Šokugeki no Sóma

Let us imagine the great Czech chef Jirka Babica has arrived at a prestigious culinary school to show all the snobs there how to cook properly, and for cheap, to show that even the most ordinary food could taste divine when well-prepared and well-cooked. Moreover, he wanted to prove that no situation is really lost and that if he does not happen to have an onion, he could just as well improvise and throw an orange in there because, well, that also begins with O. I guess anyone could imagine how that would have turned out... Fortunately, Yukihiro Souma is not as much of an abject culinary amateur as Jirka Babica, and so he did not practice his culinary skills by fiddling around with recipes and crazy experiments on live TV. He actually trained under the careful supervision of his father, who is probably akin to being something like Gordon Ramsay's older brother, judging by the culinary delights he serves up. Of course, quite often the main male protagonist was also drawn to various insane combinations and forms that probably no sane person would have thought up. After all, it is always good to try out new things and find out how a woman’s face looks when she has just eaten some food that made her feel like she had just been fucked in quite a hardcore way by an octopus. Because these mistakes occur the main male protagonist is able to hone his style to such a standard that when tasting his food, women's panties get wet and men are ejaculating through sheer pleasure, and now he is on a hard journey to do what Jirka has never been able to do in his life, to earn the respect of real chefs. I for one have to say that, unlike Babica's on-screen delicacies, this show was very easy to watch and cooking has never looked so fun and exciting. 9/10. (2019.06.07)

The best action "gastroporn" is back in full swing! The main ingredient is action, the suspense could be cut with a knife, and a dash of humor is thrown in to taste. This is all served up by old friends and great chefs. I do not recommend watching this show on an empty stomach, or perhaps at midnight. And now, please excuse me, I am going to go and eat the contents of the fridge. 9/10. (2016.07.03)

For me personally, this was the best season of Food Wars!: Shokugeki no Soma so far, and I am looking forward to the follow-up. To cut a long story short, I finally got the whole Elite Ten Council! As a luxurious addition, a real bad guy turned up (with the voice of Aizen from Bleach to boot) who is charismatic, has a proper game-plan, and everything was starting to give the impression something was really starting to happen. While those previous seasons could be described as classic sports anime, where the central focus was food preparation, where we have individual competitions, a tournament, training, etc., in this season we finally get conflict, politics, and a clash of different approaches to cooking. It is just even more interesting than it was and still just as delicious and amusing. Once again, after each episode, I was left incredibly hungry. However, there is the suspense I was missing in the past. Personally speaking, I am completely satisfied, and so far, I do not have much to complain about. 9.5/10. EDIT 07.06.2019 - COMBINED WITH THE REVIEW FROM 25.06.2018 of Food Wars! The Third Plate: Totsuki Train Arc. The second part of the third series of Food Wars is once again very interesting and exciting. The conclusion is thrilling and has a taste of the big decider, and the competition with its few rounds is very good. However, it is clear that the future (the regular fourth) season will contain a lot of flashbacks, a lot of shokugeki and long monologues, and sizing up egos (even though people who like that really do exist, like me) and that this competition will be really long and probably drawn out (which in turn could turn some people off watching the next season). But back to the "Totsuki Train Arc." It was interesting to see how the main protagonists would cope with the tests that were set up so that they had no chance of passing them. Sometimes it is incredibly unrealistic and almost ridiculous how much the examiners tried to make it difficult for them. It was just too obvious how much the screenwriters tried their best to shock audiences with what the main protagonists have to overcome and, of course, shock with how original they ended up being. On the other hand, I did watch the interesting Yukihira x Hayama showdown. There was also a glimpse into the backstory of Yukihira's father and his generation, revealing the motivations of the main bad guy Nakamura. Anyway, apart from that, it is once again a classic, very tasty experience, and I had the urge to eat something myself while they were preparing food. There were some amusing moments when the judges consumed the food, and it was all wrapped up in decent animation and had a great soundtrack. I am not complaining, and for me, this anime series, especially as a lunchtime accompaniment (or just to whet my appetite before a meal), is a great and tasty experience. 9/10. (2017.12.19)

On the one hand, I thought this was the grand finále to everything I have been waiting for since my initial encounter with the Totsuki elite culinary school and the appearance of Azami. However, on the other hand, I am once again looking back and reviewing whether it was really as awesome and impressive as I was thinking it was. It was certainly a big cooking tournament, that was supposed to deliver the best dishes and the ultimate gastronomic experience. Oh, and there were a lot of dishes I had never heard of and will probably never taste (even though there was a special quattro formaggi pizza, for example, which made me immediately get the urge to order something similar - so in terms of whetting my appetite, it worked). After saying all that, was it that impressive, or was it just a pretty ordinary single elimination tournament narrative arc that I liked because there were characters I had been looking forward to seeing again? That is a tough question... In all honesty, I was not even as pumped as I imagined, and just watching how big of a gastronomic orgasm the jury members would have this time around did gradually get less and less interesting. And at the end, Azami's ability which was just pure pure fan service was probably just about at the limit of what I am still willing to accept as funny and not as just stupid. However, it was an intense shokugeki competition and it was pretty much an adequate execution of what I was looking forward to, so I am going to award it another five stars, with the caveat that I am worried about what is going to happen next, because here and now would be a good and, for me, logical ending, even though I am told it is to continue further... We shall see... After the twelfth episode, 8.5/10 (2019.12.30)

Even among the readers of manga series, the BLUE arc is a very unpopular part of Food Wars! Shokugeki no Soma, and after watching this anime series I can understand a lot of their criticisms. The last season brings the whole anime series to a head, when the best chef in the school, who for a long time has been secretly honing his skills, is defeated. Peace and quiet return when an existential threat to the school is averted. So, what is next? A villain appears out of absolutely nowhere, has a pretty decent introduction to the show, and defeats the one person the main male protagonist could not defeat, which automatically puts him at the top of the food chain, and then they throw in a not-so-believable shadowy organization that threatens the direction of the global culinary industry is headed - they just needed to come up with a threat that seemed bigger than before. All of a sudden, the screenwriters throw Mr. Saiba's strange objective, which comes out of nowhere into the story to give it some emotional depth, and it falls a bit flat. Add the typical tournament arc, give the villain a completely ridiculous superpower, and make it all level up again. Then we add a "mama" drama, a bunch of weird characters from that mysterious organization who turn up only to disappear again and are forgettable characters that just seem to get in the way. Finally, the anime series which we thought was about Soma actually becomes a soap opera about the Nakiri family, with another very strange twist that gives one of the villain's motivations another, highly ridiculous, dimension. It is a real mess of a show that does not exactly hold together. It is perhaps the realization that while the Star Wars saga was a soap opera about the Skywalker clan, this is a soap opera about the Nakiri family and the character it is named after actually being our very own Han Solo, and this final season is actually the new trilogy from the Disney! It is a disappointing hodge-podge of a show where the screenwriters did not really know how to execute their myriad ideas. The whole anime series should have probably finished at the end of the previous season. Everything is sillier, more absurd, over the top, and the stakes are artificially driven higher although occasionally some bits are good. It is basically a load of leftovers from a delicious dinner that is still somehow edible and could still be enough for a lunch on the weekend even if it is certainly not going to be a spectacular gourmet experience... 6/10. (2020.09.29)