What Did You Eat Yesterday? vol. 3

I’ve made my thoughts clear that the previous volumes of this title do not represent Fumi Yoshinaga’s best work.  This volume, however, continues the trend of seeing the mangaka take baby steps towards giving this title more depth than it initially started out with.  There’s a brief moment where Shiro, the serious attorney, is complaining to his boyfriend Kenji about having to spend New Year’s with his parents.  While Kenji is usually responsive to his man’s *ahem* strained observations, this time we see him display a very nonplussed expression at these complaints before shifting back into his usual jovial mindset.  This actually shocks Shiro out of his current mindset and gets him to reconsider not only going to see his parents, but the relationship his partner has with his family as well.  It also has the side effect of getting the reader to wonder what Kenji’s relationship with his parents was like to foster that reaction to his partner’s comments.

We get other moments like that, usually involving Shiro, over the course of the volume.  The lawyer has to deal with loaning his parents money in the wake of his dad’s hospitalization and training a new advocate at his law firm who he seems to be making all of the right moves with.  Much to his consternation.  None of this is groundbreaking work, but the nuances are much closer to what I’ve come to expect from Yoshinaga’s work in the first place.  The foodie parts even feel better integrated into the overall narrative than before, as the momentum just slows to a crawl as opposed to grinding to a halt.  There’s still no sign of an overarching plot that would allow the series to transcend its modest aims at this point.  However, after this volume I’m feeling much better about the title’s direction than I did with the first two volumes.  It may not go anywhere astonishing, but its modest charms are slowly winning me over.