I Finished Food Wars and I am Not Okay | Manga Mondays

Hey hi hello friends, and welcome back to my blog! 

It's been a hot minute since I've done a Manga Mondays, and that is simply because I haven't really finished anything in a while. I like to do Manga Mondays after I finish a manga or anime so I can talk about the series as a whole, instead of bits and pieces. And I've just been taking my sweet time on a lot of series, so therefore haven't felt the need to talk about them. 

That changes today, however. Because I finished Food Wars: Shokugeki no Soma last weekend! All five seasons, stored in my brain. 

Some background: Food Wars is an Ecchi anime (meaning there are some sexual elements, but really it's kind of satire of the Ecchi genre) that follows Soma Yukihira (first name, last name), who runs a diner with his father. One day his father literally packs up and sends Soma to an elite boarding school for young aspiring chefs. Soma meets an eclectic group of students, along with Erina Nakiri, a student at the academy who possesses something known as the "God Tongue"--meaning she can detect every flavor, every ingredient, every good and bad thing in a dish from a single bite. Soma and Erina develop a kind of rivalry as he goes through his high school years at Totsuki Culinary Academy. 

A huge element of the show are the shokugeki, also known as food wars. These are publicized cooking competitions between students as well as teachers, mentors, and professionals. Totsuki Academy is built on these competitions, as they decide all sorts of matters, from expulsions, to financial assistance for clubs, to the student ranking. Nearly every episode has some sort of shokugeki, which reminds me of cooking competition shows like Chopped and Beat Bobby Flay. 

I want to go back to the Ecchi elements of this anime super quick. Basically, there is a lot of nudity in this anime, but it's all what I like to call "entertainment" nudity, meaning all the important bits are strategically covered. And the reason there is so much nudity in an anime about cooking, is because Food Wars takes foodgasms to the impossible level. Every time a character eats something truly incredible, their clothes are flung away and they're crowing about how delicious it is, usually in a fantasy scene in their head. There's also this thing called the "Gifting" in the show. Basically the Nakiri family have this ability to undress people with a kind of shockwave if they taste something truly magnificent. It's ridiculous, I know, which is why this really is a satire of Ecchi. 

As I said before, Food Wars is five seasons in length, and the manga is 36 volumes long, though I haven't actually read it (I plan to, though!). I watched the show on Crunchyroll, though it is also available on Hulu in the US, and the first two seasons are on Netflix as well. Each season focuses on a new challenge and a new "big bad" in classic shonen fashion, but of course the underlying conflict in each season is between Soma and Erina. To me, at least, it's implied that there are romantic feelings there, though in the anime at least it is never explicitly stated. 

As far as favorite characters go, my favorite female character is Megumi Tadokoro, a country girl who honestly grows the most in the plot of the show. She starts out super shy and not that confident about her cooking, and ends up one of the top students at the school. She's still shy and nervous, but once she steps into a kitchen, all of that goes away. I loved her growth as a character. 

My favorite male character is a tie between Eishi Tsukasa and Takumi Aldini. Eishi is the first seat of Totsuki's Elite Ten, a group of students who are the best at cooking at the academy (for reference, Erina is seat ten). He truly is the best young chef, having nearly never lost a competition. He's very soft spoken and hates the work side of being the first seat, but he has such a passion for cooking. He specializes in French cuisine. 

Takumi Aldini is a transfer student from Italy, where he worked in a family restaurant alongside his younger brother, Isami (also a fantastic character). He immediately zeroes in on Soma when he's beaten in a competition, and makes it his ultimate goal to beat Soma in a shokugeki. He, of course, specializes in Italian cuisine. Takumi makes me laugh because he so often goes along with Soma's crazy schemes, even as he declares himself above him. The two boys develop a very strong friendship as the show goes on, which I loved to see. 

I definitely liked the first three seasons more than seasons four and five, mainly because the center conflict of the last two seasons frustrated me to no end, and this being a shonen manga at its core, I knew what the outcome was going to be, so I would watch the episodes waiting for the problem to be over. But that's not to say that seasons four and five were bad, because they weren't. We got excellent character development, learned some secrets, met new characters, and saw some incredible shokugeki. So please don't skip over the last two seasons thinking that they're not worth it, because they absolutely are. 

Okay, I think that's all I have to say about Food Wars! Shokugeki no Soma. I hope I've encouraged at least one person to start watching (just be careful who you watch it with or around. I won't be held liable for any parents or children reacting to seeing naked bodies on your TV). Now I have to find a new anime to watch. Wish me luck. 

Until next time!