The Makanai - Cooking for the Maiko House: Review of the Netflix pilot episode

Created: 01/16/2023 15:15

Poster of The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House series © Netflix

Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Koreeda launched his own series on Netflix this week.

In The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House, we accompany two young women during their geisha training in Kyoto. 

Aiko Koyama's culinary manga "Kiyo in Kyoto" was adapted as an anime series in 2021 and has now been accompanied by a live-action adaptation on Netflix (here the new series and films in January 2023), which none other than filmmaker Hirokazu Koreeda in attacked.

Sensitive, carefully told family dramas such as "Nobody Knows", "Still Walking", "Like Father, Like Son" or "Shoplifters" invited comparisons with the old master Ozu and let him win numerous film awards, several of them in Cannes.

The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House went live on Netflix on January 12 without much fanfare, and at first glance it seems a lot less melodramatic or socially critical than Koreeda usually feels.

But what is very typical for the director are stories about people who find their own path in life in the often overly rigid social structures of Japan.

To be more precise, even the extreme case is practiced here, because the setting is a traditional geisha training center in Kyoto.

Normally no 16-year-olds would start in this one, but this cozy feel-good format hardly has this claim to reality.

You can read whether it's worth switching on and what exactly it's about at serial junkies.de.