The Fall 2019 Manga Guide

Sweet Reincarnation

What's It About? 

When a young, talented pastry chef dies in a freak ice sculpture-related accident, he is given a new chance at life in a fantasy world. Reborn as the young son of a nobleman with the spot-on name of Pastry, the former chef is stuck living the life of a pampered only son with swords and magic when he'd really rather be concocting sweets the like of which his new world has never seen.

When he discovers apples in the capital, he's thrilled – maybe his dreams aren't so far away after all. But if he's going to live to carry them out, he'll have to help his father to drive off a gang of dangerous bandits, or his new chance at patisserie will be over before it starts. Sweet Reincarnation is based on a light novel by Nozomu Koryu. The manga has scripts by Midori Tomizawa and art by Seriko Iida. It will be released in November by J-Novel Club as a digital-only book. ($8.99)

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Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

Move over, Truck-kun. Sweet Reincarnation has what is now my favorite form of pre-reincarnation death in an isekai series when its protagonist, an up-and-coming young pastry chef, is apparently killed by a giant swan-shaped ice sculpture. Given the rest of the book's tone, I assume that this is unintentionally hilarious, but for whatever reason it absolutely tickled my funny bone.

That's good, because most of the rest of this first volume is pretty firmly mediocre. Its premise is nice – that the protagonist was so skilled at pastry-making that he's given a second chance at life because his potential was cut off – but baking plays a sadly small role in the volume's plot. Instead it feels like a retread of familiar genre ground, with the chef (reborn as a noble boy named Pastry) being shown as preternaturally talented in all things from swords to magic and not making much use of his memories of his former life, which it is clear he has retained. That's not really something we get to learn until his dad (Casserole) takes him to the capital and he spots apples, or “bonkas” as they're called in this new world, and we're suddenly treated to a rundown on how to bake with them. But that almost immediately takes a backseat to Pas showing off his awesome sword fighting, magic, and strategist skills when a small army of bandits comes to raid his father's duchy. Because if a nine-year-old boy can't command a battalion and single-handedly defeat a bandit leader, is it really even an isekai story?

Sarcasm aside, this book is a combination of things that feel much too pat at this point of genre saturation and others that make you wonder if this isn't a comedy after all. Names are certainly part of this problem (and it is a blessing Pastry goes by Pas), and some of that may also be due to the translation being faithful to the Japanese original, which is hard to fault; presumably “bonka” sounds less like something Fozzy Bear would say to a Japanese reader. It also feels very possible that this early part of the story simply isn't translating from novel to manga smoothly and that once Pas is a bit older and more in charge of his own life, we'll get back to the pastry chef story. As of this volume, however, it feels like only die hard genre fans will get a lot of true enjoyment from it.

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Faye Hopper

Rating:

I wish Sweet Reincarnation had more baking and tasty treats. I mean, it's about a kid, the reincarnated form of a master pastry chef, who wants to build a utopia founded entirely on a basis of delicate, exquisite desserts and sumptuous delicacies. And yet, most of the volume is spent on the same derivative worldbuilding and hypercompetent wish-fulfillment fantasies that half of these things center around. Why introduce this conceit at all if it's not going to factor into the story in meaningful, important ways?

I will say, Sweet Reincarnation feels a lot more geared towards kids than one would expect (the surprising and gross brutality of the bandits as they massacre a village notwithstanding). At a glance, the tone is more special-kid book in the vein of Harry Potter or Artemis Fowl than traditional Otaku interests. Pastry is able to wield powerful magic and see shades of the world the adults can't, and even leads the children, his friends, in an attack against the bandits in a moment straight out of Percy Jackson . But I also wouldn't thrust this upon any kid I know, because it's just not entertaining. No child would want to read the first chapter, where Pastry and his father discuss crop-yields and how borders are drawn between nobility. It's resemblance to a lot of the conventions of children's media is entirely incidental, as half the book's focus is spent on dry, incredibly unexciting tactical appraisals and maneuvers, just like so many light novel isekai before it. It squanders both its premise and its potential in speaking to an audience isekai is often not addressed to.

I'm a little tired of commenting on light novel-based isekai, if you couldn't tell, and this might be the straw that broke the camel's back. You hear the premise and expect high fantasy Great British Bake-off, and instead you get unremarkable art and stakes that are entirely feudal nobility squabbling over harvests and land, with a lame magic system just slapped on top of it. There's so much potential to have fun with this. Yakitate!! Japan but between competing kingdoms with dragons, magically infused patisserie and cakes that cause people to erupt with joy when they taste them. It writes itself. But instead of applying any imagination, food barely gets mentioned beyond daydreams and an apple pie at the very end. It's a waste of a fun concept, and I couldn't help but feel I had wasted my time on Sweet Reincarnation, too.