Eromanga-sensei: Yamada Elf Daisensei no Koisuru Junshin Gohan

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I'm not sure if this is considered to be canon or not, but in my mind and my heart, I fully accept it as such. This is extremely engaging and a very good read. If you are a fan of Eromanga-Sensei, you see Elf in a whole new light and learn to love and appreciate her so much more. The art style in the food is incredible, which is essentially what this manga is about - about how Yamada Elf is an amazing cook and how she develops her friendship and opinion on Masamune, in more detail than what the original manga shows.

Spoilers ahead: Upon finishing the anime, I realized that Sagiri would ultimately be the winner. Being an Elf fan I was upset about this and wanted Elf to end up with Masamune. After some digging, I found out that there was a manga series where Elf does win and ends up marrying him in the end. I was overjoyed to find this, started reading, and finished it it a day. The ending scene where it shows a picture of Elf in a wedding dress sealed the deal. I probably won't even read the original manga due to the sheer happiness of Elf winning. Even if ... this story isn't canon, its canon in my heart.

This is one of the strangest concepts for a manga I’ve ever seen. To clarify, by concept I don’t mean premise of the manga, as those can get quite extreme, but rather what exactly this manga is trying to do. It’s essentially a food spin off Eromanga-sensei. I specifically use the word “food” and not “cooking” because no cooking is shown over the course of the manga. It goes straight to the eating with the focus being elaborate visual metaphors about the taste.

The reason this is a strange concept, is because the parent series doesn’t have anything to do with food. And this manga doesn’t ... really have much of its own story either. It’s basically just skipping through the story and inserting scenes of characters eating in the middle of other events, which often results in them feeling really out of place.

Since the manga doesn’t really try to tell much of a story of its own you should already be familiar with the plot and characters before reading this. This manga has parts from beyond the anime, so you should read the manga of the main story before reading this. Though this manga also refers to events and characters from volume 6 which the main manga did not adapt so if you can’t read the novels you’ll just to go with the flow when it comes to them.

As the title of the manga suggests, this manga is supposed to be an Elf focused spin off. However, it isn’t all that good at it. While the strange focus on food is a part of the problem, it is far from the only problem. The bigger issue is that this manga does very little in terms of expanding on Elf or fleshing her out better as a character. It provides a bit more insight into her relationship with Amelia and her family, but nothing too substantial. It’s nice to see more of Elf and romantic fluff of her and Masamune, but despite this being her dedicated spin off, most of it was still just Elf’s delusions.

The ending of this manga goes in a different direction from the main story and gives her a happy ending, but it’s really rushed. The manga basically just kind of throws out something quick as a service to Elf’s fans so those that are super into her might appreciate it, but other than that it’s not all that satisfying. The art of this manga was also pretty weak so I don’t think there’s much merit to reading this manga for that either. So all in all while the manga isn’t terrible, I just don’t find much merit to reading it.

tl;dr: A strange and not particularly good spin-off.