After I started to seriously watch anime, going from “hey, nice art and story style” to “okay, this character is definitely a tsundere archetype, and that one fits more into gothloli”, I quickly picked up an essential lesson, which is that I should, never, ever, on pain of intense and unending depression, watch any anime while hungry. This is because I tend to watch anime at night, when all the stores are closed, and I tend to eat a lot at one go (with my strangely high metabolism even with a sedentary lifestyle, I’ve not yet gotten remotely plump; in fact, I’m downright skinny). This usually means that when the part where the characters start chowing down on some tasty-looking food happens, I start feeling a bit peckish, and raid the fridge, but find out that I’m out of snacks and other midnight meals, and it is too late to buy any more. Too tired to cook, too poor to order in, and I end up trying to sleep with my stomach not really that empty, but my brain drooling at visions of huge bento sets, made with a smile.

Now, I’m not sure why food seems to be a prominent feature in anime. I might guess that it may have something to do with culture, and one’s innate pride in it. To showcase a culture, I would, in my ignorance about how such things are really done, first look at the language, followed by the mode of dress, any observances (religious or secular), and quite importantly, the cuisine. And it’s not just what the food is, but also how it is presented and prepared. It’s the difference between scrambled eggs and tamagoyaki, between spaghetti and ramen, between pizza and okonomiyaki.

Or I could be wrong, and it’s all just some very common form of Dischism. The animators were hungry, and so they drew lots of food.

The preparation and consumption of food is fairly well-represented in many anime, especially harem comedies. Keeping that in mind (ie no pointing out some random MANLY ANIME that has the characters EAT MANLY THINGS like snakes and rats and light bulbs), we’ll have a look at the various types of food that seem to pop up time and time again in anime.

1. Bento

The classic box lunch. Ingredients tend to include rice, usually with some pattern drawn onto it with seasoning, the most common of which, in many harem comedies, is a heart. Other common ingredients are egg, whether salty or sweet, and little wieners that are cut to look like octopi, for some reason I have yet to fathom.

Supposedly, according to anime, the ability to make a good bento is an essential skill for a harem comedy female love-interest. Presumably if you don’t care about the main male lead at all, you’re exempted from this.

Bento, being so generic (and not so much an actual food as a collection of food), are a common way to display various social and romantic situations in anime. We have the dedicated kouhai delivering the lunch to their forgetful sempai, or perhaps someone learning to cook for the first time in order to make a lunch for their crush. And then there’s the actual consumption of the bento, which provide for even more romantic comedy fodder (pun unintended): the presentation of the bento to the love interest, in the hopes that it will not get rejected. The first tasting, sometimes with an audience, which can go several ways depending on the skill of the cook and the requirement for comedy at that situation. And, of course, the sharing of the lunches, with all the various skirmishes regarding who’ll get the last coveted tako-wiener or breaded shrimp.

Guys tend to have HUEG LIEK XBOX bento, while girls appear to have small pencil-case bento for themselves, and make big ones for the guys. The typical male harem comedy lead will finish off the entire bento, no matter how much of it there is or how bad it tastes. If a guy goes from buying convenience-store lunches (in whatever form, whether bento or onigiri or sandwiches) to eating a prepared bento not made by his parents, it’s usually a sign that he’s going out with someone. (I almost excluded bento made by sisters, but then I remembered the imouto and siscon contingent.)

It’s probably a fantasy for most male harem comedy anime fans to imagine their favourite character cheerfully making a delicious and beautiful bento for them. These characters are usually wearing aprons; whether or not they’re wearing anything else depends on the fantasy in question.

2. Onigiri

According to Wikipedia, onigiri used to actually be round, which fit the common translation of “rice ball”. Nowadays, an actual ball of rice would probably be looked askance at, as Koyuki learned in Keroro Gunsou. Modern machine-made onigiri (or omusubi, as they’re sometimes called) tend to be triangular in shape, and have some sort of filling set into the rice (as opposed to the traditional method of rolling the rice around the filling), and the rice covered (whether fully or only partially) with seaweed. The filling is generally something like salmon or pickled plum. I’m sorry, Cecile, blueberry jam is not a valid ingredient.

Onigiri are usually associated with being cheap and convenient snacks or light meals in anime. Rather than needing lots of preparation, they can just pick it up, buy it, and go. It’s probably something akin to a simple burger from a fast food joint. I can attest to the convenience of it, especially when I buy several from Tokyo’s Narita airport in transit from Singapore to the US. Airline food isn’t bad, but it’s not really all that filling.

3. Cake

I’ve not had real cake in a very long time, largely because good cake is expensive. I can only imagine how bad it would be to one’s wallet in Japan, which brings a new light to buying Christmas cakes for one’s loved ones in anime. Cakes in anime that get featured tend to be bought from really high-class establishments with French (or faux-French) names like CLAMP’s Chirol. Cakes in anime also tend to be prone to mishaps like getting mushed about thanks to conveniently tripping. This allows the male lead to gallantly swap his cake for the female love interest’s, along with the line “it all ends up in the same place anyway”.

Alternately, the main male lead can save and scrimp in order to buy the perfect cake, and then trip and fall, leaving an imprint of his face on the cake. This is either played for drama or for schadenfreude.

4. Curry

Japanese curry isn’t as spicy as the Indian variety which I’m used to, but it’s not completely devoid of kick either. If a character wants to cook something easy and quick, curry is usually the first choice, since it’s easily available in curry mix packets and prepared mostly by sauteeing the vegetables and meat, adding water, adding the curry mix, throwing it all into a pot, and stirring occasionally. Even if something goes horribly wrong during the sauteeing, it won’t hugely affect the final result (in most cases; there’s always the Akane Tendou possibility).

Curry is usually the dish of choice cooked during school field trips which require the students to cook their own food. The ease and large margin of error appear to be the primary factors in this, as well as the incentive not to completely screw it up, or everyone in the group will have to eat the results (or go hungry).

5. Noodles

Whether udon or soba or ramen or instant or whatever, noodles are a fairly common food seen in anime. Instant ramen is invariably portrayed, perhaps not inaccurately, as being fit only for poor students, but also a guilty pleasure for those who developed a taste for it (most likely due to the prodigious amount of MSG in it). Soba (buckwheat noodles) has many traditions associated with it, such as eating it on New Years Eve, and slurping it noisily.

Ramen stands and restaurants are usually the site of various late-night gatherings in anime. The characters get to have a more informal or relaxed conversation than in the day, and the loosening up is occasionally helped along with beer or sake.

6. Taiyaki

Made well-known in anime fandom by Kanon and Ayu’s bottomless appetite for them, taiyaki are generally shaped like fish for some reason, and filled with red bean paste. Personally, I hate red bean paste, but I’ve had custard-filled taiyaki before, and it’s really not bad.

Supposedly little kids like to argue about who gets to eat the head and who gets the tail, when dividing a taiyaki in two. Mahoraba has the obvious solution of splitting it lengthwise.

7. Pizza

If nothing else, you can always order in.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 5th, 2007 at 5:36 pm and is filed under ramblings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.