Little did I know what I was getting myself into.
Recently a package of doujinshi arrived in my mailbox. Among them was "Are Kuiiji-nu!" (a pun on "Allez Cuisine")--the front cover of which is shown above--brought to us by a circle calling themselves Gourmet Academy. At 8 1/4 inches tall by 6 inches wide, with 42 pages, this is a petit-four as far as doujinshi go.
You have to understand one thing right away: I can't read Japanese. I know a couple of hiragana: I can read "no," as in "something-no-something," and I can fairly reliably translate "Aaaa-aaaah"--always an important word to know when you look at a lot of doujinshi. However, beyond that, I'm helpless--so I approach doujinshi from a strictly visual standpoint, and as you well know, a great many of them don't need written language to make their point.
So while Kagenami Q has filled in this doujinshi's actual title for me above, as far as I'm concerned, the title of this little book is "The Chef Who Shagged Me."
When KQ first told me about this book before she sent it to me, she said, "You'll like it--it's really cute, and it's funny, too. Chairman Kaga takes his clothes off and then he somehow gets really small, and then he rolls around in the food!"
"....'Kay..." I said, South Park-kid-like.
"How scary can that be?" I asked myself rhetorically. After all, it sounded fairly innocent, and funny in a demented sort of way--my favorite type of humor. I also have absolutely no objection to the thought of a nekkid Kaga. Alarm bells were going off in my mind--"Hey, that scenario isn't enough to fill out a whole doujinshi, you dork!!"--but I blithely chose to ignore them.
KQ was right--the book is drawn in a very cute style. The Iron Chefs are, in fact, very recognizable in spite of having taken several solid whacks from the kawaii stick; from the left in the cover scan are Hiroyuki Sakai (Iron Chef French), the original Iron Chef Japanese Rokusaburo Michiba (who won't be familiar to those who have only seen the show on the Food Network, as he retired in July of 1996, and I'm pretty sure the Food Network has only shown episodes with Iron Chef Japanese Masaharu Morimoto), and Iron Chef Chinese Chen Kenichi. That's Takeshi Kaga in the background. Kaga is, as you can see, somewhat less recognizable.
Of the 3 Iron Chef doujinshi I own, even though they all have wildly different artistic styles, none of them (in my opinion, anyway) have succeeded in capturing Kaga's likeness. This makes a certain amount of sense--after all, he's an actor, and he makes his living by being chameleonic. Also, all the Iron Chef doujinshi I have are pre-Morimoto, so in all of them, Kaga's hair is considerably shorter in length and he's less haggard-looking than I'm used to seeing. In this book he mutates into this weird, generic little character, recognizable only by his flamboyant wardrobe and his girlish bouffant hairdo. If you weren't familiar with his sartorial splendor or his truly enviable hair, you might not know this was Kaga.
The book opens with another day dawning at Kaga's estate. He is awakened by faithful Kenichi, bearing the makings for breakfast.
In my earlier ponderings of the concept of Iron Chef doujinshi, I figured they'd be one of two types. One type would be very worshipful of the show and everyone associated with it, and would include bios and possibly recipes (I'm basing this on the only other doujinshi I've actually looked at that's based on a real person: the charming but statistics-heavy "We Love Charles Barkley"). The other type would probably feature every sexual coupling imaginable, and probably a few that were not.
This doujinshi seems to at least make an attempt to have recipes in it. As Kenichi prepares breakfast for Kaga, you're shown a numbered list, with illustrations of a bowl, ingredients getting sliced and diced, a startled halibut losing its head (cut on the dotted line!), etc. After consuming and appreciating the soup, Kaga suddenly becomes an ingredient--he gets very very tiny (not literally, I expect--at least, I hope not!), and then he gets steamed, stir-fried, sauced and stewed--and then, mercifully returned to normal scale, he gets plooked. By Chen Kenichi. Yikes!
Not to belabor a point or keep hammering home the food metaphors, but holy cheese-and-crackers, there's a lot of shagging going on in this book. The overweeningly cartoony cuteness of the characters just adds to the slightly surreal, train-wreck effect of the sex scenes (which, as doujinshi sex scenes go, are pretty tame--you don't see any actual physical contact or naughty bits, but it's still obvious what's happening). This is almost like watching Chip n' Dale get it on.
After Kenichi takes his leave of the now-exhausted Kaga, it's Sakai's turn, then Michiba's, following the same pattern--a dish is served, Kaga likes it, and then he gets to experience some cooking technique from the food's point of view (Michiba explores the different ways we can present Kaga on skewers: butterflied across two? crucified across three in a rake-shaped pattern? or just presented on one?), and then gets shagged. (Maybe the cooking is a metaphor for sex. Honest, it's hard to tell...)
Incidentally, Kaga doesn't seem to mind getting repeatedly rammed by his supposed servants--there's no forcing going on. Although Kaga makes token protests, ultimately he gives up and gives in.
Another charming feature of this twisted little volume is that the titles of some of the individual selections are in French. This doujinshi is therefore in a truly unique category--it has a double language barrier!
On page 27, a text story begins. Its title is "Le Gibier derobe," and I'm gonna take a guess that "derobe" means "undressed," so I can imagine what the rest of the title means...
After the text story is a page of mostly text entitled "Faux-Fuyant," then another two pages of the same type of action we've already seen, and then The End. You may be looking for a good stiff drink at this point, or possibly a cigarette and a cold shower.
The one thing that prevents me from completely enjoying this book as a demented paen to my favorite TV show is the fact that these are real people we're dealing with here. It's not like Dragonball guys or Sailor Moon girls--sure, Akira Toriyama or Naoko Takeuchi might roll their eyes, or might be shocked and horrified, at some of the doujinshi that people create using their characters, but when it comes down to it, those characters are fictional. In Iron Chef, these are real people! If I was Chen Kenichi or Takeshi Kaga and I saw this book, I might be a little bit unnerved, or I might think it was funny--or I might run screaming for a lawyer.
Now, for all I know, the "Faux-Fuyant" page might be a page of apologies, or the densely-packed frame of text at the end of the final two pages of comics might be a disclaimer of some sort. I suppose we're all fortunate that the Japanese don't seem to be anywhere near as lawsuit-happy as Americans are. At the very least, if I was the artist, I might be a wee bit nervous about finding a flaming paper bag of foie gras on my porch one morning.
When it all comes down to it and the last dish of crab-brain ice cream has been served, this is a pretty funny book. It makes you feel a little weird, to be sure, but doujinshi are notorious for challenging a point of view, for shaking up your world a little bit, and for making you think. That's what good art is all about, no matter what form it takes.
Besides which, everything here is presented in a loving way--nobody gets hurt (well, except for the halibut), and it's all good, clean fun, in a way. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to someone new to doujinshi, to someone unfamiliar with Iron Chef, or for anyone under 18, but if you're of a slightly twisted mindset and you have not only a fondness for that goofy, bombastic cooking show from the Land of the Rising Sun but also a fairly high cuteness threshold, you'll definitely enjoy this book.
Simone is grateful to ironchef.com and ironchef-usa.com for having so much great information available, without which this article could not have been written. No infringement of copyright of any name, title, or otherwise owned by Fuji TV is intended, as this article is written for entertainment and education only. You can contact Simone at simone_maxwell@hotmail.com. Don't miss her new web page, MEET ME IN DREAMLAND: The Writings Of Simone Maxwell!
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This page was created November 21, 2000. Last updated June 27, 2002.
