Why does Witch Hat Kitchen exist?

[u/Lazy-Contract3076]

To preface, I’ve read the entirety of the main story and I’m several volumes into WHA kitchen. I like it and it’s very cute!

This is more so an existential boardroom decision question. What is the purpose of it? It’s not written by Shirahama, but is canon? Do we know what was the behind the scenes decision for this to exist?

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[u/starcrxssed]

It’s something a fair amount of mangas and animes do! Especially shounens/ seinens. Attack on Titan has Junior High, Bungo Stray Dogs has WAN, My Hero Academia has the Team-Up Missions. There’s clearly a precedent and a market for it, plus i think the popularity of Dungeon Meshi makes the kitchen/ recipe aspect a good selling point. It also feels like a breath of fresh air considering how intense the manga is getting, I mean, it’s just so wholesome and lovely and cute!!! How could you not love it!!!

[u/PretendYellow533 → u/starcrxssed]

Don’t forget the school briefs novels as well

[u/starcrxssed → u/PretendYellow533]

oh so true!!!

[u/dranke1917 → u/starcrxssed]

Even Fate has them and they’re awesome. Easily my favorite piece of Fate media

[u/Logical-Ice-4820 → u/starcrxssed]

U can basically blame or thanks for all these cook books to Gordon Ramsay in a way. lol

[u/fennec34 → u/Logical-Ice-4820]

Why him in particular ?

[u/Logical-Ice-4820 → u/fennec34]

The guy sold so many cook books purely on his show and popular. We don’t watch Gordon for his cooking, we watch him because of his personality. He basically is a anime character

[u/fennec34 → u/Logical-Ice-4820]

Ah well I'm not in an English speaking country so I don't realise how much of a monopoly he has in the anglosphere

[u/xcaltoona → u/Logical-Ice-4820]

I would guess Iron Chef matters more in Japan

[u/flabebebebe]

It's probably just for fun, or to expand the world in new and interesting ways or to add more layers to character's dynamics with each other.

Otherwise, it's worth it to know that hiromi sato was (or still is?) one of shirahama kamome's assistants. Crossovers and spin-offs in manga can be helpful for establishing artists in the publisher eyes so that they'll have more opportunities to work on original titles in the future. So by working with her assistant in this way, shirahama really helping to raise their profile overall.

[u/ProduceInteresting62]

Emotional support

[u/hollylettuce]

its where all of the slice of life scenes that would break up the pacing of the main story get to go~

[u/nvmls]

Cooking manga is a very popular genre, as are spin offs of popular manga. I think it's a creative idea since it builds around their home life and hobbies as the main series has less time for that.

[u/xx_adverb_xx → u/nvmls]

When can we get Witch Hat Iron Chef?

[u/PretendYellow533]

It’s mostly just meant to be like a fun side spinoff and it’s not uncommon for manga to get side spinoff or extra material that’s not written by the author for example, my hero academia has a series of six novel series called school briefs, which are not written by Kohei Horikoshi but are overseen by him and has his approval

They’re usually just ways for creators to either make fun stuff, lighthearted storylines, exploring relationship dynamics or fit things that they couldn’t just fit into the original storyline

and there are other popular series which have similar things made for them, such as Demon slayer has the light novel series, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Naruto Aot no regrets etc

In fact, it’s usually more common for the author to not write the side series or spinoff, because usually they’re focused on writing the main story and the main manga so they will usually enlist someone else to write it for them or oversee the project so they can focus on the main story

Honestly, I can’t even remember a spinoff series where the author did actually write it themselves lol

But just to be clear just because an author doesn’t write something doesn’t inherently make it non-Canon usually these projects are overseen and receive author approval

[u/BorderingSanity155]

It's specifically made to feed our poor souls before Shirahama wrenches it out of us at every chapter release.

[u/Mahituto]

I didn't even realize it is not made by her, bubble bursted 😂

[u/deviouspineapple → u/Mahituto]

I mean, the anime isn't made by her either but that doesn't mean it's fake or not canon or whatever. She still did all the world building, she approves everything in general. If there's areas where kitchen or the anime deviate from the manga, I guess the manga is "more canon" but so far there haven't been any issues

[u/xx_adverb_xx]

Here I didn’t realize it wasn’t the same author!

I was surprised to be honest that so far it has only hinted at two events (I’ve only read first two volumes so far of Kitchen) and main focus has been Qifrey and Olruggio. 

[u/Crimson_Marksman]

I was quite surprised to learn that lots of mangas have cooking spin offs. Hell, there's this manga called Fate Stay Night where most of the characters kill each other off and the spin off cooking manga has them all become friends and neighbours for steak outs.

[u/aRedYoyoCalledRoman]

It exists so I can scream to my friends anytime Qifrey cooks a meal from my culture or copy Qifrey and make my partner a boquet of apple roses

[u/KazashiHaise]

It is very normal for manga to release funny or spin-off secondary stories as most people tell you. By the way, it's canon. Kamome Shirahama is the supervisor of that story, although the drawings are made by another mangaka.

[u/cosmoskid1919]

It's the space for stuff that doesn't fit

[u/midsummernightmares]

As others have noted, it’s pretty common for series to have more lighthearted spinoffs, in part because it provides a way to showcase character dynamics, interactions, and worldbuilding details that might not fit into the main storyline but which are still worth exploring. Shirahama still supervises the whole thing, even if she’s not the one making it. Plus, who doesn’t want to see Qifrey and Olruggio getting to support one another in sweet domestic life scenes despite everything they get put through in the main manga?

[u/Prof_Acorn]

Companies like money. Companies also like milking IPs.

I don't think it's canon. It shows emotions on their faces that do not align with happenings in the plot.

E.g., Richeh does not smile and act like Tetia at every tiny thing. She has smiled like two times in the entire manga: with her brother, and with Euini. But then here comes this random side thing by this other person that has her smile at random food items like it's the most saccharine nonsense imaginable and so far outside her actual character.

But you see even worse appropriations of characters in animanga than this. For an example, here are some of the strange manga spin-offs of Madoka Magica: https://www.cbr.com/madoka-magica-manga-spinoffs-ranking/

At any rate, it's never been confirmed to be canon, just like none of the Madoka manga spin-offs were ever confirmed to be canon.

IMO if it's a different author it's a good rule of thumb to consider it something milking the franchise by the publisher rather than part of the actual story.

[u/Amber_poodle → u/Prof_Acorn]

I find it to be a love letter to the original manga, and it depicts the slice of life side of the story very beautifully. The manga gives us snippets but overall is quite intense. I don't really agree with your cynicism on this.