We all can relate to the feeling of coming back home after a rough or tiring day, and just wanting to sit down and eat a nice meal. Sweetness and Lightning explores this concept and combines it with the difficulty of raising a child, to provide a truly sweet experience.

Each chapter of Sweetness & Lightning involves Kohei, the single father of Tsumugi, cooking up a meal for his daughter to help cheer her up or just brighten her day as she deals with problems of childhood and being without a mother. Kohei is taught to cook by his student Kotori, who’s parents are divorced. The majority of the series takes place at Kotori’s mother’s restaurant, where Kotori begins a complex relationship with Kohei and Tsumugi as she tries to figure out whether her feelings are romantic, or are just parental, with Kohei acting as a stand in for her father whom she barely sees.

The series has a very good flow of time, with Tsumugi graduating pre-school and entering primary school, and Kotori gradually facing entrance exams, graduating high school and deciding what to do with her future. Everyone grows and develops in this series, even Kohei, who not only gets better at cooking, but also gets better at raising Tsumugi.

The structure of the series is quite formulaic, with almost every chapter following a problem that Tsumugi or sometimes even Kotori has, and using food as a way to breach talking about their problems, and coming up with a solution. Being a slice of life series, it’s quite slow-paced, and combined with the repetitive structure, I wouldn’t recommend reading too many chapters in one go. The series is best enjoyed in small chunks.

The slice of life moments and Tsumugi’s behaviour often give off Yotsubato vibes, and are the strongest point of the series. Events can range from Tsumugi trying to get a cat to like her, to her finding out about heaven and hell. Some of the most poignant moments in the series are when Tsumugi must learn about death. She questions where her mother is now that she is dead, and must learn to come to her own understandings. She often misses the food her mother used to cook, and so Kohei works hard to create new, delicious homemade meals to remember.

All in all, Sweetness & Lightning is about growth and the happiness that sharing a meal with others can bring. Kohei learns to become a better father and a better cook, Kotori learns to become a better cook, how to handle her feelings, and what she wants to do with her future and Tsumugi learns how to cope without a mum and how to be a kid - from playing with boys, to learning that Santa might not be real. Seeing everyone’s face filled with joy after eating delicious food together is a feeling I never grew tired of, and even though the cooking segments become repetitive, the food looks so good and makes me so hungry that I might have to forgive it.