Food Wars! The Second Plate - Reviews

ONE OF MY FAVORITE ANIME/ MANGA OF ALL TIME.

This review has been copied from my blog 'Shower of Sunshine'

Continuing on with the first season, Food Wars has had viewers hyped up about what was going to happen in this 13 episode anime filled with fantastic food and intensive competitiveness as the show kicked off with the Autumn Elections.

Here is my review

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Story Line

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After the qualifying test with curry dishes, eight contestants have entered the quarterfinal of Autumn Elections: Souma, Megumi, Takumi, Hisako, Alice, Kurokiba, Hayama, and Mimasaka. Their next challenge: bento.

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 The second season dives in straight away with the start of the Autumn Elections, no dilly-dallying as the first competition comes under way. What I like about this is that there isn’t any time that has been wasted into making content that appears to be unnecessary for the continuation of this amazing anime. Although on the other hand, the Autumn Elections go on throughout most of the season which prevents the story from carrying on at a reasonable pace. I did enjoy the last few episodes where everyone went to different restaurants to improve their skills, yet I did think the ending could’ve been done better but this probably wasn’t able to happen as the number of episodes in this season had decreased compared to the amount in the first season.

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Animation

Link to Original Image.

I spoke a lot about the animation in the review for the first season, but I will also share my thoughts here.

In my opinion,  I would say the animation is mediocre, there isn’t really anything too special. However, I love the animation of the food as it is presented in a way which makes even the viewer get hungry and want to make the dish for themselves. Furthermore, the animation tends to improve a lot during the fanservice scenes which is supposed to compare the taste of the food to sex. On the bright side, there isn’t too much fanservice but you can usually expect it when someone is eating Souma’s dishes.

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Characters

Link to Original Image.

It was nice to see some of the character’s backstories, even if they weren’t directly said as it made the viewer feel more attached to them and allowed everyone to pick a side, so it didn’t feel like Souma was the one that everyone had to like. One example of this is Jun’s assistant, Hayama. I’m trying my best to not give anything away but personally, I found his story to be the most touching.

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Overall

I would give this anime…

WARNING: SPOILERS! Look for the spoiler tags. Also don't read if you haven't seen season 1 yet.

Positive

*FW! is still thé anime when it comes to food and cooking. There is just no other anime that is so detailed about cooking. Every dish is explained in detail and the meaning of every ingredient is mentioned and how it can transform an entire dish. And the dishes themselves still looked so freaking amazing. I like cooking and watching this anime made me want to try some of them. And that’s exactly what I did. Because of the FW! manga giving detailled recipes I was able to recreate Souma’s apple risotto from S1 last year on Christmas. And this year I recreated Aldini’s Four Layer Semifredo which was freaking amazing. For this recipe I have to give credit to Emily Bushman. She runs the blog Penguin Snacks where she recreates anime and manga dishes and she made the recipe for Aldini’s Semifredo.

For a video review, check out my Youtube channel. Link on my profile page. 

*Another food related point is that in the Stagiaire arc FW! went beyond the Japanese kitchen. Most of the recipes in FW! are Japanese cuisine with sometimes some foreign influences like when Aldini is cooking. But then in the Stagiaire arc FW! dived completely into the French cuisine which I, as a European, am way more familiar with than the Japanese cuisine. So I was good that FW! extended its wings beyond the cooking of its land of origin.

*Next positive point was the development of Souma in this second season. First the non-spoiler part, to me Souma got the most development in his match against Subaru and more specifically in the preamble to the match. That scene where Souma straight up say in Subaru’s face that he doesn’t respect him as a chef. That was the first time in the anime that Souma was this serious. In all his matches Souma would stay his nonchalant self but here he was dead-serious. And in my opinion he was right, Subaru was an ass and didn’t deserve to be called a chef. Not because of his copycat technique but because of his non-respect for his opponents. He wouldn’t just defeat them but he would humiliate them and take something precious from them. People like that also don’t deserve my respect and Souma radiated that perfectly.

And now for the spoiler part of this positive point. If you haven’t seen FW! S2 yet, skip to Negative.

*Souma’s development didn’t stop at the Subaru scene but was extended to the end of the Autumn elections. To me it was a surprise that Hayama won the Elections. It was so atypical for a competition anime not to see the MC win. Look at a majority of the competition anime’s and you will see the MC or the MC’s team win but here Souma didn’t win which was what I expected from the start of the Elections. Hayama was a deserved winner, I want to get that out. If you can master herbs like him and create such amazing looking dishes, combined with his backstory than you deserve to win and I hope that in a 3rd season or in the manga, we get to see Hayama’s journey more as he battles the Elite Ten. But here Souma realized that he wasn’t the best chef in the world. And that was extended into the Stagiaire arc. When Souma was cooking with Shinomiya, who btw could have stayed a little bit more hidden in the op and ed, he realized that he doesn’t know everything about cooking, that he still has a lot to learn before he can reach his full potential.

Negative

*Now I talked about Subaru before but I didn’t like the way he was introduced into the story. Just saying “Oh this is the final candidate who qualified but we never showed that.” is way to easy. It’s such a bitchy way to get new characters into your story. At the end of S1 I already thought that something was wrong because in Megumi’s group Ibusaki and Marui tied and it was never mentioned who passed. So that was “solved” by introducing Subaru but preferably not in this way.

*The most heard complaint of this second season and its biggest problem is the pacing, especially in the first episodes. Because of this second season only being 13 episodes, which was a complete surprise to me, some of the matched were rushed. Best example was the quarter final match between Hayama and Hisako, this match was resolved in 10 minutes. But also the matches between Souma and Alice and Kurokiba vs Megumi felt very rushed. In my opinion it would have better if they left out the stagiaire arc and gave those 3 episodes to the Elections so that it all felt less rushed.

*And because of that rushed feeling lots of things that I wanted to see in this second season didn’t happen. There was simply no time for it. There was no romantical development between Souma and Megumi. The possible lesbian relationship between Erina and Hisako wasn’t exploited further although I was happy that Hisako returned in the Stagiaire arc, I thought she was completely lost after the Elections. But most importantly, the bound between Erina and Jouichirou that was showed at the end of S1 is never mentioned again. And that was a real shame because I really wanted to know what their connection was.

Conclusion

So as a conclusion, it was a shame that this second season was so rushed and because of that most of my problems with it arose. But it is still the best cooking anime out there. And that’s why I’m going to rate Shokugeki no Souma: Ni no Sara at 3,5 stars, it was a little bit less than S1 which I gave 4 stars. Now I’m not sure if there will be a 3rd season. There’s definitely enough content but the fact that S2 only had 13 episodes points in the other direction. I will wait a bit to see if there will be an announcement but otherwise I think I will read the manga. I want to see the rest of this story and all these unresolved issues resolved.

The first plate didn’t leave me full, but did give me the toots, so why am I coming back for more?

Story - 5/10

Series two of Food Wars picks up where we left off in the last season, and unfortunatly that means that three quarters of the show is dedicated solely to the completion of the fall selection, and thus more repetitive food battles.

Since each of those battles dealt with a different ingredient or style, as in season one, it again allowed the viewer to learn a few new things about food or cooking techniques. Each battle might have more or less played out as you would expect, but this time around the stories surrounding each battle were actually entertaining and the overall story wasn’t just useless hype for one terrible character.

Surprisingly I found this format more enjoyable than that of the first season, which focused more on Soma being a self absorbed jerk than the cooking itself. The only thing that got a little annoying, and they might have done this as a joke to other western food shows that focus on Japan, was the constant repeating of the term “umami.” Now when talking about cooking you are bound to hear that term, as it did become the word de jour of the food world recently, but there were episodes where its use was in the dozens, which was a little over kill.

The last few episodes dealt with the students having to undertake on the job training. Out of the entire series so far, these were far and away the best handful of episodes. With each student training at a restaurant, or rather an exaggeration of a restaurant, we got a glimpse a series that would have actually rated quite high for me. Though like season one, one of my gripes was how in the end most of the restaurants ended up having the staff bow down to the students working there, further pushing the idea that a generation of children are just intrinsically better than their peers.

Animation - 6/10

There is not much to differentiate season one and season two of this series. The only thing that was really noticeable in the animation department was the lack of locations. In season one they did a great job of creating so many different places where the scenes took place, but this time around most of the show is happening in the main battle arena for the fall selections, so it leaves few areas for the team to create more great scenery.

Sound - 7/10

Music for the second season was on par with that of the first. The opening is more of the now ever prevalent Japanese emo-rock that’s found its way into so many anime shows. Likewise the closing is pretty much the same, though this time with a female singer. Both are songs I would never personally listen to, but they do have a place in a series such as this.

Like the animation, all the voices were essentially the same from season one, which was one of the highlights of that series.

Characters - 2/10

Because this season revolves around the quarter finals, semi-finals and finals of the fall selection, a majority of the characters are those we’ve met in the first season. They add a few bits of backstory to the likes of Megumi, Alice, Yua and Akira, but most of it is either rehashed from season one, or the same “poor child having to upend their peers” story that repeatedly tainted the prior episodes.

The only new character that was worth talking about was Soma’s semi-final opponent Subaru. Although his backstory is also one that fits into the aforementioned “I need to be better than daddy” angle, what they wrote about his time at Totsuki, and his particular view of cooking, made him a little more well rounded than many of the others we’ve had to endure.

Oddly the most interesting characters again are those we don’t really get to see much of, the former students. Between Chef Shinomiya, whom Soma gets to work under, and the judges who worked at the fall selection, I see characters I’d rather learn about than pretty much any of those we’re actually stuck with.

Overall - 4/10

While still not a great series in my eyes, the show did take a huge leap forward with those last three episodes. If the show was made up completely like them, with interesting stories intertwined, I think I would really enjoy it, but if it’s just more food battles, fan service and Soma being highly unlikable, then it can be tossed out in the trash with the other scraps.

Absolutely love this anime. The culinary tips and tricks are sound. The similes to describe the food are hilarious. The characters are endearing. I have nothing bad to say about this show.