Ms. Koizumi Loves Ramen Noodles vol. 1

There’s a more interesting series lurking underneath the surface of the one we get here.  A thriller about an obsessed schoolgirl who stalks the new girl in her class. A quiet girl who can only experience happiness if she’s tasting ramen.  Instead, we’ve got a relatively sedate slice-of-life story about Yu, a schoolgirl who is fascinated by the Koizumi of the title. She encounters Koizumi waiting in line at a ramen shop and winds up having a double pork, extra veggies, garlic, and spicy oil bowl.  A mixture of ingredients so thick that you can barely make out where the noodles are. While Yu manages to finish and even enjoy the bowl, that’s of secondary concern to the look of ecstasy she sees on Koizumi’s face after she’s done. It’s captivating to Yu, and she finds herself utterly determined to make friends with this cool new girl.

Cue eight more chapters of Yu trying to do just that while her friends, snarky Misa and reserved Jun, manage it better than she can.  All while lots of good-looking ramen is consumed. Credit where credit is due, mangaka Naru Narumi gets the most important aspect of this series right:  The ramen we see the girls eating looks good enough to be worth eating in real life. If only there was something, anything more to the story than watching cute girls talk about and eat ramen.  Even the slice-of-life stuff is utterly pedestrian by the standards of the genre. “What Did You Eat Yesterday?” may never reconcile its character-driven and foodie sides, but the characters and their dramas are interesting enough that I’m willing to put up with that.  The impression I get here is that everything we see in vol. 1 of “Ms. Koizumi” is all that this series has to offer.