SOTA'S KNIFE

'Sota's Knife Vol 1' by Kei Honjo and Yuichiro Sueda is about a young man who wants to someday be a great chef. I loved this manga filled with heart and passion about food.

Sota works as a dishwasher at a famous restaurant called Tomikyu. He is starting at the bottom and working his way up, but his boss, the head chef, has seen something in him.

One day, a friend he knew in school shows up with fancy clothing and belittles Sota, but Sota doesn't mind, and soon his friend is humiliated for trying to create a shortcut to success. Another time, he helps a single mother create a special lunch for her daughter. There are trips to learn about mushrooms and miso, and late nights trying to perfect his dashi. All under the eye of a boss and coworkers who are mentoring him along the way.

I loved this book about a special young man and the passion for food that he and his coworkers have. The characters and stories were very interesting. I would recommend it to anyone who is a foodie, even if they don't read manga. I think it would make an interesting movie or television show. I definitely would love to read more of Sota's adventures.

I received a review copy of this manga from Jitsugyo no Nihon Sha, Ltd., and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this manga.

Received from NetGalley and the publisher for an honest review---thank you!!

Sota's Knife was a fun food-filled manga. Sota is a young man who leaves his hometown to gain experience in food practice to one day bring his family's own small restaurant to be the best it can be. Although just a helper and dishwasher, in his spare time, Sota practices cooking at home with different forms of the same ingredients, as well as using his knife in the most intricate of ways to make the food perfect.

I thought this food manga was very interesting. It had quite a few translation notes that related to the type of cuts, food, bentos, and restaurants therein relating to both current culture and history. I get the sense of a well-researched writer and learned quite a few fact about different types of restaurants in Japan--what makes something fancy, and what doesn't?

I thought the art was pretty good and liked Sota's attitude towards learning new things in the kitchen. His motivation and strive to constantly be better makes the character fun to follow and root for. I definitely wouldn't mind reading the next one!

(NetGalley wasn't able to post to Goodreads, so I posted manually to both Goodreads and Amazon).

This first volume of Sota's Knife compiles the first 11 chapters of the manga and it is about the 20-year old Sota Kitaoka from Hokkaido who became a kitchen-helper in Tomikyu, a fine dining restaurant in Tokyo. He was hired by Kyu Goro Tomita, one of the top 5 chefs in Tokyo and now he works for six months already in the said restaurant. Sota is eager to learn a lot so he trains alone after the store closed at night. His only dream is to get his family-owned restaurant back on track.

Kei Honjo beautifully illustrated each comic panel because how detailed his drawings are. So far, I consider this as the best-illustrated manga I've seen because I saw how elaborate and how much time Kei Honjo spent in drawing this — there are texture, shadows, and highlights and that shows how skillful he is in his craft. He didn't draw the illustrations hastily because anyone can see the huge effort he did especially in drawing those settings, and of the images of food.

I also learned a lot from how much the Japanese chefs exert a lot in order to prepare each dish — giving the best quality of food to the customers. Sota's humility and passion to learn is admirable also, and the camaraderie in Tomikyu will touch anyone. There are a lot of Japanese manga that turns into either anime or real live film or TV adaptation, and I wonder if there would future plans for this. Hopefully, producers would give this an opportunity but hopefully, Kei Honjo would still be part of the illustrators if it would be an anime adaptation.