The Bear meets The Purge in Get Jiro!, the new animated series from Adult Swim adapted from the best-selling graphic novels written by the late chef and television star Anthony Bourdain and his co-author Joel Rose.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the half-hour series will follow Jiro, a sushi chef living and working in a version of Los Angeles where customers are willing to get their hands a little bloody for a table at acclaimed restaurants in the city. The character first appeared when Bourdain and Rose published their first DC/Vertigo graphic novel in 2012. The second installment, Get Jiro: Blood and Sushi, arrived in 2015.
“In a not-too-distant future of food-obsessed L.A., where master chefs rule the town like crime lords and people literally kill for a seat at the best restaurant, Jiro, a renegade and ruthless sushi chef arrives in town with strong ideas of his own,” an official description of the novel reads. “It’s a bloody culinary war of epic proportions, and in the end, no chef may be left alive!”
Get Jiro! the series will be helmed by creators Brian Gatewood and Alessandro Tanaka. The pair previously collaborated on Sharper, a neo-noir thriller from production house A24 starring Sebastian Stan and Julianne Moore.
In an interview with Eater in 2015, Rose and Bourdain — who died in 2018 — discussed the prospect of their graphic novels being turned into a television series.
“My friend David Choe talks a lot about porn. He says, ‘You know, no Asian guys [are] on top.’ You don’t see Asian guys in straight porn much. He says, ‘How come the Asian action hero doesn’t get the girl?’ So I think the odds are stacked against [us], but if we could help break that down, that would be so completely awesome,” Bourdain said. “The first question is going to be: ‘Does he have to be Japanese? This would be a perfect Kevin James vehicle.’ So look, I hope so. It would be great. You could certainly have it in Japan. But for broad appeal, to essentially have a Japanese superhero — I think that would be great. Takeshi Kitano; man, there’s no one cooler. He’s a little older now, but he would have been perfect for this.”
