Iron Wok Jan – Episode 1

Content Warning: The ‘90s.

What’s it about? Gobancho’s Chinese Restaurant is the best Chinese restaurant in Tokyo’s ritzy Ginza district. A first rate dining establishment that prides itself on quality food by a staff of dedicated culinary professionals. Among them includes 16-year-old Kiriko Gobancho, the owner’s granddaughter and future heir of the restaurant. While Kiriko has proven her mettle to make the perfect golden fried rice and strives to serve good food, she finds herself standing counter to Jan Akiyama, who thinks cooking is a competition and all he needs to do is keep winning.

---

Let me tell you about 1995 in Japan. 

Five years on from the stock market crashing and the Japanese economic bubble popping, it was a point where most of Japan realized they’re “going through it.”

With a workforce no longer filled with post-war can-do people seeking to rebuild a nation and now a newer generation of baby-boomers who only saw year-on-year rise in national prosperity, the 1990s were a brutal wake-up call as those too old to start anew lost their retirements, and the young found their social security in concepts like “life-time employment” ripped away. It was so bad, the socialists somehow took premiership of the country and then promptly lost it after that year.

The collective trauma of 1995 is ingrained in the modern Japanese consciousness for anyone born in the Showa-era, as the Heisei era marked the lost decade, which turned into decades, and some might even argue has yet to ever be found again despite so many government slush funds to infuse economic vitality through Cool Japan and now AI.

It started with a devastating earthquake in Kobe, leveling entire neighborhoods and burning the rest, as poorer districts were cut off from emergency relief in the dead of winter. It’s often also said it put on display the powerlessness and bureaucratic nightmare of the Japanese government which would be proven time and time again from then on during times of national crisis, while offering a foothold to organized crime such as the Kobe-based Yamaguchi-gumi, which mobilized as a far more effective relief force, eventually seeing their altruism paid back in under-the-table contracts and fresh new footsoldiers made up of orphans and down-on-their-luck youth as a result of the disaster. 

Just two months later, the Tokyo subway sarin gas attack took place, further clouding the nation’s public consciousness with fear and dread. This suffocated the nation with a cloud of unease and that collective trauma fueled a nation’s anxiety for more than a decade later.

And then Akira Toriyama got sick of drawing Dragon Ball, ending it in May of that year. Like, seriously, it was bad, folks.

We want you to understand, 1995 sucked ass. Case Closed wouldn’t even start until the next year, and Morning Musume wouldn’t debut for another two years. Truly, totally horrible and unlivable.

And amidst this hell, we had one shining light. We had: _{^{Initial D}}

Normally, an anime wouldn’t necessitate the contextualization of Japan in the ’90s, but Iron Wok Jan forces this discussion by explicitly doing a freeze frame and dedicating the last two minutes of the show to sit the audience down to go:

Let me tell you about Homestuck Iron Wok Jan.

and proceeds to promise you that this 30-year-old competitive cooking manga whips ass and gave Japan hope in these dark times. Coming a year after the debut of the Iron Chef, competitive cooking had just been realized as a viable genre and Shinji Saijo decided he could make a sports manga series to tell a story of which shrimp can fry a better rice.

Just as Saijo’s idea was bold at the time, it’s nearly unprecedented for an anime to make such a statement so explicitly and boldly, but perhaps it was much needed, as following all this waxing over just how good Iron Wok Jan is, the show has a very clear disclaimer, and that it not only is a work of fiction with “no intentional resemblance of any persons or organizations, or occurrences,” but that it further stipulates its faithful recreation of the ‘90s property may offend some people by transgressing social practices and standards that have since changed over the last three decades.

While it’s unclear what exactly will be “offensive,” Chiaki’s recollection of the source material, as well as the popularity of certain dishes in Chinese cuisine from her childhood, she supposes this isn’t so much about the stereotypical depiction of minorities in Japan or anything like that, and more for their love of shark fin soup. 

Though who knows, some casual racism might make it in too.

That said, however, the first episode of Iron Wok Jan provides a polished work that is fun and a decent quality you can expect from the studio Troyca founder and the director that brought you Wandering Son, Overtake! and Girls Bravo. And with the post-episode statement, along with the age of the title, it’s clear this is somewhat of a passion project for Ei Aoki, so it likely promises to be a wild ride to watch out for, however it may transpire.

Regardless of the warning, Iron Wok Jan has a solid start. It’s got an ensemble cast of way too many characters, but the individual names and stories don’t really matter too much for now as it’s all eyes on Jan and Kiriko. Kiriko is measured and establishes her skill by practically showing off her culinary skills while Jan is brash and aims to only one up everyone else. They’re both memorable in their own way, and you can see the merits and faults of both of their respective approaches to cooking.

This makes for good entertainment, as the show sits you down to show you two takes on a dish, both exemplary for what they are, but also wholly unique to each other because of how the chefs wish to dazzle their diners.

Where Kiriko demonstrates the basics of what makes a perfect plate of fried rice, Jan shows off by using tofu to purposefully make a trickier dish. And when Kiriko uses easier to work with veal tripe and chicken gizzards to demonstrate how you can make palatable organ meat dish, Jan counters by choosing to serve up flambéed pork livers prepared in a French style to reduce their gamey texture while bringing out their fuller flavor.

Both chefs introduce interesting tidbits to their cooking, and—at least to this cat, who can’t cook to save her life—it’s all really quite interesting.

We’re willing to believe Aoki. Iron Wok Jan is a classic that was a mainstay in the latter half of the 1990s, even if it never quite reached the fame and acclaim of other shonen staples from that era. It’s very much exactly what you expect from a battle manga, but one that incorporates a cavalier approach to cutting up and serving various animals, and gives you a hankering for a night out at a proper Chinese restaurant.

It’s got energy, it’s got style, and it doesn’t set off any alarm bells unless you’ve got a thing about slaughtering animals, which then, you might want to take a step back, given what I know about the series, but otherwise it’s a fun time in the kitchen.

To tell you the truth, Iron Wok Jan has always been the punchline for an inside joke with a few friends of mine. The true and best anime we will never get to ever see is an adaptation of this manga. We always joked, “why not Iron Wok Jan?” like that will ever happen, and now that it’s finally happened, we’re at a loss for words. We don’t have any other grey whales to name (that’s a lie, we have plenty), at least one that is as deserving and potentially wild as this show. With all this hype, we’re almost scared that this might not live up to the hype, but that is something we’ll only be able to judge at the end of the season.