キッチンのお姫さま/Kitchen no Ohimesama 05
Kitchen Princess Volume 05 Manga Review

Kitchen Princess Volume 5 is now included in Kitchen Princess Omnibus Volume 3. It is out of print as an individual volume.

–> Purchase Kitchen Princess Omnibus Vol. 3 from RAKUTEN.COM (formerly BUY.COM)
–> Purchase Kitchen Princess Omnibus Vol. 3 from BARNES & NOBLE
–> Purchase Kitchen Princess Omnibus Vol. 3 from RIGHTSTUF!

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Najika becomes very depressed when she learns that her first kiss, courtesy of Daichi, apparently meant nothing to him. Daichi enlists Sora to help cheer Najika up. Sora does this by taking Najika on a dessert trip to help her as she prepares for her cooking competition. Najika decides to enter castella as her dish for the competition and works hard to practice getting it right, so much so that she injures her arm. At the competition, she has difficulty stirring the ingredients due to her injury. Daichi sees her problem and binds her arm, a skill he picked up from playing basketball. He then apologizes to Najika. With this, Najika makes a unique castella and makes it into the final round of the competition.

The head of Seika Academy (and the father of Sora and Daichi) is introduced to Najika, who lets it be known that she’s the orphaned daughter of the famous pastry chefs Nanase and Kaori. Najika finds herself unhappy that the director is using her personal tragic story to attempt to gain more fame for the school. She’s heart broken when she learns that Sora had been enlisted to use her as well. Sora works hard on a dish to express his apology to Najika and she accepts, taking the time to confess her feelings to him in return. Sora says that she’s special to him but that he’ll answer her confession once the finals are over.

Akane wins a modeling gig and she and Najika celebrate as Sora stands up to his father. Sora goes out to get some stuff for Najika but after making the purchase, Sora is run over by a truck.

In the story extra, Fujita’s father has been hurt and so Najika is dispatched to Fujita’s father’s bakery to help.

Thoughts/Review: Well, I can’t say that I expected Sora to be in an accident and apparently a pretty bad one. I suppose this means that Sora will be terribly injured in a hospital for Najika to worry about, causing Daichi and maybe Akane to step up to encourage Najika to go through the finals. She triumphs, Sora recovers, and all’s well so to speak. ^_^ We’ll see what happens though.

Other than the extra story, this volume of the manga is rather gloomy on the whole. Sure, Najika goes into the second round, but she’s all jacked up because Daichi took her first kiss, then more jacked up because Sora has been using her along with the director. Well, I suppose you have to pile onto a shoujo heroine in order for her to become stronger (or something like that).

After squaring things with Akane, I was rather disappointed that Akane’s role in this volume was rather muted. I suppose there was just no time for that since Najika was dealing with Daichi, Sora, their father, and the cooking competition.

The extra story was like a breath of fresh air as it was light and cheerful for the most part. I rather enjoyed having so much time dedicated to Fujita and his father.

The Del Rey release is pretty much standard fare. There are the usual translator notes and the recipes for the various dishes made are given. Having looked to the end, Del Rey includes a preview in Japanese for the next volume. Most of the time, there aren’t any major spoilers in these previews but this time, I think this is a major spoiler, assuming things go the way they appear to in reading the Japanese text, to include the sound effect for the heart monitor machine attached to Sora. If Sora dies, then Del Rey’s choice of preview will be bad indeed. If he does not, then I’ll give Del Rey credit for throwing out a red herring.

Still not my cup of tea as a manga series goes, but it isn’t a bad one. It is just that the manga isn’t targeted for me but I’m sure young girls will eat this stuff up (no pun intended).