Spotlighting Gems: Koufuku Graffiti Knows That Special Ingredient

 What determines if a meal will taste good? How fresh the ingredients are? How well the recipe was followed? Maybe the season or time of day you eat at? There's no question that all of these play a role, but our headspace while we eat is perhaps the biggest determining factor. If we're hungry, food always tastes better. If we've been looking forward to a meal all day, the payoff is miraculous. And when the food was cooked by a person we love just the way we like it, solely because they wanted to see us smile while eating it, that's when it tastes the best. Eating alone just because you have to eat to be alive becomes mundane. Even if it tastes alright, it's simply routine, performed mindlessly after taking the time to cook, which feels like a pain in the ass after a long day. The way that simply having another person there with you affects your meals is often taken for granted, but Koufuku Graffiti turns this joy into a heartwarming emotional experience you won't want to miss. 

Before the start of the series, mature middle school student Ryou Machiko used to live with her grandmother and shared a strong bond together largely over cooking and eating great food, but after her grandmother's death, and with her parents working overseas, Ryou finds herself living alone and going through the motions. Dissatisfied that her cooking is no longer tasty to her no matter how well she follows the recipe, she resigns herself to a life of loneliness and boredom, until it's decided that she will house and feed her cousin on the weekends while she attends the same cram school in Tokyo. Thus starts her relationship with the tiny and adorable Kirin Morino, a spunky and childish girl who loves to eat and is tired of her mother always cooking the same dishes. With Kirin now an important person in Ryou's life, food has started to taste a little bit better now. 

This is a pretty rote premise all things considered, but this series has a few special ingredients that elevate it into an immensely sweet and heartwarming story about family and human connection. While this is adapted from a Manga Time Kirara manga, the set-up has a number of unique elements that fundamentally shift the story from that of its school club contemporaries. The biggest of those is that Ryou and Kirin only see each other once a week, where they live together, eat together, sleep together, and ultimately share the same space as a family. It sounds like a small thing, but it works to make their interactions feel extremely intimate. They don't get to see each other every day, and when they're separated their home lives are mundane and unassuming. Thus, they end up being the highlight of each others week, where they spend much of their time excited to be able to see each other on the weekends. Their interactions are a special occasion with which they seek to make the most of their time together, mostly by cooking together.

And that makes it a little sad whenever Kirin has to go home as well, as it signs their returns to mundanity. But every episode ends the same way, on the same hopeful note, where Ryou sends Kirin off on the train and they exchange a "mata raishuu" (see you next week). I bet this would have been particularly impactful to watch as the show aired weekly, but it still works wonderfully to see it on the binge. Moreover, this formula allows the series to be impactful whenever it breaks that formula. If there's a time where Kirin gets to stay with Ryou for the week and no "mata raishuu" is exchanged, it feels extra special. Likewise, whenever Kirin doesn't arrive by the start of the episode, the wait for her arrival is agonizing. The nature of their time together as a special routine adds a surprisingly poignant sense of drama, and since they aren't constantly a part of each other's lives the way the cast of a school club show would be, it makes every second they spend together feel more special. 

The series sells me on the intimate nature of our leads' relationship not only through the endearing chemistry they share, but also through the roles that they play in each other's lives. Ryou has lost her only close family member and biggest support system, and Kirin comes to fill that void for her. In the first episode, Kirin tells Ryou that she's willing to be anything she needs, be it a mother or a father, a brother or a sister, a husband or a wife (but definitely not a child), and it ends up being very impactful on Ryou as she realizes that having family makes living a little bit easier in her grandmother's absence, and also makes her cooking much tastier. With Kirin, Ryou takes on her grandmother's legacy, cooking for Kirin the same way that she cooked for Ryou. Likewise, Kirin is treated by her family as a child who can't take care of herself, and Ryou helps her to establish some independence and teaches her to take care of herself, such as by cooking for herself. Around each other, the two can be themselves, and their closeness shines through in how they do almost everything together. Ryou and Kirin's relationship is the heart of the series, and the loving intimacy the series presents them as sharing is the main element that makes it worth watching. The series is light on plot and character development, mainly focusing on the day-to-day interactions of these characters and their feelings towards each other, with each of its individual stories being charming and heartwarming episodic capers. There are, of course, other lovable characters present in the story, most notably the de-facto third main girl Shiina, but their presences are fairly minor in comparison to the central relationship that defines the drama at the show's core, and I kind of don't have much to say about them beyond assuring you that they are very endearing.

Another way that the series sells me on the nature of Ryou's and Kirin's relationship as one that is particularly intimate is through visual presentation. One of the series strengths is the way it captures the feeling of loneliness and contrasts it with the livelier vibe that Kirin's presence creates. When Ryou is alone, the room is dark and gloomy, and she sees people around her as existing in a blindingly bright place which she's separated from. But once Kirin arrives she brings that color into Ryou's room. Although this is simple, the series often puts that kind of thought into its shots and visual motifs, which makes it engaging on a moment-to-moment level and further highlights the bond that these characters share. But the most intriguing detail about its direction, I think, comes from the way it sort of breaks the fourth wall while the characters cook. We'll often watch the girls cook from this angle, as if there's a camera in the corner of their room that we're looking through. And the girls will often show their food directly into the camera, as if they're performing in a cooking show for us. I think it highlights the fun that they have while cooking together, that they want to show off their food to the viewer, and also further highlights the intimate nature of it as we voyeuristically look at it through a sort of hidden camera, although the girls seem vaguely aware of it and are happy to share their creations with us. 

Since this is a Shaft production, there are numerous odd visual elements which are perfectly chosen for its storytelling goals. While it's a far more reserved production than Monogatari and others, all of the Shaft flare you've come to love is here in spades. From classic head tilts to stylized cutaways to replace movement, there's plenty of theatrical flare that takes advantage of animation's unique strengths as a medium. Naturally, food looks particularly incredible, and sometimes it's presented with these mind-blowing shots. It likes to emphasize the texture more than anything, like the chewy texture of inari sushi. It's not just the big moments though, as it's also blessed with personality rich character acting, including highly technical food preparation like the first part of this clip. It's definitely a little inconsistent, and is at it's most technically impressive in the early episodes (with episode 2 being a particular highlight of non-stop movement and Shaft stylistic flourishes), but it's ultimately a pretty stylish and high quality show in terms of visuals. Any show that has shots like this one clearly knows what it's doing in my book, as this is the only right way to introduce short people. 

If you do know anything about Koufuku Graffiti, it's probably the extremely meme-worthy over-the-top reactions to food. This show may not be Food Wars levels of crazy, but its "gimmick" so to speak is very bizarre eating scenes. While the girls eat, the artwork becomes much more detailed, and the camera will focus on blushing rosy red cheeks and excessively detailed lips. The show will animate juices flowing down the mouth and tongue with intimate detail, and it occasionally pulls out, uh, whatever the fuck this is supposed to be. Eating is presented with an erotic quality that makes each character's enjoyment look far more intense than it reasonably should be, and its presentation is so odd as to stand out. But like most things in this series, there's a method to the madness. When you think about it, eating is kind of erotic. Not in the sense that it's sexy or titillating, but that it's sensual. Our enjoyment of food is multi-faceted, everything from the texture of our first bite to the juices rolling down our lips to our reaction as it touches our tongue to the addition of taste as we bite into it, so many factors dictate the way we experience food. Eating can be an overwhelming sensory experience involving the combination taste, smell, and various forms of touch, and Koufuku Graffiti's eating scenes serve to emphasize this aspect of our experience while eating. The girls reactions are considered to be over-the-top in-universe, as other girls who watch them eat are taken aback by their reactions and desire to try the food themselves (including Kirin herself when she first sees Ryou eat), sometimes to be disappointed when it's just a normal meal. Of course, the magic of the meal isn't the food itself, but the love from the chef that is perceptible only to the girls themselves with their intimate relationship, and so these ridiculous eating scenes serve to allow the viewer to understand what they're experiencing on a tactile level. The meal is specifically enjoyable to them due to their relationship, and so the audience comes to understand exactly how intense that feels for them due to the presentation of these scenes. 

I want to advise you to not focus too much on the word "erotic," as I meant it in more of a sensual sense than a sexual one. The clips I gave should speak for themselves, but they are not presented in a sexual or titillating manner. The girls don't orgasm while eating (they mostly just describe the food in excessive detail), and they aren't sucking on phallic objects or otherwise doing things that will turn you on unless your particular fetish is highly detailed cartoon lips. The series is relatively fanservice free (aside from the strangely out-of-place 6th episode, which is the only one to feature phallic objects and leering shots as the girls spend most of the episode in the bath together), with only a few moments that blur the line between expressing pleasure and moaning, though the relative wholesomeness certainly doesn't make it any less weird on the whole. Nonetheless, that oddness is a thoughtfully chosen stylistic choice, and is certainly part of the show's charm. As odd as the scenes may be, they emphasize the unique relationship that Ryou and Kirin share, the intensity of enjoying each others cooking making it perfectly clear how much they mean to each other. 

And that focus on sensory experience is elevated by the series gorgeous soundtrack. Seriously, this show might have the most underrated soundtrack ever. I think the best way to describe it is that it takes on a sort of fairy tale vibe full of gorgeous strings and playful vocal accompaniment, but it infuses it with jazz influences and with a pinch of accordion to highlight the association with high class cooking. It has a unique sound and identity that I think is seriously cool. In context, it emphasizes the sort of floaty, heavenly feeling that comes with eating delicious food made with love, while also setting the tone for its down-to-earth sitcom shenanigans and its more melancholy moments. Rather than just describing it though, I can link to the thing, so you can give it a listen and see what I mean. 

Koufuku Graffiti is undoubtedly a strange beast of a show. In a lot of ways, it's hard to describe, and I kind of feel like I've undersold how good I actually think it is here. It's a bizarre show in some ways, but it's down-to-earth at its core. My main takeaway was never about cooking or eating in weird ways, it was always the ways that Ryou and Kirin fill the gaps in each other's lives by sharing so many experiences together and being the highlight of each other's weeks. It's a cozy and heartwarming story about loneliness, family, and connecting with others, elevated by stylish audio/visual presentation. If you're looking to watch something comfy and warm, Koufuku Graffiti is an excellent and underappreciated choice that I highly recommend.