The Battle Of Bad Cooking Gags: Yukito Sanjou vs. Mako Shiraishi

After watching Abaranger and Shinkenger from start to end, I thought I might want to ramble on two characters namely Yukito Sanjo and Mako Shiraishi. Abaranger was written by Naruhisa Arakawa and Shinkenger was written by Yasuko Kobayashi. Which reminds me, too bad that Shinkenger couldn't get my dream team of Yasuko Kobayashi, Toshiki Inoue, Junki Takegami and Naruhisa Arakawa as its writers each with big portions of the show!


Abaranger features Yukito as the anti-hero of the show. If you noticed, he did try to leave the Abarangers, Gai Yuki style and he's the show's version of Gai Yuki. Yeah, Abaranger had some Jetman elements in it. He is featured to have had created something really disastrous in episode 10 called Curry Sponge. What Yukito did was to simply mix fruit and curry in such a way. I do find it stupid how Bunds himself was able to eat the curry while Asuka gets indigestion in the process. I mean, Asuka was freaking knocked out by the curry sponge.

The humor of his bad cooking is this. He thinks he's a good cook and thinks anyone who doesn't like his food, doesn't have class. The Abarangers are more than quick to panic whenever it's his turn to cook. When I thought about his fruit curry, I can't imagine the awkward blend of flavors. I've heard of mixing certain fruits into curry but I don't think he has really done it right. Worse, you might have to sit through it. For some reason, Bunds was able to eat it and the others couldn't eat it. I always thought that he might be the worst student to send to cooking school. He's stubborn about the fact that his cooking is that horrible.


The approach with Mako's bad cooking is somewhat different IMO and I felt like the show actually explored the comedy's potential or two, placed it in even more cartoony levels. When she cooks, the whole kitchen goes on fire (literally) and she couldn't even slice anything with just a normal knife that she has to use her Shinkenmaru during the first round. Anybody who eats her food is bound to get some kind of indigestion (which makes me amazed to why Ryunosuke did not die at the end of the episode where he ate the whole bento box). Even one carrot was enough to knock Takeru out. Unlike Yuuri in Timeranger (also Kobayashi's pink), her situations were more exaggerated than not. I mean, Yuuri's bad cooking was shown to be more of a normal daily food fiasco but Mako's? It's really comedy fuel every time she fails especially if it's Ryunosuke (the juicy ham) who reacts... too bad the show never made Genta panic over it!

I always thought most of those scenes were just plain exaggerated for loads of laughs. For some reason, Kotoha is immune to all that bad cooking which for me is adds to the comic value. Unlike Yukito, she is aware of her bad cooking skills to the point she wanted to give up. She threw away the cookbook but in the end, she thought she could improve if she tried to do so. She is aware of that major flaw she has so she would be a better student than Yukito will be in cooking school. So there is a chance she will improve though it was never explored beyond that. Ironically, the actress Rin Takanashi can actually cook a decent meal as shown in Doki Doki TV.

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