Each season has many different animes that are brought to the spotlight. Not all of these animes are a savory steak that is cooked so each bite is perfect. One of these animes that is a recipe for success is Food Wars!: Shokugeki no Soma. The show focuses on a kid named S?ma who has graduated middle school. He wants to cook in his Dad’s small restaurant, only to find out that his Dad is moving to America. As a result his Dad challenges him to enroll in a school that only graduates 10% of the students. S?ma accepts the challenge and declares that he will be the top student.
The anime creates an underdog mentality from the very first episode. S?ma and his father are faced with a real estate agent who wants to buy the restaurant from them. S?ma agrees to sell it to her if his cooking fails to impress her, agreeing to this deal she destroys his cooking supplies. S?ma comes back to no supplies, except what he will make for breakfast the next day, and goes beyond exceeding her taste buds. Thus a small time local chef saves his father’s restaurant while under extreme situations. S?ma is further faced with being an underdog as his cooking becomes tampered with by other students and has to utilize his years of cooking experience to cook a meal that would normally take 2 hours to cook in 20 minutes. Relying on his knowledge he cooks the meal within the time limit, cooks it better, and gets a better grade than the students who interfered with his cooking (who then fail the cooking test). These two situations instantly create a connection with S?ma. He is a young chef who ran a local restaurant and is now in a school that has many different students who come from cooking backgrounds, which puts him at a disadvantage, yet he is more knowledgeable and a better cook then they are.
The show, if it has not already captures your heart, is seasoned with comedy as a spice. The show is a serous show as the academy that S?ma is in only graduates 10% of the students. Despite the school’s strictness there are many jokes that are executed well. The first of the reoccurring jokes is the constant, in that S?ma attempts to use squid tentacle. Now squid tentacles have been known to be associated with certain aspects of Japan so when S?ma makes a good recipe using the tentacles a nice friendly animated scene appears. When he makes a bad recipe the animated scene that appears is aimed at what Japan is more commonly associated with. Thus the show is making fun of it own culture and the association with tentacles. Furthermore, S?ma fails with most of his tentacle concoctions, which terrifies the people who have to eat it yet he is a good cook who can cook really well when it matters.
The show also captures comedy with S?ma’s character. S?ma, the main character, can deliver ridiculous lines that capture irony. The best example of this was during a food duel that he had with another student. The student he was facing had access to top food ingredients while S?ma did not. As a result S?ma picked up cheap beef to use in his recipe. Right before the duel he stated that he had gotten the cheap meat on sale to the entire audience. This element is ironic due to the situation as it is the most expensive ingredients going up against cheap ingredients that are on sale. Yet the way S?ma stated it was in a proud fashion that attempted to equalize the two meats and show the irony. To further capture the irony, S?ma’s recipe won the cooking duel, which showed that the cheaper meat worked better than the more expensive meat, which is an ironic event to take place in the cooking world.
Food Wars!: Shokugeki no Soma is only just begun as it is a new show yet it has projected many different elements such as the underdog mentality and comedy elements. These elements make it an easy meal, in 24 minutes, to digest each Friday that satisfies anime appetites each week. Each week the underdog mentality and the comedy elements are constantly being spiced up and varied to have the same core values of previous anime dishes of the past. If you have not read or seen Food Wars!: Shokugeki no Soma it is highly recommend as it is one of the 5 star dishes of this season.
You can pick up Volume 1 of the manga here.
