Get Jiro comes from Warner Bros. Animation and DC Studios, adapting the graphic novel Anthony Bourdain co-wrote with Joel Rose for DC’s Vertigo imprint.
That pedigree matters: Vertigo built its reputation on genre stories that used pulp premises to say something sharper, and the animated adaptation keeps that DNA intact rather than sanding it down for a broader audience. Brian Tee, known for his live-action work on Chicago Med, voices Jiro, and he brings a restraint to the role that a lot of animated leads don’t bother with.
Get Jiro opens like a familiar crime drama. A stranger is trapped in a lawless world where life and death are decided by the flake of the pie crust. The genre skin is the “joke”, and the show knows it.
Head chefs run crews like ‘mob bosses’.
Sous chefs are ‘made men’.
Food truck cooks work as ‘hitmen’.
Health inspectors play ‘cops’.
It sounds like a gimmick on paper, and for the first stretch of episodes it plays like one.
Stick with it. The show is using the food-mafia premise to get at something more specific: how food culture builds identity, how it gets weaponized by trends and personalities, and how easily “authenticity” becomes a brand.
Extreme veganism, fad diets, celebrity chef worship, it all gets pulled apart here, and you can feel Anthony Bourdain’s fingerprints on that part of the writing.
He cared about the craft behind food more than the food itself, and that shows up in how the world treats chefs as both artists and warlords.
Brian Tee carries Jiro as a quiet, coiled presence. He underplays instead of announcing every emotion, which works in the show’s favor once the story slows down and asks you to read Jiro rather than just watch him, which fits a story that takes its time getting where it’s going. That’s the show’s only weakness.
The pacing is slow early on, and the tonal shift from parody to genuine commentary doesn’t land until a few episodes in. If you bail before that turn you will miss the point of the whole show.
Get Jiro is a food fanfic story wearing a satire costume, and once it settles into that idea, it’s worth the patience it asks for.
Get Jiro premieres Saturday, October 3 at midnight ET/PT on Adult Swim. It streams the next day on HBO Max.
