Late-Night Isekai Food Temptation Diner: 459kcal Ramen

A wonderfully hellish work has arrived. This work has two situations of eating ramen: the Edokko (Edo native) and the Snow Woman. The Edokko slurps down his ramen looking truly happy, delighted, and blissful. He describes the toppings so vividly it sounds genuinely delicious. The voice actress playing him, Koirin Momoka-sama, apparently loves ramen and is a soy-sauce-ramen partisan herself, so it's incredibly convincing — her voice makes you hungry while also giving you energy. The Snow Woman's ramen-eating is a matter of life and death. A Snow Woman who lives in a cold world and hot ramen are a bad match, but the Snow Woman's chill overwhelmingly wins out. So she summons pure obsession. Out of love and craving for ramen, she does things no human could do, weakening herself in order to challenge the ramen. What a splendid yandere. You can feel her love for ramen. And a woman who loves something is beautiful, and a woman who, even while weakening, still tries to accomplish something is bewitching. I envied the ramen. I wanted to become the ramen. I wanted to be devoured by that bewitching, half-mad Snow Woman. Once again I realized just how bewitching Koirin Momoka-sama's performance of non-human characters is. If I had to compare it to ramen, it's not the kind of sultriness that's all lard and heaps of MSG, but the kind of alluring flavor you get from a broth simmered down properly. If you can't go eat ramen right after listening to this work, you'll fall into hell; but if you're able to eat ramen afterward, it will serve as the perfect aperitif — an especially exquisite one at that. The ramen descriptions and the lines discussing ramen are perfect. The classic soy-sauce ramen that everyone has surely eaten at least once. It awakens that memory, and further converts your brain into thinking that ramen truly is the ultimate dish, until you're desperate to eat ramen, dying to eat ramen, longing for ramen, loving ramen, driven mad with love for it. Aah, I want to eat ramen. My body, my soul craves ramen. The noodles, the soup, the chashu, the menma, the green onions, the soft-boiled egg. I can eat ramen, but the fact that my wish to be eaten as ramen by the Snow Woman can never come true — that's hell.

It's here!! I'm a huge fan of the series, so I'm really happy to see a sequel. This time too, there's a rakugo-style Edokko chapter, and the other chapter is a bizarre combination of ramen × Snow Woman. The performers are different from the previous installment, but comparing the Edokko chapters that both works share — if the previous one was solid and skillful, this one gives an impression of energy and rich emotion. Both had their own kind of goodness. When you think "Oh, that's a reference to XX!" and then it honestly says "This is a parody!" — I couldn't hold back my laughter at that part... (lol) The Snow Woman chapter was also wonderful. As I wrote in my review of the first Meshi Terror Shokudo work, the way the lines were delivered really struck a chord with me as someone who genuinely loves Oshi-O-mori (indirect kiss/ASMR-style intimacy). The Snow Woman was also the subject matter used in the circle's debut work, so I sense there's quite a lot of attachment to it — but the story of this Snow Woman risking her life just to eat the ramen she longs for is genuinely unique, and I found myself completely absorbed in listening. I sincerely hope this series, which continues to depict the extremely rare subject of food through audio works with such wonderful quality, keeps going for a long time to come.

The thumbnail made me hungry and curious, so I ended up buying it. There's an Edokko ver. and a Snow Woman ver. In the Edokko one, the detailed ramen descriptions and reviews, along with the way he eats so deliciously, make you incredibly hungry. The running gags/references were well done too, and it really felt like listening to rakugo — quite enjoyable. In the Snow Woman ver., she appears near death after committing seppuku just to eat piping hot ramen. Ah, so that's why it has the ryona (gore/harm) tag. Apparently in her normal state she'd freeze the ramen, so she'd been holding back her desire to eat it all this time. Because of that, her feelings about eating are strangely twisted in an interesting way lol She even seems worried whether the running gag is landing, and does another layer of rakugo-style parody about it, which was also funny. Both chapters were entertaining and highly satisfying audio. I'd definitely recommend this to anyone starving for interesting audio works. Though you might end up starving for food instead.