"No hugging, no lessons learned." I thought of this Seinfeld writing credo as I belatedly finished the final episode of Shinji Saijyo's Iron Wok Jan! (DrMaster) recently. Twenty-seven volumes of our comic anti-hero obnoxiously lording it over his culinary inferiors — and the little bastard never grows or changes. When the final volume's main story concludes, he's just as rude and arrogant as he was when he entered the series. Possibly, more so.
For a time, Saijyo fools his readers into thinking that the series will be reaching some form of thematic resolution, but after comically cutting off the series last big multi-volume Rising Chinese Chefs cooking competition before any clear winner can be declared, Saijyo further displays a Sopranos-like glee in thwarting his audience's expectations. From the series' first volume, Iron Wok Jan! has had an inter-generational family conflict at the heart of its storyline: exemplified in the series' extended bickering between Jan Akiyama with his survival-of-the-fittest take on cooking and the improbably breasted Kiriko Gobancho, who espouses a more touchy-feely approach to the culinary arts.
This conflict, we're shown, has its roots in the rivalry between the two characters' grandfathers, who themselves fought for supremacy of the Japanese cooking community. When, in the final volume, Kiriko's grandfather Kaiichrio challenges both young chefs to a final competition, there's a sense that this, at last, will bring the series to its proper conclusion. What first brought our title lead to the Gobancho Restaurant, after all, was a need to take on his grandfather's old cooking rival.
Except, before this ultimate competition can occur, Saijyo throws in a fairly predictable plot twist to keep it from coming to fruition. All that's left is for our boy and girl chefs to head for China and three years of further schooling. When they return, they're both as combative as ever, and Jan is his unapologetic asshole self. Carrying an armload of endangered species into the airport, he yells a the authorities who try to stop him: "Who care if they're endangered species! If they taste good, they're on my ingredients list!"
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