There are no words to describe how happy this anime has made me, except for when it ended, but I am going to put my meager dictionary of vocabulary to the test and try. FOOD WARS Shokugeki no Soma first debuted in 2014 (I think?) and I have already watched the whole thing at least eight or nine times! I can personally testify that I have not had an anime impact me this much since I fell in love with my most favorite anime of all time, Dragon Ball Z, back when I was a kid and started my life anew as an anime fan. The story itself is pretty simple, but what makes it so rich is the characters... Well, that and all the gratuitous fan service, probably heh. I will tell you, if you don't like anime with tons of fan service, this probably is not the anime for you. FOOD WARS Shokugeki no Soma is what I would define as a "cooking school" anime that centers around the high school life of the protagonist, Yukihira Soma, whose dream is to succeed his Dad and take over the family business, Yukihira Diner, as it's number one chef. But his Dad throws a hitch into his plan when his Dad decides to close the shop for an undetermined amount of time while we works overseas and then sends him off to the top culinary school in Japan, Totsuki Academy, and the anime chronicles Soma's time spent in this academy as a first year.
But back to what I was talking about. The fanservice. This is a cooking anime so when characters make tasty dishes, the people eating it get what I like to call "Foodgasms" that are so risqué that they border on almost being called hentai. For example, in the first episode...
- img edited by staff , anime help guild does not support this img
... this happens.
This woman here, whatever her name was, shows up in Soma's diner and demands that he make her a juicy meat dish and so he does and when she eats it, along with her crew, and because of the meat juice theme, they get this reaction where all their clothes explode off their bodies and then get showered in meat juice. Now, not all the characters get this kind of reaction from eating food and one character in particular who is also one of my favorite tsunderes EVER, the visions she gets from eating is kind of like her thing, but nine times out of ten, their reactions are erotic like above so if you turned off by that kind of thing, you probably won't enjoy this anime probably as much as I did.
But as I stated above, this fanservice is not where this anime shines. It's characters and their unique personalities are really where this anime shines. Yukihira Soma (the boy in the pic at the top) is, in my opinion, a great protagonist. He's a tough, takes no nonsense type who thrives on competition and will never back down from a challenge and uses any and every opportunity to learn and improve his already amazing skills. He has this funny quirk too, most likely inherited from his dad, where he is happy when he gets to make his friends eat all the disgusting food concoctions he makes up. For example, also in the first episode, he gets depressed when he loses to his dad in another cooking match, making it the 489th loss. One of Soma's friends from his middle school, who is trying to console him and cheer him up at the time, and Soma forces her to eat his new recipe: Grilled squid tentacles dressed with peanut butter. They also give her a special reaction to this too and naturally because she comments that the flavor of the squid had been taken in the wrong direction and makes it feel as disgusting as if you were to be groped all over by it obviously makes her get molested by a giant squid and its tentacles, obviously. And don't you worry, this a trope that reoccurs throughout the anime since it is one of his favorite things to do and regardless whether or not you want to happen again, well too bad! It does! Other than that, Soma is pretty hilarious too and it's fun to watch him go through this super elite cooking school and come onto his own as a chef.
Another great character is Nakiri Erina (the girl in the pic at the top), who is the character I mentioned above as being my most favorite in this series. She's so wonderfully tsundere, but it's done in such a way that it makes the archetype kind of refreshing! It makes her too adorable for me not to fall absolutely in love with her considering the tsundere is literally my favorite anime character type. Also, I mentioned that one character has very particular visions when she eats food and that is kind of like her "thing". That's Nakiri Erina here. She's the same age as Soma and putting the two of them together is one of my favorite anime ships ever! You people can argue all you want, Soma belongs to Erina and Erina only dammit! ... Ugh... ehehe, right. Sorry. Getting off track. Back to the point. Erina is already considered a heavyweight in the food world and because of her super human sense of taste and unique palate related to that, she is nicknamed, The God Tongue, and the visions she experiences from eating food are absolutely wonderful. Don't get me wrong, even if she did not have them, she would still be my favorite, because her personality and character are just that great, but the visions just make her all the more greater. The first ones we see her having are pretty funny to be honest. She is taste testing a whole group of people's oyster gruel, which is basically a rice soup made with oysters if you did not know, and the first vision doesn't start out too bad. She's staying under a waterfall for a few moments and then all of a sudden, a jukebox comes and crashes down on top of her head. In the next, she's bathing in a hot spring and then she hears a noise and looks and realizes... she's bathing with a gorilla! Outside of her taste visions, she acts like a high and mighty queen bee and it's funny watching her and Soma interact since they are polar opposite and he's the only, so far, who is capable of knocking her down a peg or too and the only one we see her getting loud and shouting out whenever they have conversations. And I practically watch and scream at the screen that they should just hurry up and get the two of them together already! This feeling was made even more worse when they revealed that Erina has a sentimental connection to Soma's dad and is the inspiration for her own cooking.
Okay, I am going to wrap this up by talking about one last character, and she, if Erina did not exist, would probably be who'd I pair Soma with. Her name is Tadokoro Megumi (unfortunately, don't have an image reference for her so I'll make her name a link instead) and she is pretty much is Soma's greatest friend and companion. She did not start out that way. Considered by everyone to be the failure of the school since she does nothing but get the lowest scores in all her classes, but that is because she has a stage fright issue and tends to lock up and get super nervous when put in important situations, and she actually despises Soma at first. You remember that squid tentacle thing I talked about before. Yeah, he also does that to Tadokoro. In her first class, she gets paired with Soma, who has became the enemy of the entire school or the first years at least since at the opening ceremony he declared that he was going to take the number one spot as if it were nothing and in their first class, they are assigned to make a simple French beef dish. But because of Soma "mouthing" off at the entrance ceremony, a couple other students sabotage their meat by throwing a few spoonful of salt into their pot when they weren't looking. Soma notices the lid is askew (stupid mistake if you ask me. If they had set the lid back on right, neither Soma or Tadokoro would have noticed until they thought they were done cooking the meat and took the lid of the pot off and there would've been no way for them to fix the mistake in time by then.) and checks. This depresses Tadokoro because she had just received a notice stating that if she gets another E rating (I suppose this is the equivalent of getting a F as your grade) that she will be expelled. But Soma only gets fired up and gathers spare ingredients to make the dish and uses a special ingredient (it's honey) to be able to cook up the beef within time they have left with Tadokoro helping out, which impresses their teacher so much that he states that it is unfortunate that there is no higher grade he can give them than an A. Since Soma saves her from expulsion and the two of them continuing to work together after that, Tadokoro gets closer to Soma and by Soma's willpower to never back down no matter what inspires her to start having confidence in her own self and her own cooking, which 180 flips her around from being considered the top failure at the academy to one of it's top students.
A few of the other main stay cast characters are pretty great too and I can probably easily churn out a couple paragraphs talking about each of them, but I think I have dragged this on more than long enough. If you want to find out, then I'm afraid you'll just have to go and watch the anime yourself! Or read the manga it is adapted from. Regardless, this is where I am finishing off for this review. However, I will say one thing. If there was one thing that I did not like about this anime. It is that... it makes me hungry. Seriously! All the food they make in it look so delicious that my stomach can't help but start growling every time and it also kinda makes me want to learn how to cook just so I can try making some of the dishes they do in the anime and see if it is as good as the characters make it out to be.
This is your gaian gamer otaku, CV, signing off!
See you next time! 4laugh
Quote:
I GIVE THIS ANIME A SCORE OF
10 / 10
A PERFECT SCORE!
10 / 10
A PERFECT SCORE!