The World of Japanese Comics, author Frederik L. Schodt categorizes cooking manga as type of "work manga", a loose category defined by stories about activities and professions that stress "perseverance in the face of impossible odds, craftsmanship, and the quest for excellence," and whose protagonists are frequently "young men from disadvantaged backgrounds who enter a profession and become the 'best in Japan.
[2] While stories still incorporate standard narrative elements such as plot and character development, significant emphasis is frequently placed on the technical aspects of cooking and eating.
[5] The age and gender of a cooking manga's protagonist typically indicates its intended audience, with both men and women forming the audience for the genre;[6] while home food preparation is stereotyped as women's work in Japan as it is in the West, professional cooking and connoisseurship tend to be considered as male activities.
The genre achieved mainstream popularity in the early 1980s as a result of Japan's "gourmet boom", wherein economic growth associated with the Japanese bubble economy widened access to luxury goods and caused the appreciation of fine foods, fine dining, and the culinary arts to become popular interests and hobbies.
Depiction of real restaurants' specialties became common as well as the inclusion of recipes at the end of the manga's chapter or anime's episode, a technique Cooking Papa pioneered.