We have a tendency to take mundane things for granted. We all have a lot on our minds and basic things like commuting and preparing meals rarely take up much of our headspace on an average day. Typical families and individuals don’t put much effort into choosing what goes on the dinner plate. There are many days where it’s such an afterthought for us, that we don’t know what we’re doing until we get home, change into comfortable clothes and check the fridge, hoping that there’s something we can throw together. Many of us would order some delivery at this point, or perhaps get some fast food or heat up some leftovers from yesterday depending on the situation. While grabbing some ready-made sandwich or a slice of pizza is always an option for many in the west, Japan has raised this quick takeout style food to something of a cultural point with their prepared meals known as Bentou.

Bentou are wonderfully convenient and while they are typically made quickly, they are of a surprisingly high quality in most cases. Grabbing a bentou before heading off on a train, or getting a seasonal or locally made hand crafted or decorated bentou during holiday or special events can be a pretty nice experience. Because of the nature of the food, after a few hours, these ready-made hot meals need to be sold and the stores will generally begin marking them down in order to entice people to buy. It’s entirely possible to score a reasonably nutritious and tasty meal for a very decent price this way if you understand the scheduling of these lunches and the best times to show up. For those on a tight budget, or those looking to save some cash, it’s a great opportunity. In the anime Bentou, it’s also taken to a rather absurd conclusion of gang style wars for cheap eats. While the premise of this show is taking something seemingly mundane to comical levels, it takes the premise so seriously that it’s actually a compelling show to watch and a bit of a sleeper shounen title.

With regards to the basic technical aspects of the show, the audio and visuals of the show are good. The themes are pretty catchy and fit the theme of the show well. The fights and animation are of reasonable quality. The music and sound effects work well and add to the generally very serious atmosphere of the supermarkets during the fights and take things into lighter territory when the show takes a break and tries to do something more lighthearted or needs to change the tone. The voice actors are pretty decent and ham up the shounen style of this show when needed and don’t detract from the experience in general. In fact, they do such as good job with things that they essentially sell us on the premise of brawling for discount lunchboxes. This deserves some praise as it couldn’t have been easy to do this given the subject matter.

The basic plot synopsis of Bentou is that a high schooler stumbles his way into what is basically a fight club of sorts to grab these marked down meals. These knock down, dragged out fights for half-priced food are ridiculous when viewed objectively, but the participants take everything so seriously that we rarely find ourselves questioning why they’re expending so many calories just to win a cheap dinner. Because of the tone and the “discount bentou is serious business” vibe, it’s incredibly entertaining in spite of the somewhat silly premise. There’s even a lingo and etiquette system that was developed by the participants of these knock down brawls that they treat seriously, and as such, we do as well. The main characters who are successful even get their own aliases and are treated with a large measure of respect as well. The whole thing reminds me of how seriously children can take a game that they’ve made up or how a fandom itself ends up with its own system of customs and rules, even if what’s ultimately being followed or participated in doesn’t really deserve the same level of input.

Another thing that ties Bentou together into a coherent system is that it feels like a real neighborhood with recurring people, stores, staff (gods of discount), school club activities, etc. This is a world we can easily envision being real because of all the attention to detail and recurring characters put into it. While it’s a bit absurd to take bentous so seriously, we can believe that they are serious business in this particular town based on the great city building they’ve done.

Beyond the basic premise and execution, is there any great social commentary or deep message to all this? Any Evangelion tier philosophical wankery to be had? Not particularly I’d say. Anything can be serious business if we all believe that it’s serious business. I’ve seen people trample each other for cheap televisions on black Friday before. Is a 100-dollar television worth taking that seriously? Well, enough people believed it to injure each other. People aren’t always reasonable in their behavior. There may be some greater point about life at the edge where people struggle to make ends meet, but I don’t get much of that from this show honestly. The closest we get to any deeper message is a quick conversation about how people should be thankful for the food they’re able to eat. It’s a good message I’d say, but doesn’t become any kind of grand focus. The protagonist struggles with his budget, and these discount bentous really help him out, but not everyone seems to be motivated this way. Some major antagonists and participants are actually quite wealthy and appear to be doing this merely for kicks. Honestly, it’s best to just enjoy the fights and the world here I would say. A bentou is just a bentou here. Any social commentary or deeper meaning is likely incidental or self-interpreted here and I think we can safely move along.

So, what about the characters? Well, they’re a bit of a mixed bag, ranging from generally good to occasionally substandard. The main character goes on a bit of a journey from newbie to contender as the show progresses and we learn through him and his participation in these fights. There’s nothing much to praise or complain about personality wise with him; he’s the typical young male anime protagonist with dreams of bentou and an adolescent hormonal focus on his female classmates’ figures. He also likes games. He could be tossed into any suburban high school in Japan or the West and basically blend in. His club members are generally ok. The cool collected senpai leader of the club who happens to be a powerhouse, and seems to enjoy these fights purely for the joy and struggle of it. His other club member who is soft-spoken and has a strategy of avoiding confrontation and an adolescent fascination with boy’s love stories make up the school club that he belongs to (the half-price bentou club) more or less. The other main recurring character would be the protag’s blonde haired blue eyed genki half-Italian cousin who also likes games and playfully teasing the protag with her body to get what she wants. As the protag is an adolescent ball of hormones, this generally works for her. While they’re related, at least they’re not brother and sister as is par for the course these days. She’s interesting as she represents a different section of the city and technically should be antagonistic to the protag’s club but works as a go between of sorts. There is a little missed opportunity in the writing here with their relationship and different turfs, but it still ends up working out decently with how they took the story.

These characters I would say are pretty good, if cliched. The timid bentou club girl’s childhood friend who is on the school council is not a great character as she is violent towards people for silly reasons and has a habit of uncomfortably sexually harassing other females in ways that are frankly a bit difficult to watch in their overzealousness. She also does not participate in the bentou fighting in the anime, which makes her character rather superfluous. I’d rather not spoiler tag much of this, so it’s up to the viewer to decide how comfortable they are with all that. Because of the 12-episode nature of the show, there also isn’t much time to flesh out a lot of the minor characters and antagonists, so some of them aren’t as strong as they could be. This is especially noticeable as one set of antagonists takes up almost 4 episodes to the detriment of other potentially interesting storylines. These characters could be done better and are written a bit better in the light novel.

This is a show that doesn’t shy away from the fan service either. As it is apparently from the protag’s viewpoint a majority of the time, we see closeup shots of legs, bouncing bosoms, and such during fights. One recurring female side character becomes somewhat of a running joke as we hardly ever see her face until a meaningful scene later on where the protagonist levels himself up so to speak (we find out she’s cute), but we do see her assets bouncing around during the fights as she acrobatically kicks and punches everyone in her way. There’s the obligatory beach episode and onsen scene too, which has all the fan service cliches as well. Although, even though the beach episode follows the fan service formula, there’s still a rather interesting and comical fight for bentous as well, which adds a bit of balance to it, so it’s not just eye candy. One episode where the show takes itself a bit more light-heartedly makes sense, and high schoolers in clubs are going to do something fun on occasion like that anyhow. However, the fan service with the creepy student council member is generally unnecessary and uncomfortable as it’s hard to justify her acting the way that she does. As mentioned, she a pretty terrible character in the animated version. Sensitive types may take issue with some of the service here, but it’s not the point of the show and all the characters, male and female have their service moments and are shown to kick ass, command proper respect as fighters, and not just be around for decoration so there are worse offenders of modern western sensibilities out there.

Beyond those basics, my feeling is that the show is an entertaining romp through surburban Japanese discount bentou shopping done in a shounen style. That feels weird to type, and even stranger to say that I found it enjoyable. However, while watching, I always felt compelled to see what was going on in the next episode and found myself genuinely having a lot of fun with this. Not many shows do this for me, even some of the major shounen that I also like, so the formula struck the right chords here. I think that those who enjoy shounen style battle royale shows will find entertainment here. It’s also a novel enough spin on the genre to stand out a bit. If it was done a bit better at the time and had a bit more fleshing out, it would have made for a decent recurring show in my opinion, but while it was fun, it didn’t strike lightening like Food Wars did, and we have to enjoy what we got.

I think there could have been an interesting subtext done where life at the edge of poverty could have made for some interesting story telling here, but that likely is too great a reach in the modern industry and things were kept much simpler to sell books. That’s understandable if a bit of a missed world building opportunity. I hope that studios and writers continue to do interesting takes on well-run genres like this and maybe we can get something great. Making the same cookie cutter rom-com, or isekai, may be safer for studios, but it is tiresome even if you enjoy the genres. Getting out of the comfort zone once in a while is a good thing in my opinion. Still, I recommend this one for most fans of the shounen genre looking for a different spin on things as it’s a great way to fill an afternoon or evening. I also recommend the light novel if the premise of the show leaves you interested and you can read Japanese. Have fun and be sure to watch your back if you’re out there bentou shopping.