28-year-old Shuuko Yakumo is aimlessly living day-to-day life since she lost her husband. She's content to live out her days in peace until a 15-year-old high school student named Shohei Yamato moves next door. Curious about her new neighbor, she soon finds that he lives alone and works himself to the bone as the only scholarship student for his school's baseball team. Not only that, but he's been living off nothing but convenience store food.
Worried for his health, Yakumo invites Yamato to eat dinner at her place from now on so he can perform his best. But after extending this invitation, she soon finds that the high schooler possesses a monstrous appetite, and she has to get creative to keep up with his dietary needs. All the while, Yamato's ability to pack away food brings back memories of Yakumo's husband.
And so begins the story of a lonely widow rediscovering her passion for cooking to feed a very hungry high schooler.
Beauty and the Feast (八雲さんは餌づけがしたい。; Yakumo-san wa Edzuke ga Shitai, literally "Ms. Yakumo Wants To Feed") is a manga by Satomi U, which ran in Young Gangan magazine from 2016 to 2021. Square Enix announced an English localization to begin on 2020, which was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic to February 2021.
Beauty and the Feast provides examples of:
- Accidental Pervert: Yamato accidentally gropes Yakumo's breast when they stumble into each other in the middle of a blackout. The act bothers him so much that he can't focus in school or during practice until Yakumo assures him that he must have grabbed her stomach.
- Age-Gap Romance: Yamato is a 15-year-old high schooler and Yakumo is a 28-year-old widow at the start of the story, and there's clear indication that Yamato is interested in her beyond being friends.
- Its also highly implied in backstory flashbacks that there was a great age gap between Yakumo and her deceased husband. She was a first year university student and he was an older instructor at that university when they met and began a romance.
- Ambiguously Gay: Yuri (albeit while drunk) is shocked when she sees Yamato in Yakumo's apartment, asking if Yakumo chose a young man over her. She then proceeds to kiss Yakumo on the lips as he leaves. Yuri also has no problems posing provocatively to help a yuri author with his material and ropes Yakumo into it against her will.
- Author Appeal: The author freely admits to having a fetish for women wearing sweaters and jeans, taking every opportunity to draw Yakumo in them.
- Bait-and-Switch: In one chapter, Yakumo decides to tell Yamato about her feelings for him... that she's thankful for him keeping her company and eating all her food. He returns the sentiment and thanks her for feeding him.
- Bespectacled Cutie: Yakumo is a sweet, caring and somewhat clumsy woman who wears glasses.
- Big Eater: Yamato's appetite is enormous thanks to being a growing high schooler as well as an extremely active athlete. He has no problems eating eight bowls of rice in a single sitting and once eats his way through two hundred takoyaki balls before he's satisfied. He mentions that he's always had trouble putting on weight despite his appetite, and was skin and bones in junior high despite eating more than everyone else.
- Bland-Name Product: When Yamato's father asks Yakumo to go to Sakura's sports festival in his place, he lends Yakumo a "Ninon" camera, blatantly tip-toeing around the famous Nikon
camera brand. - Brilliant, but Lazy: Zigzagged. Yamato is a genuine genius at athletics and works incredibly hard to improve his game, but his mother says that he's always been aimless and never really focused on anything until deciding on baseball. Even then, his quiet demeanor and bullying from his upperclassmen quashed a good deal of his motivation until Yakumo starts cheering him on. To repay her for her meals and care, he gets himself so fired up that he ends up passing out from overwork by the time he arrives home.
- Ditzy Genius: Yamato is mentioned to have excelled at any sport he put his mind to and was even chosen to represent Japan at the junior high level. But he's also air-headed and spacey, often forgetting to respond to his family's texts and failing to communicate himself properly, causing others to make assumptions about him.
- Eating the Eye Candy: When Rui stumbles into Yamato's apartment while he's sleeping, she finds herself attracted to the sight of his abs and ends up rubbing oil all over them to admire them more. At least until he wakes up and wonders what the hell she's doing.
- The Gift: Yamato's mother notes that he has an aptitude for pretty much any sport he tried, and excelled at swimming, baseball, football, judo and soccer to the point of being selected to represent Japan for a junior high baseball tournament. He ended up sticking to baseball at Rui's insistence, though he finds practice at the high school level to be far more challenging as he goes up against many other talented players from across the country.
- Hard-Drinking Party Girl: Yuri loves getting plastered and often tries to get Yakumo to party along with her, going so far as to spend 62,000 yen on a single 750 mL bottle of 100-year-old sake.
- Hormone-Addled Teenager: Discussed. Yuri plants the idea that Yamato will one day jump Yakumo because of her enticing figure. Just when it looks like it might happen... it's just Yamato wanting to save the curry for breakfast the following morning.
- I Got Bigger: As noted by Yakumo, Yamato gets noticeably taller and his shoulders get broader over time as a result of his baseball training.
- Ms. Fanservice: Yakumo has the most voluptuous figure in the cast and is the source of much of the manga's fanservice, be it through shots focusing on her rear when she's bent over or being unwillingly put into outfits she doesn't want to wear, like Barely-There Swimwear or a high school uniform.
- Nice Guy: Yamato is an honest, straightforward guy who always tries his best no matter how much grief it gets him from others. It takes a lot to rile him up and he's always thankful for Yakumo's meals.
- Not So Stoic: Yamato is fairly quiet and straight-laced most of the time with a perpetual "I'm beat" look on his face, but even he can be taken by surprise or reduced to a sputtering mess of embarrassment, particularly when something happens between him and Yakumo or Rui. He freaks out in particular when he bumps into Yakumo in the dark and believes he groped her by accident.
- Not What It Looks Like: Yuri forces Yakumo to wear a schoolgirl uniform and tries to get her into a provocative pose for a hardcore yuri manga that her magazine is publishing. Unfortunately, Yamato mistakes their struggle for a robbery and barges in to check on Yakumo, only to find the two women in a very provocative position.
- The Quiet One: Yamato is a quiet kid most of the time who tends to go through life with a straight face. His refusal to blow up at his upperclassmen when they're bullying him for being a first-year regular and his seeming lack of motivation causes others to draw the wrong conclusions about him.
- Oblivious to Love: Yamato is oblivious to his Childhood Friend Rui's crush on him. He's rejected her on multiple occasions to focus on baseball, but never seems to register just how head-over-heels she is for him.
- One Head Taller: The story focuses on Yakumo and Yamato, the latter of whom is one head taller than her.
- Poor Communication Kills:
- Yamato's relationship with his mother is strained due to her always being away from home and his own air-headedness. He never bothers to mention to her that he's competing and winning all these trophies, nor does he ever remember to call her. Because this, Ms. Yamato wonders if he even wants to see her, when it's likely that he just forgets or doesn't want to trouble her.
- Yamato admits that he's not good at expressing himself, something that others pick up on as well. Yakumo in particular has flown into a panic over him saying something needlessly cryptic by accident, only to settle down once he manages to explain himself.
- She's Not My Girlfriend: Gender-inverted. One of the first things people tend to assume when seeing Yakumo and Yamato together is that they're in a relationship, no matter how much Yakumo denies it.
- Slice of Life: The story is episodic and follows Yakumo's and Yamato's daily lives, be it cooking and eating, baseball practice, or visiting friends and family.
- Supreme Chef: Downplayed. Yakumo is an excellent cook and pretty much everything she makes will be delicious. But she explicitly has to look elsewhere for inspiration and often copies recipes off the internet.
- Tall Poppy Syndrome: Yamato is on the receiving end of this due to being a first-year regular on the baseball team. His upperclassman frequently reprimand him over minor things and tell him not get cocky while foisting all the blame on him when his team fails to go to the national Koshien tournament.
- To Be a Master: Yamato hopes to go to the national Koshien tournament, the Japanese high school equivalent of the World Series, with his baseball team. Sadly, he fails to hit any of Miura's pitches even with Yakumo's encouragement, subsequently losing his team the game.
- Trademark Favorite Food:
- Yamato can eat anything so long as there's rice around. When Yakumo only has a single can of tuna left around, Yamato eagerly gobbles it up along with eight bowls of rice just because he likes rice so much. Even his "selfish wish" when Yakumo gets some quality eggs from a neighbor is just tamago kakegohan, or a raw egg cracked over rice.
- Even when Rui treats Yamato to ramen, he ends up ordering a side of rice to go with it.
- Turn the Other Cheek: Yamato's naturally quiet nature and calm personality means that he won't lash out at his upperclassmen for bullying him no matter how frustrated it makes him.
- Uncle Pennybags: Yamato's mom Kyouka has no problems showing Yakumo her gratitude for taking care of her son, giving Yakumo an entire bag full of expensive designer perfumes as a thank you gift. She reasons that with how much her son eats, this is the least she could do to make up for the expenses.
- When You Coming Home, Dad?: Downplayed. Yamato is used to his mother not being home because she's always away on business. He doesn't resent her for it, but their relationship is clearly strained given his embarrassment over her suddenly showing up to Yakumo's apartment and her own musings about how he probably feels lucky that he won't see her before she leaves on business again.
- You Remind Me of X: Cooking enormous meals to satiate Yamato reminds Yakumo of her late husband. When Yamato gets locked out of his apartment by mistake, he ends up borrowing some of Mr. Yakumo's clothes before going to bed. In the dark and without her glasses, Yakumo briefly mistakes him for her husband.
