Kiyo in Kyoto: From the Maiko House

Mousekateer627 Jan 27, 2022

6

As the title and premise implies, Kiyo supports her fellow maikos through her cooking. The anim is your typical Slice of Life stories with cooking and food trivias thrown into the mix. It's a paint by numbers adaption of the manga with only audio and color making the anime distinguishable from the manga. Although it is irritatingly odd that there's almost no properly animated scenes dedicated to characters eating and savoring their beautifully created dishes like the manga. Given Cooking is the starring genre here and picture perfect dishes are shown constantly, why not show the characters enjoying their meals like Food Wars, Sweetness & Lightning, Poco's Udon World or Gourmet Girl Graffiti. The anime is nice looking with a calming atmosphere you'd play in the background like any cooking channel and maybe even pick up a recipe if you like.

krofire Mar 6, 2022

9

J.C.Staff’s delightful slice-of-life anime was initially familiar in the English-speaking world as it was broadcast on NHK World. It is not hard to see why as it is such a fantastic advert for Japan and its culture. (It was also noteworthy that its release schedule was drawn out over a very long period with the first showing in February 2021 and the last in January 2022. This made pretty frustrating viewing for those of use following along at the time – but that is all history now so you can sit back and stream this little gem from end to end without stopping.) The idea here is a simple one: the show revolves around Japanese Maiko and cooking culture. The two come together in the shape of two young girls working in a Kyoto Maiko House: Kiyo and Sumire. They have been friends since childhood and both moved to Kyoto to become Maiko (trainee Geisha). Unfortunately, Kiyo wasn’t very good and was on the brink of being sent back home before the opportunity arose for her to work as house cook. Sumire on the other hand is an extremely talented Maiko. For those of us outside of Japanese culture this is all quite cute, entertaining and eye-opening. Probably the Maiko-way of working is probably not well understood much in Japan itself. Either way this works magnificently. If you wish to learn, and have fun on the way, then this is the show for you. Regardless of its high-cultural content this is neither pretentious nor dull. Each episode is broken down into three segments that revolve around life in the Maiko-house. Each segment has a specific food-related theme which the girls discuss in their “Dish of the Day” section. Whether you like it or not you will learn a great deal from these girls and their discussions are highly factual. As for life in the Maiko house, this is not going to yield much in the way of drama but the entertainment value comes much from the friendships between the girls and their experience of the Maiko way of life. What is so beautiful about this is how human the girls are portrayed. That may seem like a strange thing to say but our image of the Maiko/Geisha is of highly ornamental painted China dolls. The show portrays them just as ordinary young ladies who, despite their professional demeanour, think about nothing other than going out for ice-cream or enjoying fast-food. When working their lives are highly restricted and they have little freedom. Yet on their occasional day off they can (literally) let their hair down and go out and do all the things girls like to do. “Kiyo in Kyoto” is probably one of the gentlest and most wholesome of shows out of Japan that you could ever wish to see. It is just like one long advert for everything truly wonderful about that nation. A back massage you would enjoy to the sound a waves crashing on a beach. Give this one some of your time. You won’t regret it. Perfection.

Efinate Apr 3, 2022

9

Ok so this anime is a slice of life which i enjoyed very much. It is about two girls who aspire to be maiko and this show is about cooking food too. The show was quite good and the humour in the show is just as good. The animation was quite good too i wasn't expecting much but the animation on the food was top tier. The cg was not bad but it could have been better.  The little shorts in between were very annoying but that gave us new information every now and then. if u r going to watch it make sure not to binge it.