Misoshiru de Kanpai!

This manga feels like it starts out with the premise of a love story, but then evolves into a manga about miso soup with romance to try and keep you reading. The intense amount of miso and overall culinary knowledge is excellent, to say the least. However, the drawn out character interactions end up feeling stale and unfulfilled by the end. It feels almost like the mangaka didn't know how to conclude a romance story after all this build up. On the story, you have a lot of miso soup that works as a mechanic. It is a bonding device for all the story, being asuper versatile thing that Japanese people identify with. Alongside the laborious journey to learn everything about this virtual food group, you have sprinkles of romance and whispers of progress among middle schoolers. And the main romance, as you may guess, centers around miso soup. In some ways, the use of soup to tell a story between people growing closer is a great idea. The problem becomes painfully obvious at the ending, however, when the story abruptly ends with no real resolution or satisfying development. It's so quick you might wonder if it got axed after teasing you along for all this time. In the end, the soup only works as progress, but it cannot fully bind people in a conclusive way. And the story dances around that issue for a long time, throwing pebbles of "growing closer" for you to follow. Yet, at the end, it's an underbaked gingerbread house. Character-wise, this story has an expanding cast that have their own little stories and mini-arc of chapters. The main pair serves as the primary palette to aid the side ones, and it doesn't feel fully realized. The characters in and of themselves are fine. They have a good range of different personalities and facial expressions. You have quirky adults and awkward preteens getting way early into romance. The side characters do sometimes steal the show from the main ones, just because one can get boring reading the same pair for thirty chapters and seeing just blushing and soup. Art is very good, with great anatomy and clean lines on clothes and wrinkles. Character designs are distinct and the chibi art is especially diabetes-inducing. Overall, the 7 I give is a bit generous but I have to give props to all the culinary knowledge stuffed in this manga and the great art. I'm not even 100% sure it's all accurate, but I enjoyed the history and gastronomic lessons a lot, sometimes even more than the actual story that was going on.