YMMV / Cooking Mama

• Adorkable: Mama herself, especially in the 3DS games where she is much more expressive.
• All Animation Is Disney: Despite what people say, it's not a first-party Nintendo series. It's developed by Office Create and (depending on your region) is published by Majesco Entertainment (North America), 505 Games (PAL regions), or Taito (Japan). Meanwhile, Cookstar has been developed and published by Planet Entertainment.
• Breather Level: Each game has at least one recipe, starting from the first game's instant ramen, which consists of a single step and won't require much practice, if any, to achieve a perfect score.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Cooking Mama is one of the most iconic games of the DS/Wii generation around the world... except its home country of Japan. Japanese people were confused at its massive overseas popularity.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • No, no, no! Please don't shake the baby!
  • Mama's lines are very quotable in general, like her intimidating passive-aggressive "Don't worry, Mama will fix it."
  • The legal dispute over Cookstar has attracted a lot of amused and bemused reactions, with some joking that a Cooking Mama game has no reason to cause this much drama, but that it's hilarious to watch because of the topic, people calling it "Cooking Drama", and others joking that this is just part of the insane year that is 2020.
• Nightmare Fuel: Whenever you fail a task, Mama will become enraged, enough so that fire comes out of her eyes. This, coupled with the delivery of the line used when you fail ("Don't worry. Mama will fix it.") can easily unnerve some, especially kids.
• No Such Thing as Bad Publicity: PETA made a game that mocked this game's use of animals in the recipes. It helped boost the visibility of the series.
• Only the Creator Does It Right: The games not made by Office Create have worse receptions.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: The main thing people know about Cookstar is the legal dispute between Office Create and Planet Entertainment regarding its bizarre release circumstances, and the (ultimately untrue) rumor that the game secretly contained a cryptocurrency miner.
• Sequelitis: The series' reception has gotten more negative with time, either because the games don't change enough or the changes aren't good.
• So Bad, It's Good: Not the games, but DEFINITELY the voice acting. Cooking Mama's voice is a Japanese person trying to speak English while adding an Italian twang, so it gets some crazy results. ("I'll help you" sounds more like "Ahl-hev-buh-you", "Wonderful" sounds more like "Vundaherbuhl", etc.)
• That One Level:
  • In the first game's pizza recipe, the level where you have to chop the pepperoni is quite annoying, because the meat is very thick, meaning you have to move the knife up and down many times to just cut one slice. Also, the timer is really fast, so you have to chop extremely fast to get a perfect score.
  • In the third game's dora-yaki recipe, you have to brand the dora-yakis. Sounds simple enough, right? Well, if you're even slightly off the center, you get penalized, and can't get a perfect score, which is especially a problem if you have a small DS or a thick stylus. The worst part? You have to precisely brand a total of 18 of them, and you can't get a perfect if you miss one.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The general fan reaction when Mama speaks in anything that isn't heavily accented English.

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