Food Wars! Shokugeki no Soma

Since he was a child, fifteen year old Soma Yukihira has always had dreams of becoming the owner and head chef of his family restaurant. However, his father suddenly closes up shop in order to travel and test his own cooking skills, sending Soma to the famous Totsuki Culinary Academy. In a place where only a small percentage graduate, Soma and his new friends must fight through the cut throat world of cooking as they make their way to the top of this prestigious academy.

Season one of Food Wars! was an interesting and fun romp. It had a very sports anime feel to it with each cooking competition and made the food world look really exciting and action packed. It's such an interesting concept to take food and throw the characters into an arena style battle, it's not something you generally see. The story also flowed really well, introducing new foes and friends in hilarious and entertaining ways. My favorite was definitely Satoshi Isshiki, who I lovingly dubbed Ceiling Guy. His weird need to wander the ground in nothing but his undies or apron was incredibly amusing, especially when no one says anything.

The voice acting was also phenomenal, breathing life into their characters and establishing their personalities immediately. Soma is an oblivious idiot to anything that isn't food related while Megumi is prone to panic and nervousness and Soma's father, Joichiro is confident and cool under pressure one minute then childish and immature the next. The voice cast work really hard to make sure that the audience grasps who all of these characters are while also showing their emotional growth. They never missed a beat, delivering their dialogue perfectly.

The animation in this show is gorgeous and you can tell that J.C Staff was really flexing those artistic muscles, especially when it came to focusing on the actually cooking. There is so much movement and you can tell they worked hard to make sure everything looked seamless. Let's not forget the actual food itself, it's beautiful. They even animated the sizzle on the meat, making it look not only real, but delicious. Don't watch this show on an empty stomach, it'll have you sprinting to the kitchen to eat something. The characters also have their individual, unique design, especially Soma, who you couldn't miss even if you were blind. He screams main anime protagonist.

I mean look at that delicious ass potato!

And this little jelly bean and his bright hair and gold eyes. He is a beacon of delicious food delights.

My only complaint about this delightful anime, would be the over dramatic food orgasm reactions. Yes, I know, they're making fun of hentai and they were really entertaining, at first, but after awhile it just got old. I went from laughing at the weirdness to rolling my eyes at it. For me, it was like a comedian repeating the same joke over and over again. The more times you say it, the less funny it becomes. When I started skipping them, I realized they didn't really add anything to the anime, they were just there because. Other than that, I really enjoyed it, it was fun and exciting, it was different and satisfied that part of me that loves both food and competition. I would say definitely give it a watch if you haven't yet and let me know if you had the same issues I did or if you found new things to love about it that I missed.

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