Seriously, what's wrong with this for dinner?
Ben-to is quite the show. The show has a demented premise, but the show’s action is so over-the-top, its characters so passionate, that everything just seems to work. Ben-to makes a spectacle out of one of the most mundane tasks of modern life.
Bento: A Slow-Food Advocate’s Ultimate Nightmare
I dislike bentos. To me, they are lazy and thoughtless. Pre-packaged shit in a plastic box, with a lid that barely fits. They’re also a pain to eat— disgustingly lukewarm, unwieldy to carry around— by the time I get around to eating them at home, the contents have often shifted around, so instead of Katsu Curry, I have curry-oshinko-benishoga-katsu-bullshit. As I chow down on my plastic plate of vaguely curry-flavored gruel, I think to myself, fuck, I should have just made some curry.
Yet, I find myself loving Ben-to. It transforms the most mundane task of modern life, shopping for dinner, into a battle royale of life or death. By doing so, Ben-to reminds us of a time when acquiring food wasn’t as easy as walking up to a refrigerated display and grabbing any arbitrary thing that we wanted, walking up to a register and paying some money to a disinterested cashier. The starving hordes of Ben-to risk life and limb for scraps— putting in all the effort (and then some!) that any slow cooker would into their dinners.
Alpha Male.
What the Fuck Should I Have for Dinner?
That question, claims Ben-to, is not important. What’s important is how you get whatever-the-fuck-it-is-you-have-for-dinner. Satou declines an invitation to join the Hounds specifically because he cares about how he gets his dinner. The dinner is not the goal— the fight for dinner is.
In Ben-to, buying dinner becomes a grand game for survival. Half-price food lovers fight, nay, hunt for their meals, facing “boars”, “storms”, “wolves” and “hounds.” It’s all very primordial. Alpha males of the wolfpack quickly dispatch all lesser lifeforms, grabbing their meals and leaving in a flash. Dogs “hunt” in packs, attempting to outsmart the wolves. Each group has their own tactics, suited towards their own survival. Losers are left without anything and must go hungry. (Shit, this is sounding like an episode of Planet Earth, isn’t it?)
Medal of Honor.
The Way of the Half-Price Food Lover
Yet, order permeates primordial chaos. This is, after all, the 21st century. True lovers of half-priced food have their own codes of conduct. In this sense, the mad grab for bento becomes more of a sport— the supermarket employee becomes the starter; the annoying, grating jingles of the supermarket, the starting gun. Those who don’t play by the rules are shunned, condemned to never move up the ranks. They’ll always be dogs, searching for scraps.
Perhaps, it is not necessity that drives the greatest of the bargain food-hunters to go back to the supermarket night after night. They do it for the love of the game. Each half-price sticker they take becomes a medal, a badge of pride, part of a saga. They’re collected, documented, treasured— all part of a legacy to be revered by future generations.
All this— for a Styrofoam box of pre-packaged leftovers. Ben-to really is quite the show.
“Seriously, what’s wrong with this for dinner?”
It’s expensive.
Now you make it three people who like this show. I agree with every word. The naturalistic feeling, the atmosphere of the wilderness is made so fucking well it just sucks me in. Especially the sounds and the music, like those store jingles set the mood perfectly. And then the characters. I just love all th main heroes. I even like the yandere bitch. I hope they can maintain the quality all the way.