Episode 6 – Iron Wok Jan!

Episode 6 of Iron Wok Jan! distills the series down to the essence of three things: Chinese cooking, competition, and Akiyama Jan.

Sawada and Akiyama face off in Round 1, and it does not disappoint. This is what we’re here for, aren’t we folks? The thrill of the cooking competition and what it boils away. Sure, Sawada is using his griddle, and Akiyama is using the wok… but that’s not what’s really happening. It’s our all-too-human competitors on the chopping block, facing the heat of battle, and coming out the other side either burnt to a crisp or perfectly molded by the flames.

This episode is just like Akiyama’s cooking: simple but well-prepared. We have rudimentary storytelling conflicts at work: form against substance, money against hard work, bravado against skill. Akiyama Jan similarly uses tried-and-true ingredients but prepares them with hard work, dedication, and a careful eye to produce something grander than its humble beginnings. It is the show in microcosm – you’ve seen it all before but never quite like this.

I also like how last episode’s victory colors the challenge here. Akiyama spent last episode howling and cackling like a madman as he used a wild – albeit legal – strategy to succeed. But the show does such a good job turning that into an underdog story. If Akiyama is such a good cook, why did he need to reach for such a strange trick to make it out of the prelims? Is he not good enough? That cloud hangs over Akiyama from the moment he and Sawada walk onto the culinary battlefield, and it makes Jan’s eventual victory all the sweeter.

Couple that with a thousand tiny, amazing little moments throughout the episode. Sawada bragging about the heat of his griddle, Otani’s palate being so good it betrays him, the blindfolded tasting from the judges. The best part for me was Akiyama’s starchy sauce bringing its own applause to the point that it startled and confused Sawada. And despite this heavy focus on the competition, we still have time for a great character beat with Kiriko and Akiyama before the final curtain. “These aren’t scars, they’re the source of my confidence as a chef” is an unbelievably extra line, but man does it work. Iron Wok Jan! might “just” be a cooking show, but the care put into its production makes it so much more.

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Iron Wok Jan! is currently streaming on
Crunchyroll.

Disclosure: Kadokawa World Entertainment (KWE), a wholly owned subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, is the majority owner of Anime News Network, LLC. One or more of the companies mentioned in this article are part of the Kadokawa Group of Companies.