SpanglishJC

Fun show all in all, I definitely enjoyed this one despite some things I personally did not like.

I am likely going to include spoilers so skip to the conclusion at the end if you have not seen this show yet.

Story 

The story revolves around a group of characters from the Toutuski Culinary Academy, mainly protagonist Souma Yukihira and Megumi Tadokoro with Erina Nakiri as an antagonist of sorts. It's split into 3 arcs, the introduction, the training camp and the Autumn Elections.

The introduction did a good job of setting the story and introducing us to most of the characters. I did find it a little odd though that the school was considered a highly prestigious school despite its very tiny graduation percentage. But I let that go since this is a cooking school designed to produce the best of the best so ok that's fine. 

I do like the idea that they use these food duels or 'Shokugekis' to settle certain matters of dispute even if we only see a handful throughout the show, which to be honest I liked, they were made out to be some sort of last resort to settle something so it would have been a bit silly if we got them left and right.

The Training Camp arc was my favourite. We saw some development from Megumi in particular, and some exciting cooking scenes. I will say now though that whilst the character reactions to eating food are indeed funny, they start to drag on for me, especially when judging commences which I will get to a little later.

This arc introduced us to former alumni of the school, there were a few in particular that I liked and would like to see more of in future, those would be Gin Doujima and Koujiro Shinomiya, the latter coming off as way too strict, for example heexpels a student on the spot for using apple scented hair product (which was a bit silly but ah well). 

A particular point in the story I enjoyed was that when Koujiro expels Megumi not because her dish was not good enough, in fact her dish was very much the opposite, but because she altered the recipe slightly due to the fact she had to make up for a poor ingredient (I think it was a cauliflower). Souma challenges him to a Shokugeki in order to reverse the decision staking his own place at the academy. All ends well when Megumi keeps her place after standing her own in the bout (she was made head chef as one of the conditions of the duel) and a stagnating Koujiro is revitalised by her cooking and comes to realise that he had been neglecting input from others.

After this we get a brief return to the Yukihira diner for a mini arc involving a Karaage business killing the shopping district. Honestly though this really just felt like a filler arc, it was not too interesting and not a lot happens. Still it only lasts a couple of episodes so I cannot fault it too much.

The final arc is that of the Autumn Elections, a tournament of sorts. Specifically this arc deals with the preliminaries. This arc includes a lot of those long judging scenes that I am personally not a huge fan of, they go on too long for me and what really makes it worse is how in most instances it is a little too obvious to predict what was going to happen. On a couple of occasions we had these little stand offs between characters, notably the Aldini brothers and the 'witch' girl, whom is completely obsessed with Erina, and Erina's assistant. In both instances the second person to go up beats the other which is rather grating after the aforementioned judging scenes. Still I liked that Souma only got second despite going up after his rival who's name I forget, although they had to throw in some sort of secondary victory in the form of scoring higher with more of the judges meaning that he would have won were it a Shokugeki.

All in all though the story was enjoyable and I definitely enjoyed the comedy of the show, it's just held back a bit by those drawn out judging scenes.

Animation

It was pretty good, I am never too great at going over the more technical side of things but I can say that I liked how things looked and thought the cooking scenes moved very well. 

I really liked the funny chibi looking bits too.

Sound 

Sound effects were good, felt like I was watching a cooking show at times. The first OP was great too, can't say the same for the second. Music fit the part when used.

Characters

This was what I liked most of the show. Megumi was my personal star of the show. She had the most progression throughout the series going from being overly dependent (on Souma specifically) to becoming a chef confident in her own abilities, even if she occasionally retains her inherent anxiety and clumsiness. She and Souma have some good moments together and she ends up learning quite a lot from him. This could be seen as her needing him in order to improve but from my own view this is how a lot of people improve, by learning from others.

As for Souma himself, he was likable enough for me but he didn't really show much progression. He is the central, OP-type character of the show which is fine, but he does not actually show any real growth. He is shown to already be able to just think up solutions on the spot and produce some amazing dishes, it's only apparent he has a lot to learn when we see him go up against his dad.

I did not understand all the love for Erina. She comes off as a complete tyrant, only doing things for herself and not caring about anyone else, an impression which lessens near the end when it is made apparent that she does indeed think of her assistant at least, and her intimidating demeanour is lessened when we remember she is indeed human and can easily feel embarrassment among other emotions. Still I could not come to like her very much, she hass too much of an elitist ‘Holier-than-thou’ attitude. I hear her motives become clearer later on so I hope we see some development in the next series.

As for the secondary characters, they were all fun. Isshiki and his tendency to walk around with nothing but an apron was really amusing as there was no real explanation from what I remember. I would have liked to have seen a little more from them as they are mostly side characters.

Conclusion

Great show that I would recommend to anyone, especially if they like food shows. The main characters serve their purpose well enough with some good character progression for Megumi. Held back by some things like the frequent predictability of an outcome of a 'battle,' I felt like the tension just does not build up enough, or the little to no real progression for the protagonist. 

I am definitely looking forward to what the next series brings.

A SpanglishJC ‘review’

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