Etsushi Ogawa: The Comeback Story of a Cooking Manga

2020/05/20

Since I was a child, I frequented the studio of my grandfather, a Western-style painter. While learning to paint, my impatient nature led me to seek the dynamic storytelling of serial art rather than the quietude of mastering a single painting.

In other words, I began to aspire to be a manga artist.

I didn't mind repeating a year or not joining a seminar; I went through trial and error aiming to debut while still in university. However, I failed to gain traction and eventually took a job. Unable to give up on my dream, I left the company, drew a one-shot story, and brought it to Weekly Shonen Magazine, where I was lucky enough to get an editor.

When I told my editor I wanted to draw a manga set in China, he suggested, "Then why don't you try aiming for a series with 'Chinese cuisine' as the theme?" That was the beginning of the "Chūka Ichiban!" (Cooking Master Boy) series. Up to that point, everything went smoothly. I researched and prepared by devouring books on cooking, a subject I wasn't even familiar with.

However, having been thrown into the harsh battlefield of weekly serialization without any experience as an assistant, I immediately fell into a predicament.

My popularity was stagnant. There was the fear of weekly deadlines and the reality that if survey results hovered at the bottom, the series would be canceled immediately. If I dropped out, I didn't know how many years it would be before another chance came my way.

While "cooking manga" is a major genre today, it was a minor one 20-some years ago. Furthermore, the protagonist, Mao, was a very young foreigner in a period piece. It was full of disadvantageous elements for a shonen manga at the time, and I didn't know what strategy to take.

I couldn't beat the rival in the same magazine, "Shota no Sushi," and unlike manga in other genres, it was difficult to create the exhilaration of defeating an enemy head-on. There was the despair that even the most important element—the "taste" of the food—could not be accurately conveyed to the reader no matter how much I exhausted my drawings and words.

After six months, I was told the serialization would end.

However, the turnaround began from the moment I decided to stop worrying and just go for it.

I decided that if I couldn't convey the "taste" accurately, I would at least exaggerate the "degree" of the taste. I used my full imagination to depict the reactions and the mental landscapes of those who ate the food through my drawings.

I also staged the cooking style with actions reminiscent of a martial artist.

Once that absurdity luckily became a hit, all the minor elements turned into rare positive ones. The series moved to a monthly magazine, returned to a weekly, and was adapted into a TV anime, becoming a long-running work read and watched widely across Asia. Now, I am even working on the sequel, "Chūka Ichiban! Kiwami."