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).

**I received this from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review**

Thank you Netgalley and Jitsugyo no Nihon Sha, Ltd. for letting me read and review this book!! ^_^

<b>Before Thoughts:</b>
So I requested this book out of curiosity because one I love manga/ other graphic novels, Two it has cooking in it which in a way is the career I plan to pursue as far as owning a bakery goes, and three because his name is Sota which low-key reminds me of the name Sohma from Food wars. (A character who also worked at a restaurant before trying to "pursue" more of his goal.)  

But I'm sure this manga will be more in the slice-of-life territory with a hint of Seinen, and less into the territory of shounen and borderline foodgasm stuff. xD 

I really hope to like this story since the character seems like he really wants to pursue his dream in the food industry and who seems like he wishes to make others happy. Which is something I hope to achieve once I've opened a bakery. 

<b>Review:</b> 
<b>Read on:</b> 07/11/18


<b>Plot:</b>
The plot is basically this: 
Sota comes from his family's restaurant which is successful and traditional, but he eventually goes to the Ginza's famous Tomikyu restaurant to become a kitchen hand because the head chef sees potential in him. He mostly washes dishes and peels vegetables, but when he's off work he practices knife skills and other important methods of Japanese cuisine. 

And throughout this volume, he tries to help others and learn lessons about Japanese cuisine not so he can be the best, but so he can see customers have a smile on their faces. He wants to have a restaurant of his own that can be just as amazing as Tomikyu and his family's restaurant. 

<b>Character(s):</b> 
<b>Sota:</b>  Sota reminds me of Ippo. 
He's starting off small but I can tell he'll have the potential to only go further up in the world with just a little more hard work. And even if there's someone trying to knock him down I'm sure he'll try to get back up and push himself harder to do better. And Sota might be a bit of a push-over for people who are distressed. But he has a good heart. He's a good character who's just trying to be nice while making his way up to his goal in life. He learns much as a kitchen hand about the ways of cooking, but he still has quite a way to go. 

<b>Satsuki:</b> He's the restaurant owner/head chef's daughter. She tends to be helpful to the things Sota learns about with cooking. I can definitely see her being the encouraging friend figure in the story that eventually could become his love interest. 
(That is if they ease more into their friendship with more development to help back it up in future volumes.) 

<b>Aoyagi:</b> He's kind of Sota's buddy in the kitchen among the other chefs. He's the other kitchen hand that does the smaller work alongside Sota. He's the friend that can get jealous over silly things but doesn't remain that way for long since he's an overall light-hearted individual. He can act hard sometimes too, but really he's as I said a light-hearted and fun individual. 

<b>Final Thoughts:</b>
I really liked this book. I would love to see it get an adaptation. It's not strong plot-wise yet, but character-wise I'm getting to really know the characters a bit which helps to ease me more into the series and story. 

Also, there are a few spelling errors like your instead of using You're. 
Ex: <i>"Your gonna be successful, right?"</i>

And only a few sentences don't always sound right grammar-wise but I'm sure translators are trying their best.

<b>Recommends to:</b>
If you love the Seinen(Older men's) genre you may like this. This is a genre I enjoy as much as Josei.
If you like cooking read this since it talks about many different lessons to understand in cooking (Granted it mostly focuses on important cooking methods for Japan, but still it should remind you of how a chef must go from amateur days of cooking into professional days of cooking through small steps and training.)

Hope you enjoyed my review!! Thanks for reading!! ^_^
And go catch that good book!! ^_^

My blog site: https://emthetiger7.wixsite.com/thatrandomcardcaptor

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.