What Did You Eat Yesterday? vol. 1
If you’ve read enough of Fumi Yoshinaga’s manga, it becomes abundantly clear that she has two real passions in life: food and gay men. She managed to combine them both in magnificent fashion in her best series, “Antique Bakery,” which I recommend to everyone who reads this. Particularly to those who appreciate good character-driven stories but have issues with the idea that a focus on one or both of these subjects would lead to a story they can’t enjoy. All of her other mainstream work has touched upon these things to lesser degrees, though “What Did You Eat Yesterday?” finds the mangaka bringing them back together again in less successful fashion.
Shiro Kakei is a lawyer and hobbyist gourmand who, while not antisocial, is more of the reserved type. His live-in boyfriend Kenji Yabuki is an outgoing stylist with a gift for handling the most difficult clients and serves as the chief taste-tester for Shiro’s culinary experiments. Their exploits aren’t anything out of the ordinary and the series is enjoyable in the way that it details their particular slices of life.
Of the two, Shiro is the more interesting due to the circumstances of his job as a lawyer. Not only does it mean we get to (briefly) see him navigate the Japanese legal system, but there’s an interesting tension in the way that he hasn’t told his co-workers that he’s gay yet. The man isn’t in the closet, as quite a few people know about his sexuality. That includes his parents, as his mom provides some good-natured comic relief in the way she tries to accept her son for who he is but can’t quite get it right. He’s just someone who doesn’t feel the need to broadcast this fact about himself to everyone.
On the other hand is Kenji, who is out and proud and not averse to telling his clientele that he wears the pants in this particular relationship. Hilarity then ensues when said clientele sees them together and draws their own conclusions about Shiro based on this. Their bickering and general dialogue isn’t all that dissimilar from what I’ve seen from straight couples in comics or fiction in general, yet the two don’t have a whole lot of chemistry together. At one point, Kenji wonders out loud whether or not his fastidious and budget-minded boyfriend is only going out with him for the free haircuts he provides. After a big argument ensues after the encounter with the aforementioned “clientele” Kenji breaks down in tears and Shiro, realizing that he’s gone too far, simply clams up and swiftly decides to focus on making dinner. Yeah, they seem to get along really well when they’re eating. Otherwise you’re left wondering just how they got and continue to stay together.
Now that I think about it, this actually represents new territory for Yoshinaga as pretty much everything I’ve read from her involves people who either aren’t cut out to be in a monogamous relationship or are spared from it through some kind of tragedy. Writing a couple who have an ongoing relationship appears to be a new thing for her. I certainly applaud her efforts to try new things, though it would appear that she has a little ways to go before this central couple feels like they actually belong together.
In fact, for someone as good as characterization as Yoshinaga is the stories here feel surprisingly safe and predictable. A lot of the situations here feel sitcom-ready from Shiro’s encounters with his mother, the time he’s mistaken for a rapist by a neighbor, and Kenji’s jealousy over the fact that his boyfriend is buying bread from the woman he dated a lifetime ago. All of this is well-executed with good comic timing, but the plots and setups are familiar enough to drain a lot of the entertainment out of them. If I had to guess, I’d say that the “safe” approach here may be down to the fact that this series seems intended as an informative work for those in Japan who don’t have a whole lot of familiarity with gays and their lifestyle. There’s a lot of, “They’re ordinary people too,” in these situations. While I can see this being of great value to a country that isn’t all that gay-friendly like Japan — regardless of all the yaoi manga that it produces, they’re quite conservative in these matters — it’s of less interest to those of us who have already learned the lesson of tolerance casually conveys.
As for the food part of this title, it comes off just fine. If the food doesn’t look quite as mouth-watering as the sweets in “Antique Bakery,” it still appears pretty appetizing. The problem is that whenever the focus shifts over to food in a given chapter, the narrative grinds to a halt. You could probably take the pages in each chapter detailing each meal out and not interrupt the flow of the story much. While I generally like seeing Yoshinaga indulge her foodie side, it read better as pure indulgence when she made it the focus of the story in “Not Love But Delicious Foods Make Me So Happy!”
“What Did You Eat Yesterday?” is ultimately amusing fluff. If you haven’t read “Antique Bakery” yet, then you should go read it first as it’s the superior work. This one ultimately finds Yoshinaga taking things easy and exploring some new territory though not trying very hard at it. I can understand the need for creators to relax from time to time, but I can’t imagine any fan of hers reading this and not feeling that she’s done better elsewhere.