I posted my review of Oishinbo: Vegetables: A la Carte. This is the fifth volume in VIZ Media's American edition of the acclaimed and hugely popular Japanese food culture manga. Like every volume of Oishinbo, Vegetables emphasizes both a deep love of the ingredients for food and the importance of eschewing pesticides, herbicides, and additives in food.
However, what writer Testsu Kariya and artist Akira Hanasaki do to keep this story and others from seeming preachy and annoying the reader is deliver their message on a smaller, more human scale, rather than grandstanding with statistics and data about the industrialization of food. In Part Two of "A Surprising Taste," Kariya and Hanasaki use a gentlemen farmer and home gardener to convey to the readers that each person can do his or her part to improve the quality and safety of food by doing something personal.
In this instance, the something personal is keeping a home garden. In the case of this story, a man who grew up a farm boy regains his appreciation for what the earth gives and learns that every part of a plant is something to be appreciated. An imaginative gardener can turn even the tough, dirty root of spinach into a tasty dish.
Oishinbo proves once again the breath and scope of what the comics medium can bestow upon the reader.
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