Akio Ōtsuka Takes Over a Role His Father Played
The headline casting on this sequel is a family matter. Akio Ōtsuka (Batou in Ghost in the Shell, Blackbeard in One Piece) voices Yūzan Kaibara, the exacting gourmet who presides over the exclusive members-only restaurant Gourmet Club and happens to be the hero's biological father. Chikao Ōtsuka, Akio's father, played Kaibara in the 1988 series. When the casting was announced in late September, Ōtsuka kept his comment short: "Yes, again. I'll take it over."
Yōhei Azakami plays Shirō Yamaoka, a culture desk reporter at the Tōzai Shimbun newspaper who coasts through most of his job but knows food better than anyone in the building, which is why he gets handed the Ultimate Menu assignment. Azakami is probably most familiar to international viewers as Guel Jeturk in Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury. Hitomi Sasaki plays Yūko Kurita, Yamaoka's colleague on the culture desk and his partner on the Ultimate Menu project; her credits include Nero in Black Clover.
What the New Teaser Shows
The food comes first. According to Japanese anime news site Anime Anime's report on the teaser, the video opens on dishes built to make you hungry, with steam curling up off plates and meat browning on a grill, before it cuts to Yamaoka and Kurita deep in the hunt for Ultimate Menu material.
Then Kaibara laughs over them, declaring that the Ultimate Menu is finished. Yamaoka's answer, also in the teaser, is that as long as the showdown with the Supreme Menu keeps going, he still has his shot at Kaibara. Whether he can actually cook something that satisfies his father is the question the series has always run on, and the teaser leaves it open.
A batch of scene stills went out at the same time. They cover Yamaoka glaring at something off-frame, Kurita looking composed, Kaibara filling a room without saying anything, and a tense group shot of both camps in the same place.
Ultimate vs. Supreme, With a New Rival in the Mix
A quick primer for readers who missed it the first time around. Oishinbo is the food manga, written by Tetsu Kariya and drawn by Akira Hanasaki, serialized in Shogakukan's Weekly Big Comic Spirits and sitting on more than 135 million copies in circulation. Its engine is a culinary cold war between the Tōzai Shimbun's Ultimate Menu project and the Supreme Menu assembled by Kaibara.
Shin Oishinbo picks that story up directly and keeps the 1990s setting rather than updating it. The new wrinkle is Ichirō Dan, the young president of a company called Daikensha, who turns up as the referee for the showdown and falls for Yūko Kurita on sight. That drops a third party into the long-unresolved romance between Kurita and Yamaoka. No voice actor has been announced for Dan yet.
Kenichi Nishida directs, with Takahiro Nagano on series composition and character designs by Nozomi Kawashige (川重希). SynergySP and Vega Entertainment handle animation production, and Shin-Ei Animation (Doraemon, Crayon Shin-chan) produces. The project is part of Shin-Ei's 50th-anniversary slate, announced in September alongside new episodes of Atashin'chi NEXT.
Looking Ahead
The broadcast window is still just "2027," with no month, network, or episode count announced, and no international streaming partner has been named. That matters more than usual here, because the original series never got a Western release of its own.
The manga has been in English, in a fashion. Viz Media published seven Oishinbo A la Carte volumes between January 2009 and January 2010, each one a themed compilation (sake, ramen and gyoza, rice, izakaya food) rather than a straight run through the series, so the English edition reads as a best-of rather than a continuous story.
The original 1988 anime, also made at Shin-Ei Animation, ran 121 episodes on Nippon TV. The official Oishinbo YouTube channel, where the new teaser is posted, has hosted limited-time free streams of all 121 digitally remastered episodes in the past, the closest thing to a catch-up option before 2027.