Hello all, and Happy 2023! Sakaki here with another delicious review of Maiko media by our good friend Hippo! This time around is the recently released Netflix adaptation of Aiko Koyama's Maiko-san chi no Makanai-san Which is entitled The Maikanai: Cooking for the Maiko House.
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Well, without further ado, let's get cookin' with Hippo!
The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House
Hello everyone, I hope the new year is treating you well. It’s been almost two years since I last did a guest spot on the blog, time flies, huh? Last time I gave my first impressions of the anime adaptation of Maiko-san Chi no Makanai. Since it was announced that Maiko-san was once again being adapted, this time as a Netflix TV drama under the name The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House, by one of my favorite film directors, Hirokazu Koreeda, I asked Sakaki if I could do a guest piece again.
Hirokazu Koreeda is among the biggest names of his generation in the realm of international cinema. His films regularly screen at major festivals such as Cannes, where he won the top prize, the Palme d’Or, in 2018 for his film Shoplifters. While he is primarily known, especially outside of Japan, for his film work, he’s not a stranger to television. Koreeda started his career working on TV documentaries before branching out to fiction, and he’s developed a few other TV shows in the years since. Koreeda’s filmography leans towards realist dramas, typically but not exclusively focusing on families. His style has repeatedly been compared to the late Japanese master Yasujiro Ozu, though Koreeda himself is skeptical of these comparisons.
Maiko-san Chi no Makanai is of course a manga series by Aiko Koyama that has ran in Weekly Shonen Sunday since 2016. The series offers a peek into the life of Kiyo, the makanai for a maiko house. Kiyo initially came to the maiko house with her best friend Sumire to train as a maiko, but unlike Sumire who is a rising talent, she isn’t cut out for it. Instead she becomes the live-in cook. Through Kiyo’s eyes we get to see both the daily life of a cook in her position, but also those of the maiko in the house.
While at first glance Maiko-san doesn’t seem like the average Koreeda project, there are certainly links to be made. This isn’t his first go at adapting a manga, with his films Air Doll and Our Little Sister (Umimachi Diary) being adaptations of such source material. Maiko-san isn’t strictly a drama nor is it about family, but as is emphasized in the show, the girls in the world of maiko are to refer to their elders as “mother” and “sister” so there is an element of a non traditional family at play, something Koreeda loves to examine. Still, it’s an interesting combination, one that could produce interesting results.
The first thing that’s noticeable about the drama when compared to the manga is where it begins. While the manga begins with Kiyo already working as a makanai, only later flashing back to earlier events, the drama begins with Kiyo and Sumire leaving their hometown in Aomori. The drama continues chronologically, and also heavily expands upon this backstory section. Kiyo doesn’t become a makanai until the second episode. This leaves the show taking a while to get to a hook, though perhaps in the streaming era this is less of a problem for people. If this had aired weekly it certainly would have been structured differently. The episodes are roughly 40 minutes long, which is a far cry from the short manga chapters. That said, because so much of the material is original, it never feels like it’s clunkily trying to string too many chapters of a manga into one stretch.
The Makanai is still an adaptation of the manga, but it very much has its own identity. Because of how it expands events, it also has original characters Shoplifters star and regular Koreeda collaborator plays Ren, a bartender. We also get extended scenes with the previous Makanai. Her interactions with Kiyo are a definite highlight. Ryoko is a girl who is the daughter of one of the masters of the maiko house. She mostly serves to speak negatively about the house and events happening in the show. She definitely seems set up to be important later, but for these first two episodes she feels a bit out of place at times. The series also leans towards tackling structural issues related to the society that the maiko live in, but I would hesitate to say it does so enough to be a real point of focus of the series. A lot of different things get a bit of focus in these 40 minute episodes, to varying degrees of interest. The show is at its best when it’s focused on Kiyo and by extent her cooking.
The show has a nice feeling to it’s production. It’s shot well, though maybe not as pretty as a Koreeda movie. It has a nice score, especially the main recurring melody. It’s perfectly good television; but as an adaptation, it’s hard to not compare it to the source and find it a bit less engaging in comparison. You shouldn’t expect a live action TV show to employ the same type of storytelling as a manga, so I can’t dock the show too much for not have the exact same feel as the manga, but I will say these first two episodes did not make me feel as strongly about anything as I did reading the beginning of the manga. I would still call it a good show so far, but it’s a good show built off of a great manga.
The Makanai is a show with different priorities than its source material. It has more forward plot momentum, and is taking its time setting up the world differently than the manga did. It’s an approach that makes for a bit weaker of a start, but could possibly pay off by the conclusion of the show. I’m certainly interested in watching more… but I might prioritize reading more of the manga first. That being said, Maiko-san isn’t available legally in English, so this is still a good little taste for everyone, just know that it has a different, distinct flavor.
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