Welcome to the Couch Club, our recurring column devoted to all things #DCTV! This week, Juliet Bennett Rylah shares why she’s developed a hunger for DC’s newest animated series.
 

If you’re the sort of person—and I know there are quite a few of you out there—who’s had enough of DC’s usual animated fare and might be looking for something different, check out Get Jiro, Adult Swim’s take on the graphic novel series of the same name written by author/chef Anthony Bourdain and Joel Rose. It expands Bourdain and Rose’s pair of Vertigo OGNs into a ten-episode animated series with half of them now streaming on HBO Max.

Both the graphic novels and the show are a take on spaghetti Westerns, but the silent, mysterious antihero is no gunslinger. It’s Jiro (voiced by Brian Tee), a talented sushi chef with a violent past. He lives in a dystopian, near-future Los Angeles where restaurant culture has replaced all other entertainment. Two chefs dominate the scene: Bob (Titus Welliver), a traditional French chef with an ominous-looking scar on his lip, and Rose (Allison Pill), a pierced-and-inked vegan obsessed with local, organic ingredients. The pair operate under an intense rivalry, pitting their goons—often wielding kitchen utensils—against one another in the streets, while crushing every other chef through oppressive trade restrictions and mob-style tactics.

While Adult Swim’s adaptation is largely true to the story’s nuts and bolts, if you’ve read the books, you’ll find there’s a lot new here as well. But put down the carving knife, purists, these changes and additions feel necessary. The original book, illustrated by Langdon Foss, was fairly short and had only one follow-up, a prequel drawn by Alé Garza that explored Jiro’s life before Los Angeles. With Bourdain’s tragic death in 2018, there’s no reason to expect more comics featuring Jiro and there is simply not enough of the original story to stretch across ten half-hour episodes, let alone set up a compelling second season, should Adult Swim decide to give it one.

So, we get several compelling new bits of story that flesh out the food-obsessed city, as well as Bob and Rose, who get beefier backstories and new allies. There are also a couple of brand-new characters, including sisters Maria and Cam, who run their family’s Mexican restaurant across the way from Jiro’s sushi counter in the city’s outer ring. Jiro takes on the younger Cam (Tessa Inez) as his apprentice, forcing her to prepare rice and nori to perfection before he’ll let her touch the fish. (Jiro’s apprentice in the book is a sous chef he rescues from Bob’s abuses, but she has virtually no backstory nor dialog and so far is nowhere to be seen in this adaptation.)

Cynda (Courtney Taylor) takes on the role of a hard-boiled detective, only in this world, she’s a health inspector with her own bone to pick with the current regime. She becomes an unlikely ally for Jiro while trying to track down an alleged body snatcher. It’s a good thing too, since the actual cops seem more concerned with nibbling on the latest bites than helping Cynda figure out what’s up with the missing corpses—par for the course in a world where you can gut a chef for preparing a dish out of season.

If that sounds grisly, well…that’s Get Jiro. Like most shows on Adult Swim, this is not an animated series for kids. The graphic novel opens with Jiro beheading a rude customer who dares to dunk his rice in soy sauce. The series opens with the same scene, but it also finds new ways to shock with its violence, including several fun sequences involving food truck assassins and knock-down chef brawls. The action is elevated with a moody, synthy score from Stuart Roslyn that nods to the story’s Western underpinnings.

And then there’s the food. Creatively graphic violence is only one-half of Get Jiro’s wonderful excess. Between the double-crosses and decapitations, there are numerous scenes devoted to food culture, history and the genuine joy that comes from both cooking and gathering around the table with those you love for a good meal. If you can stomach the violence, then don’t be surprised if Get Jiro leaves you hungry and perhaps interested in exploring a new cuisine.

All told, it’s a fairly faithful swing at the original with some welcome world-building, giving the satire more room to breathe, like you might give an excellent Cabernet Sauvignon to deepen its aroma. It’s also a lot of fun, especially if you’ve ever worked in a kitchen or fancy yourself a foodie—or at the very least enjoy poking fun at your foodie friends. Plus, it’s full of things like execution by way of deep fryer, gun-toting pastors (who also make a mean el pastor) and a baker/assassin who hides guns in baguettes. What’s not to love?
 

Catch new episodes of Get Jiro at midnight ET/PT on Adult Swim and the next day on HBO Max.

Juliet Bennett Rylah writes about horror, Vertigo and the dark side of superheroes for DC.com. Follow her on Bluesky at @JBRylah.

NOTE: The views and opinions expressed in this feature are solely those of Juliet Bennett Rylah and do not necessarily reflect those of DC, Warner Bros. or Skydance, nor should they be read as confirmation or denial of future DC plans.