Etsushi Ogawa: The Comeback Story of a Cooking Manga

Ever since I was a child, I frequented the studio of my grandfather, a Western-style painter, to learn how to draw. However, being impatient, I began to seek the dynamic storytelling of sequential 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. Yet, unable to give up on my dream, I left the company. When I brought a one-shot work to Weekly Shonen Magazine, I was lucky enough to get an editor assigned to me.

When I told my editor that I wanted to draw a manga set in China, he suggested, "Then why don't you try aiming for a serialization with 'Chinese cuisine' as the theme?" That was the beginning of the cooking manga series "Chūka Ichiban!" (Cooking Master Boy). Up to this 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 battlefield of a harsh weekly serialization without any experience as an assistant, I immediately fell into a predicament.

The popularity was sluggish. There was the fear of the weekly deadlines, and the reality that if the 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 foreigner who was too young, and it was a period piece. It was full of disadvantageous elements for the shonen manga conditions of the time, and I didn't know what strategy to take.

I couldn't beat the magazine's rival, "Shota no Sushi," and unlike manga in other genres, it was difficult to create that exhilarating feeling 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 to show "just how delicious it was."

I also presented 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 instead. Moving to a monthly magazine, returning to a weekly, and being adapted into a TV anime, it became a long-running work read and watched widely across Asia. Now, I am even working on the sequel, "Chūka Ichiban! Kiwami."