly Japanese lens.
Ass rating: 5/10 - look, in the very first episode, a giant red dragon shrinks down to the shape of a human woman, whose modesty is only protected by some discreetly curling hair and some steam, while she waits around for her servitor to go get her clothes. Why didn't she already have clothes handy, given she was planning the transformation well ahead of time? Don't ask these questions! To say nothing of the tendency of the female characters to really, really, really :cough: enjoy their food.
Shit rating: 3/10. It is what it is what it is. Do not come here for anything really resembling a Plot lasting longer than a single episode: we are here for cooing over lovingly depicted Japanese food.
Violence rating: 3/10. Mostly cartoony fights between, say, a treasure hunter and attacking goblins, or mothmen attacking guards. Very little blood.
Crack rating: 5/10 - we are taking the isekai genre (let's drop people into another world!) and mashing it up with Japanese food porn (...let's drop people from another world into our world and feed them!)
Actual opinion: So I watched this back in 2017, and then didn't really think about it again until I was rummaging through Anime I Have Watched, and discovered that hey, new season dropped!
Which is good, just to be clear. I like food in anime, and I'm not alone. Lots of other anime spend animation cels on loving depictions of Japanese food - Studio Ghibli in particular is so famous for it that a search on Google for 'studio ghibli food' brings up a whole bunch of lists of 'times Studio Ghibli made you hungry,' or where to try those mouthwatering meals in real life (and possible recipes to help you along).
But most other food-focused anime I've encountered has also had, well, a plot. RESTAURANT TO ANOTHER WORLD is not here for your plot-related nonsense. It is here to randomly kidnap citizens from another world and bring them to a small restaurant in Tokyo, and hook them on one specific dish. Which dish? Depends on the focus of today's episode! And then it sends them back to their regular life, now with an ongoing craving for that one specific Japanese dish, and searching for the mysterious door to That Restaurant.
This makes it sounds a lot more creepy than the actual vibe of the show. True, it never bothers explaining why the door opens in this other world on Saturdays, and why multiple places there, but the addiction to Japanese food doesn't appear to be a plan so much as the side effect of how clearly awesome Japanese food is. No food allergies or sensitivities appear, and people never take one bite of something and regret their decisions. This is how you know it is fiction. On the other hand, now I'm in the mood for Japanese food, so the win goes to the show.
Amount watched: Season 1 (12 episodes)
Official description: (From Crunchyroll) There is a certain restaurant in the first basement level of a multi-tenant building in one corner of a shopping street near the office district. The historical restaurant, marked by a sign with a picture of a cat, is called "Western Cuisine Nekoya." This restaurant looks completely normal through the week, but on Saturdays, it opens in secret exclusively to some very unique guests. During these hours, doors in various areas of a parallel world open to allow customers of many different races and cultures into the restaurant.
Weeb rating: 5/10, because this is all about Japanese food, or Japanese takes on 'Western' (=non-Japanese) food, and how clearly awesome they are. With occasional sidetracks onto anime or fantasy tropes, although the fantasy tropes are likewise filtered through a thoroughly Japanese lens.
Ass rating: 5/10 - look, in the very first episode, a giant red dragon shrinks down to the shape of a human woman, whose modesty is only protected by some discreetly curling hair and some steam, while she waits around for her servitor to go get her clothes. Why didn't she already have clothes handy, given she was planning the transformation well ahead of time? Don't ask these questions! To say nothing of the tendency of the female characters to really, really, really :cough: enjoy their food.
Shit rating: 3/10. It is what it is what it is. Do not come here for anything really resembling a Plot lasting longer than a single episode: we are here for cooing over lovingly depicted Japanese food.
Violence rating: 3/10. Mostly cartoony fights between, say, a treasure hunter and attacking goblins, or mothmen attacking guards. Very little blood.
Crack rating: 5/10 - we are taking the isekai genre (let's drop people into another world!) and mashing it up with Japanese food porn (...let's drop people from another world into our world and feed them!)
Actual opinion: So I watched this back in 2017, and then didn't really think about it again until I was rummaging through Anime I Have Watched, and discovered that hey, new season dropped!
Which is good, just to be clear. I like food in anime, and I'm not alone. Lots of other anime spend animation cels on loving depictions of Japanese food - Studio Ghibli in particular is so famous for it that a search on Google for 'studio ghibli food' brings up a whole bunch of lists of 'times Studio Ghibli made you hungry,' or where to try those mouthwatering meals in real life (and possible recipes to help you along).
But most other food-focused anime I've encountered has also had, well, a plot. RESTAURANT TO ANOTHER WORLD is not here for your plot-related nonsense. It is here to randomly kidnap citizens from another world and bring them to a small restaurant in Tokyo, and hook them on one specific dish. Which dish? Depends on the focus of today's episode! And then it sends them back to their regular life, now with an ongoing craving for that one specific Japanese dish, and searching for the mysterious door to That Restaurant.
This makes it sounds a lot more creepy than the actual vibe of the show. True, it never bothers explaining why the door opens in this other world on Saturdays, and why multiple places there, but the addiction to Japanese food doesn't appear to be a plan so much as the side effect of how clearly awesome Japanese food is. No food allergies or sensitivities appear, and people never take one bite of something and regret their decisions. This is how you know it is fiction. On the other hand, now I'm in the mood for Japanese food, so the win goes to the show.