Sometimes you want an anime to watch and chill with. This is not to say you can’t do that with any anime — it’s unlikely most anime are like that. Works want to evoke different types of emotions, and it’s good to have an anime that’s super serious, is comedic, is shameless, etc. You also want a work where the stakes aren’t always high.
Restaurant to Another World was that type of anime for me, and it’s not completely conducive to high drama.
The thing is, the very first episode starts out normally enough. Many people are having dinner at Nekoya restaurant, and then it closes shop. Tick tock tick tock. Suddenly, instead of people wearing t-shirts, pants, etc, a man wielding a sword is chowing down on teriyaki chicken. A wizard, lizard, and a samurai are going to fight to the death because they have each a one true rice pairing, and can’t stand it any other way. Somehow, instead of the human getting sent from the real world to another world, or a human getting reincarnated into another world, we get a restaurant that fantasy characters visit in another world.
And…I’m weak to that.
No seriously, food shows are my weakness. I feel like food, from my perspective, is the one thing that can withstand being the butt of any joke. If you see the most delicious combination of sweets all in one it’s immediately liked on Twitter. If you see the worst combination of meats known to man, it’s gonna be derided, and everyone will be on it. It’s like one of the few things where I feel if you say you don’t like pineapple on your pizza, you will be shamed, but it’ll never escalate into a full blown war. It finds a way to somehow be fun and not nearly so vicious.
So combine food with have an extremely powerful dragon, an elf who can’t eat meat, and some dwarfs, have them try Western cuisine, and you have an anime that fits all my required needs — the food is good, and the stakes aren’t high at all. No need to worry about the chef or the maid getting gutted out of nowhere. It’s not gonna happen. Throw in some characters’ backstory, then show a nice platter of seafood (note: I love seafood) and I’m sold.
That’s probably why I was a little disappointed there wasn’t too many people watching this. I feel like this is worth a watch, not only for the food, but how the characters respond to it. It’s nothing like Food Wars, but it’s excitable in itself. The atmosphere isn’t threatening, and the characters are looking for good eats.
Also the food looks good. Like, mouth-wateringly good. And maybe I gotta try and make it look good. Since it’s living on Crunchyroll, I think if you missed out on it this summer, you owe it to yourself to try it out.
12 Days of Anime is a series of posts from bloggers regarding the best, worst, or in between anime moments of 2017. Here’s the initial article from Appropriant inviting bloggers to take part.