I’ve been following this series for years and each new translated volume release makes me feel like a kid on Christmas morning, eager to open his presents. There are several things about Cooking with Wild Game that make me appreciate it so much. These exact reasons may be dealbreakers for people with different tastes, however, and I can see how this series is not for everyone. First of all, the pace is quite slow. I mean that both in a plot sense and in how much time passes in-universe each chapter. This also means that there is a lot of attention to detail. You can tellhow much care the author takes with the world, characters and plot. It is all very well thought out. This zoomed-in, slower look at events really lends the series its charm.

The worldbuilding is excellent, especially when compared to most other isekai series. The writer touches on many different cultural differences such as food, religion, physical appearance as markers of ethnicity, as well as the differing values of each social group. There exist tensions between different peoples and this actually matters in the way characters from different backgrounds interact with each other. The main character Asuta not only tries to become a part of the forest tribe, he also helps that same tribe cross cultural barriers and form deeper connections with the nearby city folk. This is done mainly through his cooking. This struggle to bridge cultural barriers is in fact one of the main recurring themes in Cooking with Wild Game.

There are many different characters in Cooking with Wild Game, and most of them are quite impressive in terms of depth of personality and role in the overarching story. In fact, there are occasionally chapters from the point of view of side characters in order to elaborate on their perspective. This way you can also read about events that the main character was not directly involved with. Forging bonds with others is another of the main themes that you will see in Cooking with Wild Game and the way all of these characters are written makes that an interesting experience.

The main character, Asuta, is an ordinary guy. Even after he gets isekai’d he doesn’t gain any special powers. He’s just a teenage chef. He doesn’t become super powerful or gets cheat powers or anything of the sort. This is quite refreshing for isekai standards. But he is particularly skilled as a cook and a lot of my enjoyment comes from reading about him experimenting with local ingredients. If you like cooking and cooking techniques or simply descriptions of delicious food, you will definitely be interested in this aspect of the novel. I must admit that it can be tricky to remember the names of all the new ingredients he discovers in this new world, so in the end I just wrote them down because there ended up being too many to recall.

The artwork is quite good and gives you an idea of how the various people he interacts with look like. Many of them are, of course, beautiful women. But even ordinary folk and other men are depicted as well.

In any case, if you like slow pacing with detailed worldbuilding and very realistic characters, this might be the novel for you. Especially if you enjoy food or cooking and a main character who is just an ordinary guy.