Sweetness and Lightning

The manga is about a single dad raising his daughter with the help of people around them, focusing mostly on the food and their daily lives. Each chapter includes a new recipe they learn together, there’s no weird relationships. Among other mangas, this one captured the daugher-father relationship really well. I found that as the story progresses, it gets better and better. The first thing that made me interested was the manga’s art and it never dissapointed me with various expressions and character designs. There’s so much improvement in each character, especially Tsumugi since she’s a child, both in appearance and behavior. Theonly thing I can complain is that sometimes it explained the cooking process in too much detail, more so in the earlier chapters. Each of the characters were lovable. Especially Tsumugi, she is a literal angel. Her childness, imagination and way of dealing with problems were so cute. If you’re looking for a heartwarming, cute and delicious manga, check it out! Make sure to read the special chapters too since they include the characters’ older selves.

Story - The story is really great. This manga's main focus was food and the recipes and the father-daughter relationship. It was full of overloaded cuteness--- KAWAII ---. Loved the ending. But in the middle of the story, there was a little bit of romance and love which wasn't fulfilled. It left an unsatisfied feeling. But at the end of the manga, the mangaka made up to it. Art- The art if this manga is good. Nothing to criticize about in my eyes. It showed a great number of details about everything. When the recipes were mentioned, the ingredients were shown nicely or rather perfectly andthe cooking process was shown in great detail. And the way food was shown, as appetizing as it was, it really brought water in your mouth. Character - Ooooooowwhh!!!! Can't get enough of the cute little, adorable Tsumugi-chan. How cute can she be!! What beautiful relationship she has with her father!! Her adorable charter takes all the credit for and from all the characters in the manga. Enjoyment- Yaap, it was a good read. It was really fun. Just left one uncanny feeling. The unfinished romance. It really bugs me. Overall, it is a good manga and also a unique one at that. It deserves all the respect for everything. It creates a new love for food, especially for Japanese food.

I was a skeptic about Sweetness and Lightening. I didn't want to admit it was a great manga. But it is truly great. It is original. The art is excellent. And it is romantic. And it leaves the reader happy, relaxed, sometimes hungry at the end of each chapter. There are so many recipes, I plan to buy the paperbacks and put them on the same shelf as my cookbooks. This is an Iyashikei slice of life story about two broken families who find healing and come together to make a new and extended family, all centered around the kitchen and the dinner table. Who isthe audience for this story? If you appreciate romance but don't need any kissing or love scenes to leave you bawling on the couch, you will enjoy this story. This manga is for fans of Japanese cooking. It is for anyone grieving the loss of a family member or loved one. It is for parents grieving their children growing up and moving away. It is for teachers grieving the graduation of their students. It is a wonderful meal of our favorite foods shared with our closest family and friends.

tl;dr: A manga about beginners learning to cook that handles the relationship between a single father and daughter really well, but does a much worse job with the other main character. This manga is primarily about three characters: a single father and high school teacher named Kouhei, ; Kouhei’s five year old daughter named Tsumugi,; and the daughter of a celebrity chef and one of Kouhei’s student named Kotori. The core of why they’re all together is that Kouhei and Kotori both aren’t really good at cooking but have a desire to learn, and thus they decide to do so together. The actual cooking isn’t justa backdrop as is the case with some manga, but rather is a very important aspect that a lot of detail and time is dedicated to. However, beyond that there is also a large emphasis on each of them just living their lives together alongside their family and friends, and thus a heavy dose of slice of life. With Kouhei and Tsumugi the relationship is exactly what you would expect but written pretty well. Kouhei is a very straightforward and kind father doing his best to raise Tsumugi on his own, and though he feels inadequate at times he pushes through to be the best parent he can be. Tsumugi is an energetic tomboy that can act spoiled and even mean at times as kids often do, but is clearly genuinely very good at heart. The focus here is very much on Tsumugi with Kouhei essentially acting as a supporting role to her, but because Tsumugi is what Kouhei lives for and is involved with every aspect of her life as you would expect, it essentially feels like he’s getting focused on equally. There’s a lot of heartwarming and adorable moments with the two that are enjoyable to read. That Tsumugi also goes through so much character growth also feels really satisfying, and though it was definitely rushed the speed run at the end was also really appreciated and a great way to end the series. How Kotori fits into things is a lot messier and in the end, I don’t feel it was handled all that well. Kotori has a light crush on Kouhei, who I will once again note is her teacher. Thus, she essentially decided she isn’t going to act on it and thus for the vast majority of the manga there is absolutely no progress in this regard at all. However, despite that she’s still heavily involved with both Kouhei and Tsumugi, and she ends up coming to care tremendously about Tsumugi as well. Thus, the bond between Kotori and Tsumugi was also pretty great, in that it has an older sister like dynamic to it with some really heartwarming moments too. The problems arise from the final stretch around her graduation and beyond where it felt like the author wasn’t sure what she wanted to do with Kotori and her relationship with Kouhei and Tsumugi. At times it seems to emphasize her bond with Tsumugi and felt like it was trying to push that she wasn’t romantically in love with Kouhei, and both Kouhei and Tsumugi also wanted to remain close her in such a manner. But even after that she still seemed romantically interested at times and Tsumugi also seemed like she wanted for them to get together at points with even Kouhei showing some interest at the end, though ultimately the manga ends before things are made clear. If the author wanted the relationship to be romantic, it should have clearly been made romantic, and if the author wanted it to be non-romantic, it should have been clearly made non-romantic and emphasized the non-romantic parts. Doing things halfheartedly felt like it spends time doing nothing at all. Additionally, I don’t think the manga did a good job with her character arc or her relationship with her parents either with a lot of it feeling pretty rushed or sudden. Kotori felt like a key part of the manga early on and I think it managed to build up solid investment in her story, but then didn’t really deal with her all that well which I feel was unfair to her and was a major disappointment with the series as a whole. I will also note that I’m not much of a fan of cooking in general, but the cooking aspect in the anime still managed to capture my interest due to the way things were presented, structured, and paced. Unfortunately, the manga doesn’t manage to capture that and the cooking portions in general weren’t interesting to me beyond the context of how they fit into the story. This is especially true of the later portions of the manga where it felt like it was dealing with more complicated dishes a lot more quickly. The art was okay in terms of style and quality but never great, even on covers or color pages. The character designs were solid for a grounded manga like this.