OTHERWORLDY IZAKAYA NOBU (Isekai Izakaya "Nobu"), based on the story by Natsuya Semikawa and character designs by Kururi; art by Virginia Nitouhei. First published in 2015 and first published in North America in 2018.
PLOT:
With the medieval walled city of Eiteriach, there is a strange pub that serves as a portal to another world. Within its walls, the head chef and his friendly waitress Shinobu offer up classic izakaya fare to the grateful populace. Whether it's soldiers from the city watch, snooty tax collectors, or fussy aristocrats, all find themselves overwhelmed by the exotic new food and cold mugs of 'whatsontapp.'
STORY:
The combination of isekai stories and food manga is an increasingly popular combination in Japanese media these days, so the existence of this manga was kind of inevitable. That being said, these two flavors never quite seem to mesh the way you think they would.
While I'm grateful that this isekai story doesn't involve video games or reincarnated losers in any way, shape or form, there isn't much to this otherworld. That's presuming that it is an alternate world at all; there doesn't appear to be any sort of magic or fantasy trappings and everyone seems to be speaking plain old German. While a story based around being transported to another time would be a novel twist on a tired formula, it's hard to get a pin on when this is supposed to be set over than 'vaguely medieval times.' The personalities of the customers doesn't help to define this world any better, as they're mostly familiar archetypes united only by their love of Nobu's food.
One of my least favorite variations of food manga is the kind where people go into raptures about otherwise ordinary Japanese dishes. There's only so many times you watch someone go into raptures for pages at at time about curry rice before you start to get a bit jaded. Since this is set in a izakaya, the standard dishes are a bit different but are otherwise well-known Japanese dishes and sides: edamame, kara-age, oden, spaghetti napolitan, and so on. There are some slightly more exotic dishes as the volume goes on, such as tonjiru (a pork miso stew) and ankake yudofu (a cube of tofu gently stewed in dashi stock), but the townfolk go into raptures over every single one like they were the finest five-star cuisine. They even have visions that could have come straight out of Food Wars! (minus the rampant nudity). It gets a bit ludicrous, and unlike other food manga there isn't enough of an ongoing story or a compelling cast to ground these moments in some sense of reality, even in this unreal world.
ART:
This is one of the first times I've seen a manga adapted from an LN where the art is BETTER than the original. From what I've seen of the original light novel illustrations, they are perfectly ordinary, but Nitouhei puts a lot more care into the visual here. She doesn't do anything drastic as far as composition, but she clearly puts care into the character designs, the backgrounds and (most importantly) the food. They all have a nice sense of dimension, and the restaurant feels as homely as any good pub should feel.
RATING:
Otherworldly Izakaya Nobu should be as satisfying as a cool mug of beer, but instead it comes off as bland and half-baked. It's pretty enough, but the setting, characters, and menu are all too bland for their own good.
This series is published by Udon. This series is ongoing in Japan with 5 volumes available. 1 volume has been published and is currently in print.
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