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Hello again! Sadly, I’m back from my holidays. At the very least, I’m extremely glad that my editor didn’t steal the website while I was “gone”. ( ˙꒳˙ )
Unfortunately, I was too busy to finish the blog I had intended to upload whilst you were gone, but it’s nearly done, so it should be up at some point soon. 😅
We’re all looking forward to it! And yes, it’s true that I kept posting during this month, but it’s also true that I was more distracted than usual. Jokes aside, I’m working on the Space Channel 5 Part 2 Review, which will come out possibly soon, and I have two amazing blogs planned for you! The topics will stay a secret for now, so stay tuned to find out what they are! In the meantime, I’ve been playing my usual weird games, as you expected. This week, I’m writing about my first impressions of a Nintendo DS game I’m trying right now. I found it because I was looking up Cooking Mama games after the challenge I described in Page 9, and it seemed too cute to ignore it! Be aware, though, that it’s far from serious.
| Cooking Idol! I! My! Mine! – Game De Hirameki! Kirameki! Cooking |
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This game, which has a needlessly long title that I keep forgetting and thus having to look it up, is a visual novel with cooking and rhythm elements for Nintendo DS, based on an anime called “Cookin’ Idol Ai! Mai! Main!”, which is supposed to teach kids how to cook. The main character, a cute elementary schooler uniquely named MAIN, is voiced by an idol called Haruka Fukuhara. I started it thinking it was Cooking Mama with cute anime graphics, but I was largely wrong, as it’s everything but that.
The gameplay consists in reading visual novel dialogue, all in Japanese, sometimes choosing food to buy for the recipes, and finally… swiping the screen in various directions following the rhythm, as MAIN sings a cute and catchy song. Then the recipe will be magically cooked, and if you didn’t miss many swipes everyone will be quite Happy Happy Happy, as MAIN loves to say. In the anime, this portion becomes live-action, and the idol herself will cook for her audience, then sing and dance. The game is divided into months, which are completed after making a number of recipes successfully. Some of the dialogue lines are voiced, coming directly from the anime.
Delicious food makes everyone happy happy happy!
As I mentioned above, I played this game thinking it was something else entirely, yet I can’t say I’m disappointed. It’s certainly a naive game, as it stars an elementary schooler who literally goes food shopping alone and cooks live in front of people, but that’s exactly what makes it silly and over the top. Where else can you find a situation like this? Actually, MAIN reminds me of Mamori Minamoto from Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE, who is also a young idol featured in a show called Microwavin’ with Mamorin, where she cooks anything with a microwave (which also sums up the cooking skills of many university students I know, and mine, when I can’t be bothered to cook) and sings too. I’m not sure whether Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE was inspired by this character or not, as the Wii U game came out 3 years after the ending of the Cookin’ Idol anime (that aired from 2009 to 2012).
I was quite curious about how the Cookin’ Idol anime was, so I looked it up, and, quite unluckily, there are no subs for it. Plus, I also couldn’t find a website that still hosted it, even without subs. Even if my Japanese skills are certainly lacking, for now, I still wanted to watch such a cute idol dancing on screen! Luckily, I found 3 unnumbered episodes on YouTube and watched them, so I could compare them to the game here.
The first one I watched was about a Pancake Sandwich, which MAIN invented because of a place her dad, who’s a journalist, is currently in for work reasons. The second, which is the best one, in my opinion, is about the idol agency’s cameraman, who’s depressed because of his workload (what a very Japanese-y issue here) and is going to be killed by the producer, so MAIN decides to make him a cake omelette to make him feel better again. Despite my lack of skills, I still noticed how nice it was that “げんき” (genki), which means well, and “ケーキ” (kēki), which means cake, sounded similar, and it made me think that they probably did it on purpose. They could have called this recipe the Genki Omelette, and it would have worked even better, maybe. Even so, the nice part comes after this; MAIN finally gives the Genki Cake Omelette to the cameraman, who feels instantly better, and turns into a… handsome anime boy! MAIN is very surprised and stares at him with dreamy eyes, but the spell doesn’t last long… The cameraman turns into his old self again, leaving the young MAIN understandably disappointed. I laughed so much during this scene!
The third one was also quite intriguing. The title is immensely weird, as it tells us that MAIN will be cooking a… Cabbage Mask? As I was watching it, it struck me as the first episode of the show, as there seemed to be an audition going on and MAIN didn’t know her pet partner, Misanga, yet. In this episode, MAIN was visibly worried as she had to go on TV (for the first time, I’m guessing), so the idol agency’s president suggested that she imagines that everyone in the audience has a cabbage instead of a human head! I found this suggestion to be quite smart, as it makes you feel like you aren’t in front of people who can judge you. While it sounds weird to choose cabbages, I’m guessing that it’s a somewhat common saying in Japan, and I’d say I agree with it. Thus, MAIN goes on stage and sings a song about cabbages! The crew isn’t sure if they’re going to hire her, as they surely didn’t expect her to go on singing “Cabbage Cabbage” and many words I didn’t get, but I imagine that they are related to the vegetable. Luckily she was hired, or we wouldn’t see the rest of the episodes! After this, MAIN, who I think I heard saying “But… I’m not a cook!”, cooks the dumbest recipe on Earth: she takes a cabbage leaf, cuts in two holes for the eyes, draws a smile with ketchup, and voilà, a cabbage mask…! But she’s too adorable while doing it, so I guess we won’t complain.
Now, sadly all of these nice scenes don’t seem to be in the game, as the game rather seems a stripped-down version of the anime. Even if I haven’t completed all the 100 recipes, I can say that the game wasn’t as fun and varied as the anime, even by understanding most of the game by pairing my amusingly lackluster beginner Japanese skills with Google Translate. An example is how the song MAIN sings is always the same throughout the recipes I made, while in the three episodes of the anime, I could listen to three different songs.
What I can’t complain about, at least, is how I took advantage of the visual novel scenes and the simple dialogue to practice my Japanese! I tried to understand as many sentences by myself as I could, as thankfully there was furigana over kanji, which means that the nasty ideograms were transcribed in hiragana, one of the two Japanese syllabic alphabets, so I could read them just fine. So I guess I could be thankful for this opportunity, couldn’t I?
The food is ready!
Editor’s Note: That thing looks like it would be something from Yokai Watch. Either that, or it’s a Digimon wearing a costume.
By delving more into the world of this game, I found that Haruka Fukuhara, the idol who plays MAIN, is currently working on movies, j-dramas, and even a solo singing career! She’s currently active on her Instagram. She was 12yo at the beginning of the show, which means that being born in August 1998, she is 24, as of writing (she’s 3 years older than me). I listened to her latest song and I found it immensely sweet. I’ll surely watch the dramas she’s in, as I’m quite curious about how much her acting skills have changed these last 10 years.
As such, I’ll leave a playlist of some of her videos for you to enjoy, perfect if you love cuteness:
In the end, would I recommend this game and anime to you?
Actually, no, I’m not sure that I would; it’s one of those over-the-top, silly, and cute media that not everyone likes, so if you aren’t into kawaii idols, I’d recommend you avoid this. However, if you are a fan of immensely adorable things, don’t overlook Cookin Idol! You may love it, just like I’m doing.
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