Review of Kitchen Wars

Rating: 10.9%

Kosaka Makoto is a career woman who is the youngest female director for InterConnect Co while her husband, Tetsuya is taking care of the household. However, when her husband dies of a sudden traffic accident, Makoto has to take up the responsibility of doing household chores and cooking for her daughter Mayo who feels distant from her mother. As such, Makoto heads for a cooking class by Sugino Sakura where she learns from scratch how to cook despite having lots of knowledge about food due to work reasons. Besides trouble at work by her subordinate Izumi Yukio, Makoto also has to deal with a weird artist Rupan Yamada who keeps entering her house without permission as well as handle a crumbling relationship with her daughter. Just at this time, her mother-in-law Kosaka Haruko wants to bring Mayo to her place and raise her granddaughter instead of leaving her to Makoto...

Although the ratings were relatively low than my initial guess of around 14%, I must say that the quality of this drama SP is not as bad as the figure suggests. Maybe something happened on the date of OA or there was a more interesting programme over at other channels.

The story is rather straightforward and very easy to follow. Makoto (Amami Yuki) is a career woman who works for a trading firm which imports cooking utensils. No doubt she may have extensive knowledge about food and has a taste for the finest cuisine, she's actually lousy at cooking and has little chance to practice or learn since her husband Tetsuya (Sasaki Kuranosuke) takes care of the household and their only daughter Mayo. However, when Tetsuya dies due to a traffic accident, Makoto tries to face the future strongly and maintains a positive appearance in front of Mayo. From the eyes of Mayo though, it seems as if Makoto is not affected by Tetsuya's death and she resents the fact that Makoto brings her out for dinner every night despite her craving for homecooked food.

Tetsuya's mother complains about Makoto's incompetence as a mother due to her lack of cooking skills and having little time for Mayo. To prove her wrong, Makoto enrols in a cooking school where she meets the teacher Sugino Sakura. Although she is making progress, Mayo refuses to eat the fine cuisine she cooks which makes Makoto very discouraged. Instead, Mayo chooses to eat at Runba Yamada's place. Runba is a comic artist who lives in the vicinity and dishes out weird-looking (to Makoto at least) food for Mayo who likes it more than the exquisite dishes Makoto makes. Thus, this makes Makoto unable to comprehend why this is happening.

Sugino then arranges for Makoto to attend a children's class where she finds out the kids have very simple requirements when it comes to food. Makoto realises that she has been using her own views to determine what to make for Mayo instead of thinking about what she wants to eat. Makoto tries to regain Mayo's trust by promising to make something she likes but goes back on her word because of work again. Mayo decides to stay with her grandmother instead so Makoto makes a last-ditch attempt to reconcile with Mayo. In the end, mother-and-daughter patch up which can be considered a happily-ever-after ending.

To be frank, the plot isn't that novel but what's interesting is seeing Amami Yuki take on this role of a career woman who can't cook. It was hillarious to see her mess up in the kitchen. For example, she wanted to remove the skin of a fish and was using her bare hands to tear the skin off from the flesh. And she was cutting the red pepper such that it ended up in circular pieces instead of cutting it horizontally, removing the seeds before slicing. I'm not a cooking expert but at least there were some basic things which I know. Given the fact that Amami usually plays the strong career woman who's capable of everything, seeing this comical side of her was a new discovery and made the drama SP more enjoyable to watch. And picking up the konbu from the boiling pot by using her bare hands just gave the idea that she lacked common sense. Too bad the humour didn't last for long as she picked up the skills rather quickly. It would have been better for her to make more mistakes along the way to increase the comical effect.

Another point which I wish to bring up is about Takeda Shinji. I wonder why he's been playing eccentric or should I say rather unique characters of late. In Kami wa Saikoro wo Furanai, he plays a music university graduate who's lazing around and behaves weirdly and now, he plays a comic artiste who has an unusual way of cooking food. Thank goodness he wasn't wearing the woolen cap like in Saikoro or I would have found his appearance quite hard to accept.

Last but not least, Matsuzaka Keiko who has the look of a virtuous mother and housewife, seems to be "under-utilised" in this SP because her appearance time was limited and her main purpose seemed to be guiding Makoto towards the right way of winning over her daughter's heart. I thought her role could be developed a little more.

On the whole, I would give this drama SP a 7 out of 10. No doubt it isn't particularly impressive, it's still not bad and for the sake of seeing the ever-capable Amami Yuki make silly mistakes in the kitchen, I think it's still worth spending 1 hour and 35 minutes over.