Another 10 Anime Food GIFs

Having some ramen in the movie Ponyo

It’s that time again, the time for MORE anime food GIFs!

Anime recommended by me will have a ☆ next to them.

1) Mixing cream into a coffee from Guilty Crown (☆)

2) All these cakes from Servant x Service (on my to-watch list)

3) Yakisoba (fried noodle dish) from Silver Spoon (another anime that is new to me)

4) Hashbrown or omelette thingy from My Little Monster (never heard of it before but it made me think of My Little Pony so I laughed)

5) Stirring some juice from The Garden of Words (still on my watch list from the last post- why? College, ugh)

6) A large spread of food from Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions (on my to-watch list)

7) Cooking some Takoyaki (little balls with filling that is often octopus) from Penguindrum (which I feel like I have heard of before)

8) Intensely layered cake-pancake thing from Dream-Colored Pastry Chef

9) Topping off fish with a pineapple slice from Free! Iwatobi Swim Club (☆)

10) All of these many different foods from Hanasaku Iroha

And, finally, because I love putting Honorable Mentions: how I feel after writing this post.

10 Anime Food GIFs

Food in anime is very beautiful, idealized, in fact. Watching the characters eat makes me hungry.

Tea time shown in Gachaman Crowds:

So, in no particular order, here are 10 random awesome GIFs of food from anime. Shows that I personally recommend will have a star like this ☆ next to them.

1) Omurice (omelette+rice dish) from The Garden of Words (a movie that I found out about that looks great)

2) Dessert with jiggly puddling from Polar Bear’s Cafe (which I just now learned about from finding this gif)

3) Some sort of egg-rice awesomeness from Blue Exorcist (☆)

4) Cooking meat from The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (which I’ve been meaning to watch)

5) Crab Cooking from Free! Iwatobi Swim Club (☆)

6) Cake and Tea from Watamote (☆)

7) Making a tart from Dream-Colored Pastry Chef (which seems to be about baking…?)

8) Bento from Seitokai Yakuindomo (never heard of this one before, it seems like a typical harem genre anime)

9) Parfait from To Love-Ru (also new to me)

10) This weird thing + mushrooms from Oregairu (learning about so many new anime shows today!)

Honorable Mention: Poking open an egg yolk from Black Butler (☆)

Should I watch the Anime or read the Manga?

When asking a friend or convention acquaintance about an anime show I haven’t seen yet, I sometimes hear a sad or dismissive answer that “it’s not as good as the manga” that its based on. It is the same issue other creators face in converting a book to a movie, though the transition between anime and manga is a bit easier, considering the continuation of the art style set in the manga.

For some anime I’ve inquired about I have received the reply that I shouldn’t even bother watching it and should just read the manga instead. When I was in my younger High School years I to roll my eyes at this notion, but then I realized that there have been many times I have hated a movie version of a book I like. Many of my friends prefer to read the manga before they watch the anime. I, myself, am too lazy to do that, though there have also been several examples of the anime-manga transition that have compelled me to consider reading the original version rather than watching the less-than-perfect animated translation.

I throughly enjoyed watching Death Note and it is one of the series that I have watched multiple times through, though I have yet to go back and read the manga. Let’s take a moment to consider the art using promotional covers.

Here we can see the difference in art style between the of Death Note in the manga (above) and anime (below). In this case, the popularity of the manga resulted in the creation of the anime.

Death Note became so wildly popular that it the franchise also got two Live-Action movies, which I thought were decent but way too condensed for the complicated plot they were trying to portray which was only loosely based on the anime plot. Had I read the manga, which was probably even more complex than the anime, I might not have enjoyed these movies as much as I did.

Many of the wildly popular and long-running anime shows like Bleach and Naruto are based off of their just as popular and extensive manga counter part. A noticeable hiccup in that process is filler. When a show is based off of a manga, it depends on the manga artist to produce new content to air in the show, however, the artist cannot produce as fast as the show can translate, resulting in the need for extra not-main-plot episodes which are aptly called filler. Another problem with the generally successful process is a sudden and/or bad ending to the anime that doesn’t match the manga, which might even be on going despite the end of the show. When that situation crops up, this is the general reaction by the fan community. Notable popular examples of this include Ouran High School Host Club and Soul Eater.

While talking about some of the failings of the manga-to-anime process, one of main examples that comes to mine is my personal experience with the series DNAngel. I heard of it from several people, saw the art, and decided to check it out by watching the anime. It has been several years since I watched it, but I still remember thinking that it felt really off for some reason and that the plot was similarly awkward. Later a friend told me that in her personal opinion, the anime didn’t live up to the standard set by the popular manga. I still have yet to read the manga, as I still have yet to read most manga even of series I really like.

A similar thing happened to me with Fruits Basket. I heard that it was good so I watched the first two episodes of the anime and then I did not watch any more. My friends told me to read the manga, that it was better, and I have yet to. I do intend to come back around and eventually read the manga for many anime shows that I like. I do like manga, I have a small collection from certain series, but to be honest it is just my personal preference to watch the shows.

Despite all the pit falls of the transition process, I know for sure that it is possible to adequately pull off the transition from anime to manga, just as it is possible to pull of a decent book-to-movie transition. Over all, it is up to the individual to decide if manga, anime, or both are right for them, and at times even on a case-by-case basis.

Gory vs Cute: Attack on Iwatobi Swim Club

Gore and Cuteness have always been at odds in the Anime Community at large. Recently there have been examples of a trend of splitting off gore and cute into separate shows, such as Attack on Titian and Free! Iwatobi Swim Club. Shows like Death Note (2006-2007) showed a trend away from a balance of cute and gory, replacing cuteness a mystery aspect. But, Death Note still had the cute female character Misa Amane, as well as maintaining humor with creepy-cute male character L that kept the show from getting way too depressing. Follow in the footsteps of Death Note, came shows like Code Geass, Future Diary, Guilty Crown (to a lesser extent for gore than the others though still violent) and more recently Btooom! and Dangan Ronpa (which uses pink for blood, earning mixed reactions among fans).

All those shows had increasing strategic/psychological aspect, increasing levels of violence and less arbitrarily cute things surrounding the characters, though the female characters remained adorable as ever. This all brings me to Attack on Titian, where nothing is cute. I mean it. Nothing is cute at all in this show. I’ve tired really hard to look for anything cute. Settings? NOPE. Animal sidekick? NOPE. Pretty, well-drawn foods like cakes? NOPE. Cute outfits for the girls? A billion times NOPE. It sticks with realistic hair colors (contrary to the trends set in Code Geass, Future Diary, Guilty Crown and Dangan Ronpa) going back to the standards set in Death Note for a more realistic feel (which Btooom! also did). And in Attack on Titian, since all the characters are in the military they wear the same uniform with the same uniform coat, and PANTS (unlike in Code Geass which also has military aspects but the girls all have skimpier outfits, even outside of the school uniform).

But I’m getting ahead of myself. What IS this show, Attack on Titian? Well, Attack on Titian is set in a post-apocalyptic world where all of humanity is confined within the layered walls of a huge settlement, cowering in fear of the huge humanoid monsters (called Titians) that wish to violently devour humans. Gore is an everyday reality for the forces of the Survey Corps, a branch of the military meant to gather intelligence reports on the Titans. Honestly, I didn’t watch it the first few times I heard about it. The Titians just looked so darn UGLY, and the characters all looked like plain regular human beings (by anime standards), so I couldn’t find anything cute to draw my initial attention. I now understand from watching Attack on Titian that things don’t have to be cute, or even beautiful, to be aesthetically pleasing, something that I had apparently forgotten upon joining the fandom of My Little Pony Friendship is Magic, which is populated mostly by colorful ponies. Regardless, the art of Attack on Titian is tight while still feeling very raw. I have come to appreciate from it that not all things need cuteness, which might very well have been by design of the artists.

What about that other show, Free! Iwatobi Swim Club, that was mentioned earlier? Ah yes, that. It is commonly referred to as Free. It revolves around a group of male friends who are in a High School Swim Club, mostly focusing on their friendships, social issues, and swimming races. The stories hinge on social drama or swim races, which is just fine since the guys take off their shirts to swim quite often. Finally, an entirely cute-but-not-pink-and-tageted-for-children anime to fill the void left by a market overly saturated with bloodshed! The typical accent-color-to-personality stereotypes persist in a standard anime fashion, Rin (red) being the fiery passionateone, Haru (blue) being the cool collected one, Makoto (green) as ‘that third main-main character’, then the more easily molded ones- yellow and purple, Nagisa (yellow) as the naive one and Rei (purple) as the wise or glasses character. The animation style is beautiful and the abundant amount of water in the show is all animated wonderfully. But, mainly, when watched along side violent shows (mainly Attack on Titian since they share a hugely overlapping fanbase) it provides a great break from gore and violence.

Generally, there is a swing towards a gore/violence/suspense/mystery genre, but Free proves that other anime genres are still alive and kicking… lol.