In Volume 1, we met Nomoto Yuki, a contractor in an office. She finds society’s expectations for women confining and stress-cooks to relax. We then met Kasuga-san, her neighbor two doors over, a large woman with a physically strenuous job who eats with gusto. They bond over the making and eating of food. In Volume 2, Nomoto comes to realize that she’s probably never been interested in boys, and is definitely interested in Kasuga. They enjoy each other’s company and the food they make and share.

Tsukuritai Onna to Tabetai Onna, Volume 3 (作りたい女と食べたい女) is everything I could have ever asked for. This is an excellent volume of this consistently excellent series.

To begin with, there are two Content Warnings in this volume, one for eating disorder-food phobia and one for parental verbal abuse.

Nomoto and Kasuga have an empty apartment between them. In this volume they meet and quickly adopt their new neighbor. Nagumo-san is young, very nervous and has a very fraught and uncomfortable history with food. Nomoto and Kasuga accept Nagumo immediately without demands that Nagumo conform to any behavior. When Nagumo offers up a given name, Sena, we learn that Kasuga’s given name is Totoko. Nagumo immediately refers to them as Yuki-chan and Totoko-chan, which turns them red. ^_^

Nomoto is also getting closer with an online friend, Yako. They watch a lesbian movie together online and have snacks, drinks and talk. Yako talks to Nomoto about the spectrum of sexuality – a great conversation, I thought. We learn about Nagumo’s problems with food. And then, we turn towards Kasuga when…her father calls. I don’t want to spoil this scene, not even to summarize, except to say it was magnificent. I’ll scream about it when it comes out in English. ^_^

Yako invites Nomoto, Kasuga, and Nagumo over for a meal, where they make and enjoy naan and a bunch of curies and sauces. Yako gets to see Kasuga’s eating powers for herself. Then they have a sleepover where, again, they discuss the kind of small family trauma that clogs up a childhood. We all have those stories in our hearts, where inequity forced us to accept things that denied us something truer to ourselves.

This volume came with a little extra comic about the work Nomoto puts in to her social media food posts, ^_^

Overall, this volume covers a LOT of territory and does it with skill and sensitivity. There is tremendous power in being seen. I cannot WAIT for you all to read this volume. Volume 1 is out now in English from Yen Press and Volume 2 is headed our way in March. Definitely read this series – it is an outstanding slice-of-life (and bread) story about found family, finding one’s self and sharing delicious food with friends.

Ratings:

Art – 9 Yako and Nagumo give Yuzaki-sensei a chance to ramp up expressions to 11
Story – 10
Characters – 9 (only to give them room to be even more wonderful)
Service – 0  Unless, like Nomoto, you consider watching Kasuga eat “service.”
LGBTQ+ – 10

Overall – 10

OH! And! Valentine’s Day is coming…and yes, Kasuga-san would love to make, give and get chocolates with Nomoto.  ^_^ We have that conversation.

No one:

Me: …I am 100% confident that I am not the only person who actually looked through their shopping cart on the cover, because between the inside cover and back color pages, we get an intimate look at what they bought. ^_^

Because I loved Volume 1 so very much, I ran out immediately after reviewing it, and bought Tsukuritai Onna to Tabetai Onna, Volume 2 (作りたい女と食べたい女) as a digital release (because as has become increasingly common, my copy was sitting in a storage unit in Japan.) But now that it has arrived and I’m taking time to read it again, I wanted to let you know all about it!

Nomoto-san and Kasuga-san are starting to open up to one another as people now. Nomoto is struggling about not going home for the holidays…well, no, she’s perfectly fine not going, but is fending off her mother and concerned that Kasuga might be. Kasuga confides that she never goes home and her story is very sincere and very her.

But while hanging with Kasuga, Nomoto is finding herself thinking things like…the other woman is cute when she’s eating with such gusto. When she once again is too sick to make food for them, she has a slightly disturbing flashback. This is the chapter that comes with a content warning, as it contains scenes of online harassment and other feelings of societal and internal homophobia and confusion. Kasuga comes over with food and medicine and her kindness is just so sincere that Nomoto thinks to herself how glad she is that likes the other woman. The implication that she like likes her.

They celebrate the holidays together, they make food and eat it. Nomoto and Kasuga playing house is my new hygge. ^_^ I’m all in on iyashikei, feel-good manga. But, more than just a nice manga, this volume has some laugh out loud bits, too Like the night that Nomoto buys Chinese take-out containers and they binge fried rice and fried noodles while watching the America Barbecue Showdown on Netzflix. ^_^

Or the time that Kasuga suggests making fruit sandwiches and Nomoto practically squeals, “What the what? That sound so fun!”

I’m really rooting for these two. I don’t know if there even could be romantic partnering in this relationship, but I’m okay with this story either way. This friendship between women bonding over food is everything I need right now.

Ratings:

Art – 9
Story – 9
Characters – 9
Service – Still saying that the food here are the money shots
Yuri – Let’s edge it up to 4, now that we know Nomoto is in like.
Food – 9 It all look so good. What the what, I could make a fruit sandwich!

Overall – 9

Somebody license this manga, and just inject it into my veins.

I am so excited to be able to review this particular book as my first review of 2022! Since I first read this on Comic Walker, I’ve been super excited to get it as a collected volume.

Tsukuritai Onna to Tabetai Onna, Volume 1 (作りたい女と食べたい女) is what I’d like to think is the future of Yuri. Nomoto-san is a office worker who is stressed. As she sits down to eat lunch a male coworker “compliments” her lunch by commenting that she’ll make a great wife. Nomoto understandably resents the implication that her life is nothing more than practice to be useful to a man.  Angry, she goes home and cooks a massive meal, far more than she can eat.

Just the day before she had seen her next door neighbor, Kasuga-san, a large women, who had come home with multiple buckets of KFC for herself. In a moment of courage, Nomoto offers some of her too-large-for-one meal to Kasuga. And so, a friendship is born.

In this first volume, Nomoto will make meal after meal, while she enjoys Kasuga’s enjoyment of the food. When Nomoto gets her period and is down with bad cramps, Kasuga realizes something is up immediately because she can’t smell any food cooking – and so she texts to see if she can do something for Nomoto. I was all in, but that simple act of kindness pinged all my *THIS IS GOOD* alarms.  And indeed, Kasuga understands Nomoto’s issue, buys her pads, pain killers and they make comfort food together. It was perfect.

Kasuga offers money to Nomoto, because she rightly understands that Nomoto is spending a lot more on meals than normal. Nomoto tries to refuse, but Kasuga’s reasoning and sincerity would be too much for anyone. ^_^ At this point, Nomoto is starting to realize how much she enjoys her time with Kasuga and we can see that Kasuga agrees, when she invites Nomoto on a drive out to a farmer’s market. They shop for fresh veggies, eat ice cream and generally have a lovely time. They continue to have fun together, including making a 5 liter giant flan in a rice cooker. ^_^

The volume ends with Nomoto asking Kasuga to spend Christmas and New Year making and eating food. In an omake, Nomoto buys a brand new platter just because it would be pretty to serve something for Kasuga in. And indeed, when she serves her fried rice, it is a perfect platter. As Kasuga finishes every last grain of rice, Nomoto thinks that she is so very glad she had some courage that day.

Okay, in case you can’t tell, I LOVE this manga. Everything about it is just right. It has a woman who is not the same slim, small, fashionable working woman we keep seeing. I’ve just flipped through and I don’t think we see Kasuga working, but her work jacket has a logo is similar to that a large distributor of alcoholic beverages and she drives, so I’m going to take a leap and assume she does delivery for an alcoholic beverage distributor.

Here we get to watch adult women loving food and eating to their heart’s content without any tiresome thoughts on /insert something stupid about what women should or should not do./ This will always appeal to me. The way to my heart is through food and food manga. ^_^

I know from reading further on Comic Walker, that Nomoto’s thoughts about Kasuga will change and she will realize that she likes her, which you too can read if you pick up Volume 2. (That’s next on my to-read list.) In a Twitter conversation some months ago, it was also noted that this manga comes with a content warning for workplace sexual harassment, but unless I am missing it, I don’t see it on the book or site anymore. It’s pretty plain by Nomoto’s reaction, that she’s very uncomfortable with the man who approached her at work. Nomoto’s feeling are implicit in that one scene. I like that the story focuses on the two of them, without an external “reason” Nomoto doesn’t like men. The scene where she realizes she likes Kasuga is charming. It doesn’t need a reason, other than her affection. Update: CW has reminded me that the content warning was for Chapter 16, so I had forgotten something. My mistake.

Kasuga is a character marked with very subtle expressions. For this alone, I’d call this art amazing. Her face changes very little, but even slight shifts carry a lot of weight. Especially compared to excitable Nomoto, Kasuga almost seems to have no affect, but that’s not at all true. Nomoto and we can tell exactly what Kasuga feels with subtle, but telling shifts in her expression.

The focus on eating and mouths here is not gross, completely unlike a similar obsession in Blue is the Warmest Color movie, which I found creepy and intrusive.

In a lot of ways, I think this story is emblematic of a shift in queer story-telling overall. So much of queer work in the last century was rooted in trauma (isolation, rejection, ostracization, etc.). Now we’re seeing more positivity in our fiction and I’m all for it.  I would like to see much more Yuri sitting in a place that isn’t a closed-off fantasy world but also gives no or little room to intolerance.  Yes, of course, harassment and violence exist in the real world and yes, definitely there needs to be some manga that addresses that. And…there are some now and there will be more. I’m glad to see this one that is about something else entirely – two women bonding over food.

Ratings:

Art – 9
Story – 9
Characters – 9 We don’t know much about them, but what we know is sufficient to know them
Service – Does massive platters of food count? No? Then…no.
Yuri – 2 in this volume, more to come.

Overall – 9 but only so there is somewhere to go up.

And so I start this new year with a “best of breed” and declare Tsukuritai Onna to Tabetai Onna as a harbinger of great work to come in the new year!

If you get the book, there is a QR code to download the cover art as a digital poster…and so I have. ^_^