And just like that, we’re back in the kitchen for the battle of High Yo’s culinary life. The judges for this outing are not what I would call important, except in contrast to the last panel, but they are almost to a person sidekicks of important characters. First is Shin, who Fukui-san cannot even introduce without mentioning Teresa, just so we know where he’s at on the Yaoi Army power pyramid; next is the odd man out of this group, Stallion, though I guess you could argue he used to be second fiddle to that asshole Linkolas; third is Apple, and I feel like we’ve discussed her plenty today; and finally Fukui-san announces Sasuke, the junior associate ninja from Bukkake Hamlet. At first I thought his sprite was Futch, and I am pleased that though I was wrong, it didn’t screw up my little theme. (Sasuke apparently likes chocolate, and he is about to be INCREDIBLY disappointed by High Yo’s offerings in that case.)

Once the chefs are introduced–and for what it’s worth Retso is still spinning his golden cleavers like a flashy cock and making me think he’s totally lying about not trying to hypnotize the judges–it’s time to choose an all-new menu. Well, High Yo is still going to make island salad, because none of those new recipes provide him with an acceptable alternative. But Barry’s visit to Gremio is about to prove fruitful indeed, as both the entrée and the dessert are variations of his very special stew. High Yo’s main course is “Mellow Stew,” an offering of special stew with added mayonnaise, and you should all just see the face I’m making. Was it not creamy enough?! And somehow even more baffling and oddly suggestive is his “Sweet Syrup,” a special stew with sugar. Mmm! I am left wondering if Gremio only knows how to make this one thing, and he just covers his tracks by adding and subtracting from the same recipe ad infinitum. It’s possible PUGGY!!! and his entourage think all food is stew of some kind, and would lose their minds completely if they saw, like, a baked potato.

(Yes, I know Pahn keeps a diary of his favorite foods in his room, but what if he thinks “toast and eggs” is egg soup with croutons in it? This has levels.)

For an appetizer, Retso has prepared grilled tongue, which is presented to each judge on a personal charcoal grill. For once, I can say without hesitation that I would go to town on that, and the judges more or less agree, giving him medium scores only just below what High Yo scores for the salad he’s literally been serving since the beginning of the game. I guess it’s just a really fucking good salad, guys, because I cannot imagine anyone in this castle being like “No tongue for me, thanks.”

Retso’s entrée is, again, the sashimi combo, and it again dazzles, though it falls just short of a perfect score thanks to Shin giving it a 4, and I had something to say about Shin actually not liking raw fish and I am going to keep it to myself. High Yo’s humble but lovingly prepared mellow stew, meanwhile, does get a perfect score. Oh no, High Yo has been using, uh, creamy substance hypnosis! What has he been doing below the sight line of the table?!

Finally, it’s time for dessert, and Retso serves…pizza! No, not like “dessert pizza” that’s basically s’mores on a pizza crust. This has giant slices of red bell pepper on it. In a stunner, this doesn’t go over well with the judges. It is perhaps because they are thus starved for anything that even resembles a dessert that the sweet syrup, which in practice looks like a cum float cream soda is such a hit. Who wouldn’t just want a sweet, creamy beverage after five straight courses of salt, including an entire large pizza?

Following his loss, Retso is upset, yet unsurprised, that he could not eke out a win without his hypnosis. Listen, man, just try making an actual dessert next time. It will help, I promise. “My daughter Shun Min was right to believe in you….” he says to High Yo. “I’m giving this back to you. Now it’s my turn to beg of you… Please defend this recipe with your very life.” High Yo thus comes back into possession of the Moon Bird Recipe That’s Probably Just MSG, as well as Retso’s own secret recipe for his sashimi combo dish. And a good thing too, because shockingly, High Yo has one last chef to battle, and he is entering the restaurant right now!

“Bah!! You dissapoint [sic] me, Retso!” the fabled Jinkai bellows from the kitchen doorway. Jinkai turns out to be a burly grandpa with flowing white hair that cascades over half his face and makes him look like he has an eyepatch. He’s wearing geta sandals with his black chef’s ensemble and red neckerchief. He very much looks like a culinary crime lord, so points for effective imagery. I cannot imagine geta are the most comfortable thing to wear while spending most of your time standing in a kitchen, but maybe the beauty of the Moon Bird Recipe is you can spend most of your time lounging in a club chair and reading a magazine while your all-star meal just percolates in a crockpot.

High Yo and Retso both exclaim very excitedly about Jinkai’s appearance, like this was going to end any other way. He demands High Yo return the Moon Bird Instant Pot Cookbook, insisting “It means nothing to you anyway.” This is true, given that High Yo now has Gremio’s secret stew mojo and will have doe-eyed young men the world over flocking to his doorstep for the rest of his professional days. “But in my hands,” Jinkai says, “it is a powerful tool! I can make all the chefs of the world happy with it!!!!” High Yo does not engage with this defense of the Moon Bird Black Truffle Salt, only saying, “I don’t want to hear any more of your lies!!!!” For once he is raring to get in the kitchen and face his final enemy, and Barry’s not about to stand in his way. I’m just happy this confrontation is happening entirely in public, so Jinkai can’t attack High Yo and Barry with a taser and steal the special stew recipe.

Okay, this is a record third chef battle for one recap, so let’s get through this quickly: the judges are Anita, whom Fukui-san seems too frightened of to even try asking her what kind of food she likes; Templeton and Stallion, both repeat judges; and–I’m sorry, what? We can forget about being perfunctory, because the fourth judge is a fucking robot. “What do you do when you cross a barrel and a windup doll?” Fukui-san asks. “Can this thing really judge food? It’s Gadget!!!” Fukui-san, though I am in no position to criticize someone for using too many words, I have to tell you there was only need for one of those questions.

Fukui-san introduces the final opponent: “Grand Wazoo of the Black Dragon Group, it’s Jinkai of Genbu!!!!!” Jinkai stomps down his thick left leg as a show of strength, actually looking a little bit like an ancient magical warrior tortoise or whatever the hell Genbu is. And once High Yo has been announced with all his fanfare for the final time, the chefs can get to work.

The only change from High Yo’s menu against Retso is that, after 11 battles, his beloved island salad is finally being replaced. To my horror, the variety of the sashimi combo recipe he puts to use here is, OF FUCKING COURSE, the one with mayonnaise, making a “Salad Combo.” You know how “salads” in the Midwest are just trifle dishes filled with mayonnaise and iceberg lettuce and cheddar or some goddamn thing? Is that this, but there’s, like, red snapper in it? Shudder.

Jinkai’s appetizer is the much more appetizing, but possibly much less appropriate sashimi bento. It’s called that, but there’s clearly a lot of rice in there. Is it still sashimi in that case, especially when there is a totally separate sushi recipe? Anyway, the judges fucking hate it, though maybe they have the same asshole semantic concerns I do. Templeton seems like he’d be that level of prescriptivist. As for the salad combo, it looks to be a pile of sashimi plated in a ring shape with mayo on the top and some leaves of romaine tucked into the edges. I do not love it, but it doesn’t matter what I think, and the judges seem to like it just fine. Stallion is the only one to give it a 5, and that’s after he was a judge in the last contest, too. How is he still hungry?

If the elf that can house 7000 calories and still be a rail is at all feeling the effects now, he’s not about to be helped by Jinkai’s entrée, kaiseki dinner, or a multi-course dinner. It feels like dirty pool to specifically make a multi-course meal in a competition that has three courses. (The little pixel courses themselves, as far as I can tell, are some kind of dumpling or meatball, some kind of cutlet in brown sauce, and maybe a salad. Someone is trying hard!) Here, though, Jinkai’s efforts pay off and he gets “Great scores!!!” Stallion gives this a 5 too! Jesus, my guy, slow down. Unfortunately for him, High Yo’s cum stew gets the exact same score, so he’s still in the hole. And so, it comes down to dessert. Oh no, how will High Yo compete with whatever spinach egg torte Jinkai is probably going to serve?!

Oh fuck, that’s sorbet!!!

Jinkai stomps in triumph as the judges are served his actual dessert…red pepper ice? Okay, I mean, that’s probably still sweet enough. This is scary! I mean, by my math at this point, to lose, High Yo would have to get 1s across the board on his cum float, which seems unlikely, but he is not out of the woods, and who the fuck knows what Gremio’s homestyle dessert is going to do to Gadget’s circuitry. And…”Great scores!!!” Fukui-san shrieks. Fuck yeah they are! Spec-ial stew! SPEC-IAL STEW!!!

A quick digression, because I had to go back through my footage and check: while Stallion does give a perfect score to nearly everything he puts in his mouth, I noted that the only times he did not do so were for the challenger’s dishes, not for High Yo’s. Barry makes a mental note to, I don’t know, give him a special pass for some private time in the bath or something. And open the locked BARRY ONLY cabinet with the good soaps.

By a score of 44 to 35–our boy has done better, but who cares–High Yo is the champion over his former mob boss. Jinkai stomps exactly as he did in celebration, but then falls to his knees afterward, while still grinning and holding his hands to his face. Given this somewhat manic, Damon Gant-like display, I feel like we are in for some caps-lock and exclamation points, and I am not disappointed. Well, I am, but you know. Out in the dining area again, Jinkai screams, “WHAAAAAT!!!!!!! How!!! How could I have lost!!!! It’s impossible!!!!!!! [HIGH] YOOOOO!!!!!!” If someone five feet away from me were carrying on like this, I would hide behind a table, but High Yo is calm. “I…I didn’t do it alone,” he says. “Antonio, Lester, Bashok, Retso, Barry, they were all behind me, cheering for me… But most of all…. Most of all it was Shun Min who gave me the power, the courage to defeat you!” I’m sorry, did he just give Barry, who literally helped prepare every single dish he presented, SIXTH BILLING behind four chefs who suck more than he does and his dead girlfriend? What the fuck, High Yo? He is not getting access to the good soaps.

Jinkai is defiant in defeat, saying, “You fool……. I’ll never give the ‘Moon Bird Recipe’ to you!!!! Never, never, never!!!!!” High Yo is currently in possession of said Moon Bird Recipe, so I don’t know how Jinkai is managing this level of admittedly whiny bravado about it. High Yo sighs. “The ‘Moon Bird Recipe’…Shun Min sacrificed her life for it, chefs all over lust after it…. Well here’s what I think of it!!!” And to the shock of everyone present, including the rare narrator of physical actions not captured by sprite movement, “He tore up the ‘Moon Bird Recipe’!” But High Yo, why now? Why not 12 fucking chef battles ago?!

As Jinkai is blustering about how the Moon Bird Recipe was “passed on from chef to chef for ages and ages,” I think we need to unpack what’s going on here. All we know about the Moon Bird Recipe is that it is used to make food that makes people happy, but that chefs like Jinkai and Retso were using it to, I guess, pack people into their restaurants and make a shitload of money. The Suikoden wiki, for what it’s worth, says the recipe is easy to prepare and pleases everyone. And yet the thing High Yo chooses to do–and again, even if it were the right decision, WELL BEYOND the point he could have done so–is destroy it. I have some beef with this.

First of all, if it’s so easy to make, why haven’t these dummies all memorized it, but more importantly, why is the impulse to HIDE this thing? Wouldn’t the best course of action be to democratize the Moon Bird Recipe and throw copies of it off every rooftop from here to Zexen? It’s easy to make and people like it! It seems wrong to destroy the recipe for the perfect baked mac and cheese just because one asshole wanted to hoard it for himself. Moon Bird Mac and Cheese! For the people!

High Yo’s weak justification is, “Cooking should be fun!!! I don’t need something like that to make food that brings happiness to people!!!” Well, fucking good for you, Mr. Iron Chef HoYay Grand Champion, but that doesn’t mean no one should ever make it! And given that Shun Min literally died, not to hide this recipe but specifically to protect it, I feel like she would be kind of pissed that he just ripped it up like this. She could have fucking done that, and lived to tell the tale!

Before I start demanding a Congressional investigation into the shadow conspiracy behind Moon Birdghazi, Retso steps in. “Jinkai, let’s stop this!” he begs. “Both you and I walked the path of the chef. But somewhere along the line, we lost sight of what’s important.” I cannot emphasize enough that his daughter is dead because of these dumb men, and he’s just worried that they lost the joy of cooking. You know who else lost the joy of cooking? Shun Min, because she died in a fridge somewhere! Just saying! “Let’s start again,” Retso is saying as sappy music is making me, despite my annoyance at all this, shout “KISS, KISS, KISS” at him and Jinkai. “This time we won’t rely on secret recipes…. This time we’ll walk the true path of the chef…..” This time they’ll post all their dishes on Instagram and become influencers.

Jinkai finally relents in the face of his man basically begging him, to romantic music, to walk off hand-in-hand into the sunset. “…………… [High] Yo….the victory is yours. I was fighting to make chefs of the world happy, but I was wrong. A true chef can never be happy unless the people who eat his food are happy first…..” And I am lost all over again. Was the Moon Bird Recipe about making the chefs who made it happy? That is not what High Yo said a second ago! Further confusing me, Jinkai goes on, “You should go, [High] Yo. I look forward to seeing which path you’ll choose. Ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!!!” No? You are the one who is leaving? What are we doing anymore?

The scene fades to black, leaving me to figure this shit out on my own. I want to believe all three chefs are leaving, together, to travel the world and eat good food, but only because that too would be foreshadowing some stuff we will be getting to shortly. For now, we fade back in on High Yo standing on the cliff behind Yuzu’s pasture, overlooking the lake. (Stallion is doing laps in the pasture during this entire scene, so his head keeps flitting in and out. It’s honestly the best part of it.) “Shun Min……” he murmurs, looking out at the clouds over the lake. “I kept my promise!!!!! You’re gone forever, but…..” I cannot imagine the promise he kept was to destroy a recipe she died for, but as High Yo notes himself, it’s not like she’s here to fact-check his lying ass. Min Min enters from the left, carrying an empty serving tray. “Oh!!!! So this is where you were, [High] Yo!!!! The customers are getting hungry!!!” Yeah, it probably sucks to be in the restaurant when a chef battle breaks out, let alone two in a row. It’s not like the competitors are making enough to feed the audience. High Yo says he’ll be right there and Min Min leaves. Taking one more moment to himself, Barry’s chef stretches, seeming refreshed. “Well, back to work….” he says.

And so ends the other major suck on Barry’s spare time, the Moon Bird Recipe Saga! “Cook-Off” even has its own short credits sequence, to give a special shout-out to the hard-working developers who gave me so very many recipes with mayonnaise in them. Take a bow, you monsters!

But with his feelings of closure for Clive and High Yo come the realization that he has to take care of his own affairs. He may be happy for Retso, Jinkai, and perhaps High Yo going on an Eat, Pray, Love pilgrimage together, but under that happiness is an empty pit of grief for all the noodle dishes he and Jowy could be slurping together if only they weren’t mandated to be enemies by some fortune teller broad. He’s going to fix this. By killing every person around Jowy until he has to get together with Barry again or die alone! Yeah, that’s the ticket!

Let’s allow this recap to stand as a monument to Barry’s reluctance to do what must be done, and doing absolutely anything else he can think of in order to avoid it. And in our next recap, he will get down to the necessary business of making his man see sense once and for all. And he will do that…right now!