Because Oi, Hayaku! has gone down, I have taken my posts from OH! and brought them to MANiME for the sake of completion. This was the first official post in the blog, titled “Insert Food Pun -> Here <-”. I hope you enjoy.
Original Excerpt: They say that you are what you eat. If that is the case, do you need to eat a person in order to be a human? But if that act makes you a cannibal, then are you not, in essence, a monster? So, in order to be what you are, you need to eat a monster. But you are not a monster. You are a human. Long story short – don’t think about eating.
… and 4,000 dollar a month for food. For food! What the fuck was she eatin’ man? For four grand a month! I guess she’s like “I gotta get some extra cheese on my Whopper”…
-Chris Rock, Bring the Pain
Most of us have seen it at least once during our childhood. You know that scene, where Scooby and Shaggy devour a gigantic sandwich that no one could realistically finish. And we laugh. And laugh. And laugh some more. It’s funny, cause he’s a pot-smoking hippie scumbag scrawny dude. Of course, Shaggy and Scooby aren’t the only ones that can make us laugh. One can just as easily get a chuckle out of Garfield pigging out on a variety of Italian dishes or pastries. Jughead’s food obsession is one of the reasons why we love him – of course, I use we as a vague term. I’ve never read the Archie Comics, so I wouldn’t know, nor care. And there’s always a Dagwood sandwich for anyone who’s hungry – a gigantic sandwich named after a character from the hit (?) comic strip Blondie, notable for making those very sandwiches that have been named after him.
The glutton has been common in many characters throughout literature. It is, in many occasions, the trait of a comic character. Take, for instance, the Hobbits of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series.
There was supposed to be a quote here from The Hobbit about how many meals the hobbits eat in one day. Sadly, I could not be bothered to find my copy of The Hobbit, and you will have to make do with this quote explaining why the quote could not be quoted.
The eating habits of the hobbits are often dealt with in a humorous manner during the series, or at least during the first book, and cements the role of hobbits as, among other things, the funny little guys that lighten the story. Granted, the movie does make Gimli a fun character, but I blame Peter Jackson for that.
~ Little Big Planet Eaters ~
It’s fun to watch thin people eat, really. It’s also philosophical. Where does all that food go? Are they actually eating that food? What does it mean to ‘eat’ something? And what is that secret recipe for KFC chicken? Really, though it’s much more fun to watch a thin character eat than a fat one – when you see a fat person in an anime eating, the first thought to come to your head (if you are me) is “Stop chugging down, you fat fuck!” Chances are, however, that you are not me, and if you are not me I really have no idea what you’re thinking. In that case, I shall presume to know what you are thinking, and hopefully, I am correct. A broken clock is right twice a day, after all. But really, a fat dude eating more food? Someone needs to tell the fool to go on a diet.
~ I Place My Tongue in Your Hands ~
One Piece has its share of big eaters. Of course, as one may expect, Luffy is eats enough food to feed a starving nation, and he does it in the course of one meal. His reckless eating habits manifest themselves in scenes where he sports a gigantic inflated stomach (though to be fair, it also happens with water – see: Water Luffy), though as comedic scenes it lasts for a single scene before turning normal again. Luffy’s love of food is one of the first things that come to a person’s mind when he is mentioned – along with his courage, his simple-mindedness and his loyalty, among other things.
Now, why is it that Luffy is able to eat so much? Here are some theories.
- He’s a rubber human, and because he’s rubber, he can stretch. As a result, he’s capable of holding more food than a regular person.
- Because Luffy fights a lot, he uses up a lot of energy. Something to do with high metabolism and converting his calories into energy and whatnot. Really, that requires knowledge of the human body and biology, which I lack. This seems the most likely, since the other characters don’t have Luffy’s stretchy powers, yet manage to eat nearly as much as he does.
- One Piece is a fucking manga. Don’t try to apply your elitist-realist logic to it, you Neon Genesis Evengelion watching elitist.
But we can’t forget his brother, Portogas D. Ace, who first demonstrates to the readers of One Piece the fabled tactic of sleep-eating. In fact, Ace’s first appearance in the series is in a diner, face-down on his plate and his fork held high in the air, a piece of food still stuck to it. Concerned diners stare at the young man, wondering if he has died via the consumption of a Desert Strawberry, a venomous spider shaped like a strawberry. To the amusement of the readers, Ace then suddenly lifts his face up, revealing that he had simply fallen asleep, and then continues eating … only to fall asleep again. This talent of sleep-eating is acquired by Luffy later on, who uses it to well… eat while sleeping.
But let’s get to the main subject.
One of the main themes in One Piece is trust between comrades. Anyone who reads the series can tell you that. Or watch, for you anime people. Of course, being a shounen, it’s quite typical. Shounens are all about trust and friendship and lack of romance. But none of them show it quite as well as One Piece. Throughout One Piece, the crew of the Straw Hat Pirates change opponents – if an enemy is considered too strong for one character, they switch with their comrades. Check the Alabasta arc, the Skypeia arc and the Enies Lobby arc, and you’ll see it there. In other words, the characters of One Piece entrust their lives to their trusty companions. This can be seen in the role of Sanji, the cook of the Straw Hat Pirates.
Food is necessary to live. If we do not eat, we die. It’s a common concept. And for someone who eats as much as Luffy, it is extremely important. Food, then, equals life. The power to make food is the power over life and death. In appointing Sanji as the cook of his crew, Luffy has, in other words, entrusted his life in Sanji’s hands. You wouldn’t leave your medical affairs in the hands of a known criminal now, would you? Well, if your answer to that is yes, then you’re a very exciting person! But I wouldn’t want to be friends with you. This is relevant, because for Luffy, eating equals healing. Heck, he managed to recover from nearly fatal wounds and get a rematch with Crocodile simply after eating meat and drinking some water.
Moreover, Sanji constantly stresses the importance of food; having once gone through the horrors of starvation and seen its effects on his mentor Red Leg Zeff, he knows that it’s vital for a person to eat. In fact, he goes out of his way to feed a dangerous criminal, simply because the criminal was starving. This would later end up saving Sanji’s life, as the criminal – Gin – would later be unable to bring himself to kill Sanji, due to the kindness that he had shown to him. To take things further, virtually all of Sanji’s techniques are based on food, and even Zoro’s techniques often have food-related puns in them.
~ Eat to Live, or Live to Eat ~
A phrase often used by people who bitch on and on about food shortage and people who don’t really like eating is that they eat to live, not live to eat. Those people should try taking their case to Nougami Neuro. In fact, I dare them to. I don’t think the demon would take it to kindly.
Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro is a series centered around eating, and it shows on the two protagonists, Yako and Neuro. The two of them are fond of eating – Yako inhales food like a vacuum cleaner, and Neuro is constantly hunting down the mysteries that feed him. Though Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro is classified as a ’supernatural’ ‘mystery’ ‘horror’ series, its true nature is that of a ‘cooking’ series. Take a person, sprinkle a bit of motive in it, cook it with some vile concoctions and you’ve got yourself a delicious mystery full of evil intent, ready to be eaten!
In literal terms, Yako is a full-out glutton. For someone of her slender frame, she eats and eats and eats… and eats. Among her exploits are…
- Finishing 4 bowls of udon.
- Finishing a super-sized bowl of noodle that’s free if eaten under 20 minutes in under 10 minutes, and then going to a tongatsu restaurant across the street.
- Eating almost everything in a high-class buffet within a half hour.
- Choosing her high school based on the lunches it served.
- Eating 26,000 yen worth of take-out courtesy of the police force.
- As a child, filling up on glass marbles after mistaking them for candy.
- Working for a bread factory, then being fired for eating all the bread in the production line.
- Taking a shopping cart loaded with food on a school trip.
- Eating 120 kilograms of a 200 kilogram fish, which should have been physically impossible.
- Buying 20 kilograms of chocolate to make gifts for others… and eating nearly all of it by herself.
Yako’s love of eating is enough to overshadow her reputation as a detective; many people who recognize her refer to her as the “Eating Detective” or a similar variant, and in one chapter a character goes as far as to claim that a hungry Yako would even eat a person. Yako’s desire of food is fueled by her mother’s lack of cooking skills, which Yako has compared to “an act of terrorism”. Haruka’s cooking exploits include…
- Sending 95% of the neighborhood association into the hospital with a pork soup she made.
- Stopping by a hardware store in an attempt to buy ingredients for food.
- Trying to make valentine’s chocolate and turning it into metal.
- Making a cake for lunch… with chicken wings and eggs (logic being that they both come from a chicken), flour and insect pupae used for fishing (to bring out the flavor), butter and balloons (to make the cake puff and rise), and oil paint (food coloring).
- Said cake would blow up and destroy a good part of the house.
- Said cake would be used as garden blocks and wilt flowers, radiate radiation and fail to rot even after 10 years passed.
This all leads up to Yako developing a “cast-iron stomach and desire for food”. Of course, Yako isn’t just someone who eats. As to be expected of a heroine in a mystery novel, she has that uncanny ability to uncover the hidden motives behind a person’s crime. This is taken to a humorous level in one case, where she is able to determine that flaws of the criminal’s cooking, sensing that while it was delicious, it wasn’t something that could be called food. After one bite, too.
Truly, Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro is the living proof of the phrase “Live to Eat”. Neuro stakes his life on eating – food is SERIOUS BUSINESS to him. In a certain chapter, Neuro describes the hurdles for him to be in Earth – he lacks shouki, which is the demon equivalent to oxygen. In other words, Neuro is trying to eat without breathing. Yako herself compares it to “continuing to eat shellfish at the bottom of the ocean when you can’t breathe”, which she (unsurprisingly) has tried herself. Because you see, Neuro isn’t some pussy who’ll eat anything that’s been put in front of him. No, he’s hardcore. He’s the man who has solved (and eaten) all the mysteries of the demon world. When the super-antagonist Sicks offers him a mass of crimes created solely for the purpose of being solved by him, the manly demon tells Sicks to fuck off. Nougami Neruo can not be bought off with some artificial mysteries.
I have felt keenly these last few days that an unnatural “puzzle” will not do. There is a depth of flavor to the “puzzles” born from the evil intent of a true desire. Anything else is merely cultivated. A puzzle that can be created through threats is another matter entirely. Take back your pride, humans. Is your evil intent… that cheap a thing?
It is through his philosophy of eating that Neuro is able to connect with humanity. When a great deal of people are wiped out by a terrorist-made flood, Neuro is noticeably angry.
Even the one who held the “puzzle”… sank in the water and died. And that is not all. All the humans that drowned in the place… might have someday made a “puzzle”. They were the eggs of a superb “puzzle”. All of that was crushed. You could never understand this anger.
… I understand how much it hurts. The word Neuro used, “puzzle”… could be replaced with the word “possibility” in this situation now. The possibilities of multitudes of human beings… were stolen away in an instant by the “New Bloodline”.
Neuro’s relationship with humanity is comparable to that of a partnership. He protects them from the “New Bloodline” terrorists, and in return humanity provides him – albeit unknowingly – with the puzzles and mysteries that he consumes.
All humans are my source of food and playthings. Only I have the right to toy with them.
But of course, it doesn’t start out that way – the “New Bloodline” don’t appear until at a far later arc. Neuro’s relationship with humans evolves as the manga progresses – while he first considers them to be nothing more than food produces and slaves, he begins to think of them as tools – different from slaves – and, later on, individuals. In a moment of danger, he reveals himself to humans that he has saved, and is thus helped by Detective Sasazuka, allowing him to defeat a terrorist, Tierra.
Look, humans! At the man responsible for burying all of you here!! One man from a group that is trying to exterminate all of you!! It is necessary for me to rest a while!! You humans, protect yourselves!
Though Neuro initially starts out treating Yako as a mere puppet to hide his identity, he soon begins to think highly of her skills and urges her to improve. The two of them – the demon and his detective (or the detective and her demon) – are in a way colleagues. Both of them are connoisseurs when it comes to fine dining, though they derive nourishment from different sources. While Neuro continues to treat Yako poorly, he does, in his own way, consider her an equal… or at least more than a simple slave.
Um, Mr. Sasazuka… Neuro uses humans like trash, but… but he… would never kill or sacrifice humans. If you can stand up to him with all your might… there’s always a way out ready for you. That is… the difference between Neuro and the “New Bloodline”.
~ Food For Thought ~
Not only in anime and manga, but also in many works of literature, food is tied in with emotions. Which is to be expected, though, considering that being hungry tends to make people testy and angry. You doubt it? Then try eating a hamburger in front of a homeless and hungry man. He’ll fucking rip you to shreds. And rightfully so. You don’t taunt a hungry hungry hobo. You don’t mess with a fucking hungry hungry hobo.
Think about it. When you want revenge, you’re not simply out to avenge. No, you HUNGER for revenge. Your deep desire is about as deep as a deep dish pizza. It is as if you are in an emotional FAMINE, and the only thing that can satisfy your hunger is the death of the one who has wronged you. Nothing else can fulfill that dark and empty hole in your soul. It’s like trying to fill a cup with holes in it with water. It just trickles down. What you need to do is put in a cup-sized and cup-shaped piece of clay, you see? The same applies for your curiosity. You don’t simply want to know things, you have a THIRST for knowledge, that can only be QUENCHED. You don’t try to drink from a cup with holes, you THRUST your fucking head into the fountain and DRINK till you can’t drink anymore. Because if you are in a DROUGHT, a fucking sip isn’t going to cut it for you.
Of course, Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro and One Piece aren’t the only series with references to food.
- Naruto: Naruto himself is named after those… swirly things in ramen, and Anko is named after the ingredients in her favorite food.
- Spice and Wolf: Horo. Apples. OM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM.
- Dragonball: What started it all. Those Saiyans have a notoriously large appetite. And Buu? Buu could turn people into cookies and fucking eat them to gain their powers. If that’s not obsession, I don’t know what is.
- Lucky Star: The first episode was basically tips on how to eat bread. Or, at least, that’s the gist of it.
- TYPEMOON: Apparently, the male protagonists of TYPEMOON works are good cooks. Everyone loves Shirou’s cooking (Saber especially) and Shiki is able to get Acrueid to do things by threatening not to make her breakfast in the Melty Blood manga. And of course… Ciel and curry.
And of course, there’s so much more. Whether it’s used as a simple gag trick, or a focus of a certain episode, food does play a gigantic part in anime. The necessity for food is perhaps the only daily function that is shown in anime – you don’t see characters go to the bathroom on a daily basis, do you? Even games take this into account – in many of the Tales of… series, one can choose to cook after a battle, allowing characters to heal HP and SP, or even gain some stat increases for the next battle. Or, of course, there are those Metal Gear games where you eat snakes or something. I wouldn’t know. I don’t play Metal Gear Solid. Heck, I once mistook Metal Gear for that other Metal game. Metal Slug, or something. The concept is, in the end, food equals healing, healing equals life. You need food.
~ Conclusion ~
I supposed I should conclude this article with a witty anecdote or something of the like. Perhaps using the phrase “just desserts” since it’s humorously fitting. But, as any of my university professors will tell you, I suck at conclusions almost as much as I suck at introductions. So you’re only getting a random picture from me.
I think it speaks for itself.
For those of you going too long; didn’t read, here’s the gist of it.
FOOD IS IMPORTANT, BITCH.
