Cooking doramas has become a fad in Japanese television this year. All of them both tell stories about a certain person’s journey to reach mastery of his or her craft. Delicious Gakuin (Delicious Academy) or DeliGaku for short, shown in early June 2007, is one of these doramas. The only difference? It’s not really ‘drama’. If you want to have a slice of the cracky side of cooking, this is probably your thing.

AAA members Nishijima Takahiro and Atae Shinjirou star in this drama as 2 of the main characters, Kitasaka Rouma and Katsuragi Shugo respectively. With them as the main characters are stage and drama actor Miura Ryousuke as Matthew Perrier, stage actor and dancer Aiba Hiroki as Takasugi Rin, and D-BOYS member/sentai actor Nakamura Yuichi as Nangou Ryouji. Other actors worth mentioning are drama actor Shirosaki Jin as Tokudaira , singer/actor Hironari Amano, stage actor/singer Nagayama Takashi and actor Kawai Ryunosuke, all of whom acted as teachers in the so called “Delicious Gakuin”.

The story evolves around Kitasaka Rouma and his friends. Rouma is a country boy who has a knack for smelling ‘the good food’. He’s hungry all the time and could care less about other things when he is hungry. One day, as he was smelling his favorite food (cabbages!) he was abruptly kidnapped by an unknown man! When he woke up, he ended up inside a classroom with 2 other people: the half-Japanese, half French rich kid named Matthew Perrier and the super narcissist and camera whore (literally) Takasugi Rin.

Finding out that they were all kidnapped, they decided to try to escape but somehow (partially Rouma’s fault), they ended up inside what looked like a large classroom. There were tons of food there and just when they were starting to eat, four men came into the room.

Those were their kidnappers! Their kidnappers introduced themselves as the “Four Delicious Kings” and issued a challenge: If they managed to cook a meal that is delicious, they will be let go. They agreed, but the problem was … they all didn’t have that much talent in cooking — or so they thought. As they were forced to stay in school, they discover both allies and rivals not only in each other but also in the form of the egoistic and rather angsty Katsuragi Shugo and the energetic and loud Nangou Ryouji. As they come together, they build the ultimate plan to know the school’s secrets, their reasons for being there and the weaknesses of their tormentors…or rather teachers.

The rest of the episodes is a wacky mixture of rivalry, cooking, discoveries of skills and fanservice that might seem really nonsensical to some but pretty much entertaining for those who love humor. As expected, each of the main characters has a special cooking utensil unique to his use as well as a unique specialization (Rouma, I think, specializes in messy cooking XD).

Humor aside, the drama pretty much fails in terms of plot. It is completely random with BL insinuations, kung-fu cooking, weird classmates and even weirder character personalities. Still, each episode has a lesson embedded be it about friendship, self-consciousness or about cooking. At the end of each episode, the moral of the story is indirectly discussed by some of the characters to bring clarity to the whole episode and to bring purpose to the drama itself.

The DVD boxset of this drama is already sold under mu-mo.net, the official shop site of AVEX. Various Deligaku merchandise are also sold in the said shop like stationery sets, T-shirts, photosets and even cellphone messages! The official site has summaries of the episodes as well as recipes for the previous dishes they made.

A drama with a lot of crack with lessons in between, how can that be? What do you think is cooking beneath the lighthearted plot of Delicious Gakuin?

Sources:
Delicious Gakuin official Site
Character Profiles (translation)
Episode Summaries (01-09)
Merchandise List

** All translations for the profiles, merchandise and summaries were done by me. Please credit when linking/using. Thank you very much!