Food Wars! Shokugeki no Souma

Alt title: Shokugeki no Souma

TV (24 eps)
4.231 out of 5 from 40,896 votes
Rank #265

Ever since he was little, Souma Yukihira's main goals have been to beat his father in a cooking contest and take over the family diner. That's why, when his dad suddenly announces that he's shutting the restaurant down and sending Souma to cooking school, Souma is shocked. However, Tohtsuki Academy is no ordinary cooking school. This elite institution is filled with culinary giants like Erina "God Tongue" Nakiri, who does her best to keep a lowly short-order like Souma from even making it inside the door. However, if the snobs can dish it out, Souma can serve it up, and when he learns that only a handful of the students manage to graduate every year, he swears that the only way he'll leave is as number one!

Source: Sentai Filmworks

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Reviews

WinTheWarOnPants
4

I'm not going to go into a ton of detail because this show is not worth the time. i just wanted to offer a counter too all the undeserved praise this show is getting. i will however, talk about some general points so that people who are thinking about watching this show should most likely stay away from it. Score Disclaimer: 1=the worst of the worst 5= average 10= perfection. Story: the store starts off with a decent base with a young aspiring chef leaving home and what he thought was going to be a fairly secure life to challenge himself among the best of the best in his field. the plot is doomed before it even begins with the beyond ridiculous and nonsensical(in a bad way) food tasting scenes which let you know right off the bat that cooking is nothing but a hollow shell of a plot device. the main story is even further cluttered and pulled down by the introduction of the love interest and all of the insanely overused shonen tropes. Animation: nothing to complain about. good quality. moving on. Sound: completely average Characters: oh dear where to start... the main character is typical shonen bland which isn't that bad if your into that, but all the other characters range from bad to "omg how can you make characters that are this horrible". love interest is the worst kind of tsundere, who is a pretty much a princess that was born better than everyone, but only the main character doesn't treat her like a princess THEREFORE she loves him... the rest of the characters have some INCREDIBLE "super power" or skill set that they use to cook and yes... it's as lame as it sounds. Megumi is honestly the only decent character in the whole show(other than kinda saoma)because while she is very cliche she also has some depth and actual struggles that she has to overcome. Conclusion: This show is very overrated and with all the lazy shonen tropes you've seen before but with a new skin. If you just want a show to turn your brain off and watch goofy poorly written nonsense and have some laughs(it is funny at some points) then given it a try. be warned however, if you decide to give it a try it can eat your time fairly quickly. Deceptively little actually happens throughout the show and you can find yourself clinking on the next episode simply because you want something to happen and nothing ever really happens.

Gzerble
7.8

You had me at tentacle rape. Food Wars! is everything both good and bad about Japan at the same time, and it is glorious. Shameless fan service, a silly shounen plot inside a competition anime, various mumbo jumbo about cooking which is sometimes kinda true and at times just wrong but feels right... this show is the Donald Trump of anime. It has everything you should absolutely loathe about Japanese animation, yet is just so funny and you can't be sure if the charisma is intentional or not. This is a show that everyone who attempts to view as an adult should hate, but everyone loves. Because perhaps the greatest thing in Food Wars! is that it brings out a feeling of childish fun. The humor is juvenile, but it's fun. The plot is a thin at best, but it's fun. The drama is so artificial that it goes beyond ridiculous. But. It's. Fun. Everything is over the top in the series. There is only one character that acts remotely normal, and he walks around naked. The fan service is blatant and hilarious. Anyone who knows cooking will laugh his ass off at the reactions (and at least some of the recipes; I'm sorry to break it to you believers, but a burger without meat will always suck compared to a burger with meat). But I cannot deny the effortless charm in the execution. What can I say? There is a combination of earnestness and a wink to the audience that just makes Food Wars! irresistable. It is to school life shounen what Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is to mecha shounen. A genre I hate, made with charisma and over the top antics, aimed at both the people who love the genre and at people who like mocking it. This is a labor of love, and it shows. Oh yeah, there's tentacle rape in the first episode. It's hilarious. Writing (story and characters): Raise your hands if you heard this before: a teen from a modest/poor background is somehow in a school with rich/talented/famous kids, and he must prove himself the best among them through hard work and determination. He makes a lot more enemies than friends at the start, but his passion and drive soon have him surrounded by a good bunch as he takes on seemingly impossible challenges, each time surpassing his limits. Of course, there are high stakes competitions, but he will work hard to be the best! But, as a foil to our protagonist, there are his supporting cast. The Tsundere, the shy girl, his friendly rivals, his not friendly rivals looking to crush the commoner under their superiority, and of course, an ulikely group of friends with different styles. They're a practically a super-duper-generation-of-miracles! So the plot and characters are a cliche. Food Wars! has the most stomped on cliches ever. What makes all this matter very little is that combined, they actualy work. Usually this stuff makes me scoff and deride a show, but here they combine into endless setups for gags, fan service, fan service gags, and just over the top ridiculousness. This is definition of "so bad it's good". And you know what? I'm one hundred percent that the author aimed directly at that, and scored masterfully. It ticks all the boxes shounen, harem, ecchi, and parody. It also manages to do this in a way that's graceful and unforced. Art (animation and sound): Usually, I say that the art has the unenviable task of bringing the writing to life and kicking it up a notch. But really, when the writing is so over the top, all that's needed is to actually keep up. That isn't an easy task in any way, but the artwork manages to give a good showing and definitely does the job. The animation is good. Well, not so much the animation, which is rather static at times, falls upon the "scroll through some still picture over a psychedelic background" cliche a lot, and doesn't involve very intense choreography of motion. But the still pictures are great, the character designs charming (if a bit towards ecchi cliches), and most of all it just matches up so well with the tone of the series. I'd have liked to have hated the sound because of the veritable standard range of voice acting, standard soundtrack, and cliche opening and ending themes. But it actually fits so well. It matches the extremities of the writing, glues it to the visuals, and does everything it should. Food Wars! has executes well on the audio, there's no doubt about that. But all this being said, the flaws are still there. It cannot be said that the animation and sound are top-tier. They fit magnificently, but you can see and hear where the budget constraints made this show less than it could be. But given all that, the artwork of Food Wars! is great at doing what needs to be done for the writing to really come to life. Overall: Really, I should hate this show. I don't. It's ridiculous and awesome, and it does it with a completely natural feel to it. Food Wars! is touted as great, and it kinda is. If you don't mind some blatant fan service, aren't expecting anything cerebral, but are just looking for something fun... this hits the spot. Oh yeah, tentacle rape within the first five minutes. Prepare to laugh your ass off.

UndeadMonster
4

What's to hate about Shokugeki no Souma?A lot actually, Food wars feels so bloated, the story is just a poor excuse of a story about cooking food, yes the food looked good but does that make up for the bland story? No and if you think that, well good for you. The characters are supposed to be enjoyable right? Well souma felt like the most bland harem protagonist, every female character was there just for the fan service. The animation is okay at best. The sound and music in the anime are actually good somehow.The enjoyment I had from this anime is very low and boring at best. Overall this anime gets a 4 out of 10.Is there anything that you could hate about Shokugeki no Souma?The answer is yes and more than you'd first expect. The plot line, unlike the food, is very bland and flavorless. When you can predict what Souma will do even though the things he does is "crazy" becomes very off putting from the start. Well you may think that the story is less plot driven and more character driven? Right? Wrong yet again, the characters are very one dimensional with each of their talents being showed off maybe once or twice if ever then they are casted aside to watch crazy octopus boy try and overcome some new chef that still only has a single thing going for themselves. Souma himself feels like the usual dense MC who doesn't notice very obvious things. The female characters are put there at first for new enemies to topple, but then after their "arc" become nothing more than fanservice for when their clothes are stripped off them. The animation is at an acceptable level that is comparable to most shows coming out around the same time as it. The only good thing the show has going for it is the sound direction, it does what it should with elevating what you see on screen without being overbearing and taking away from the impact of what happens on screen. My personal enjoyment of the show was very low and had me yawning for the best reaction, I give it a 4 out of 10

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