Yes, they really turned it into a movie. Across 10 seasons of TV Tokyo¡¯s ¡°The Solitary Gourmet,¡± salaryman Goro Inogashira (Yutaka Matsushige) has chomped and slurped his way through more than 100 restaurants, often with little but his inner monologue for company.
Based on a manga by Masayuki Qusumi and Jiro Taniguchi, the series is pure comfort food and an obvious forerunner to what¡¯s now known as ambient TV. Little of lasting consequence ever happens in ¡°The Solitary Gourmet¡±; even when it does, it¡¯s no match for a rumbling stomach. As with kung fu movies or adult videos, the dialogue scenes are just foreplay before the important stuff ¡ª and in this case, it¡¯s all about the eating.
It¡¯s the least likely contender for a theatrical outing since the equally uneventful ¡°Fictitious Girl¡¯s Diary¡± made the same transition in 2020. Matsushige pulls up his regular seat at the table as Goro, but also occupies the director¡¯s chair for the first time in his career, in addition to sharing screenwriting duties with series mainstay Yoshihiro Taguchi.
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