Holiday Review #12: CAMPFIRE COOKING IN ANOTHER WORLD WITH MY ABSURD SKILL

 Of course, most of the fantasy manga we got this year was nowhere near so ambitious.  Most of it was your bog-standard isekai light-novel adaptations, like this one which hit print for the first time this year.

CAMPFIRE COOKING IN ANOTHER WORLD WITH MY ABSURD SKILL (Tondemo Sukiru de Isekai Horo Meshi), based on the original light novels by Ren Eguchi and illustrations by Masa, with art by Akagishi K.  First published in 2017 and first published in 2025.

PLOT:

Mukouda was just another twenty-something salaryman when he found himself magically transported to a fantastical world by accident.  Possessing nothing but a bit of coin, the clothes on his back, and the ability to identify things and purchase food and supplies from his world via a magical stat screen, he ends up trading his services as a cook to a group of adventurers in return for protection on his travels.  His cooking ends up attracting the attention of a powerful fenrir, who is happy to provide Mukouda with fantastic beasts to cook up in return for three square meals a day.

STORY:

Campfire Cooking In Another World manages to combine two genres I find increasingly tedious: low-effort isekai fantasy and low-effort cooking manga.  It's far from the worse either of those subgenres can offer, but it also has nothing particularly novel or interesting to offer either.  

There is nothing that puts me off an isekai story faster than the lead character pulling up a stat screen, especially when they are not explicitly in a video game.  Unfortunately that's pretty much the entirety of Mukouda's isekai protagonist powers.  When he's not identifying things, he's basically buying foodstuffs via Magical Amazon.  It's not exactly the most impressive or original idea for magical powers, but then Mukouda isn't a particularly impressive or original protagonist.  He's slightly older than your average Potato-kun, but personality-wise he fits right in.  At least he's not spiteful or pervy.  He just wants to be able to make a living without attracting a lot of attention...something that goes out the door once Fel the fenrir shows up.  People notice when you walk into town with a giant talking wind wolf.

What really gets me is that this manga's approach to cooking is just as dull as its approach to fantasy.  Usually the joy of a food manga is watching the protagonist use their skills to bring together a fine meal step-by-step.  Mukouda's not a particularly skilled chef, though, and he mostly relies on bottled sauces and other convenience foods so there's not much to his process to spotlight.  Since he can pull up any real-world ingredient he wants, he doesn't incorporate much of this new world's offerings beyond the meat of various magical beasts.  It's not like he's cooking for a particularly demanding audience, as Fel will try anything so long as it has plenty of meat.  I guess this is slightly more engaging than the rest of the book.  Thrill as Mukouda negotiates the sale of some of his seasonings! No one will be seated as he applies to two different magical guilds!  This is supposed to be a slow life sort of story, but there is indeed a difference between slow life and just plain slow.

ART:

Akagishi K take on Masa's original illustrations is noticeably rougher.  This is most obvious with Mukouda, who already had a pretty plain look.  In Akagishi's hands, he feels almost like a rough sketch, with harsh, squared-off lines and minimal features.  This does at least help him to stand out from the slightly more rounded, elaborate people of the magical world, so I guess it does work as far as visually reinforcing Mukouda's status as an outsider.

That's about it as far as original artistic ideas, though.  This manga sports all the usual faux-medieval trappings of your standard isekai world, all of it rendered kind of flat by the lack of shading and minimal backgrounds.  There's definitely some effort put into the panels featuring the finished dishes, but not enough to make them truly enticing.  In fairness, the paneling in general is pretty plain all around.  A food manga should be a feast for the eyes, but nobody bothered to tell this guy.

RATING:

Campfire Cooking In Another World tries to fuse the flavors of isekai and food manga but the end result is so bland that you wonder why they even bothered.  Perhaps that's good enough for isekai's extremely undiscerning audience, but everyone else can (and should) demand more than just more Narou slop.

This manga is published by J-Novel Club.  This series is ongoing in Japan with 8 volumes available.  2 volumes have been released and are currently in print.

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