Food Wars! Shokugeki no Soma
Director: Yoshitomo Yonetani
Producer: J.C.Staff
Genre: Cooking/Ecchi/School/Shounen
Simlucast: Crunchyroll
Food Wars! Shokugeki no Soma is an anime adaptation by J.C.Staff and is based on a manga of the same name that is currently being published in Weekly Shonen Jump. Written by Yūto Tsukuda and illustrated by Shun Saeki, Food Wars! Shokugeki no Soma, is one of a handful of new series to appear in Weekly Shonen Jump over the past few years, that are really raising their profile and becoming some of the best the magazine has to offer. Combining great shonen style storytelling and some of the best artwork in manga today, Food Wars! Shokugeki no Soma has become a hugely popular series, that is already being release in English via Viz Media and the excitement for this adaptation has been meet with great anticipation.
J.C.Staff is handling this adaptation, I personally find them a little hit and miss and with two series on the go this season we’ll have to wait and see which is the hit or the miss. Yoshitomo Yonetani is in the director’s chair for this series and while the majority of his work is not quite to my taste his work as director for both Tiger & Bunny movies is all I need to have confidence in his ability.
Being familiar with the source material is like a double edged sword because you know going into a series how good it can be and when it’s not the flaws stick out a mile. Thankfully Food Wars! Shokugeki no Soma has left me no reason to be concerned, easily becoming one of the most popular series this season with fans.
The first episode did throw up a big question though; Souma creates a dish called ‘flame-grilled squid tentacles dressed with peanut butter’ as though the idea of it is totally outrageous. But this would essentially just be another way of preparing squid in satay sauce which is a very normal and common dish throughout Asia. Not a reason to the write off the series but a small oddity, also get used to seeing Souma creating some of the weirdest dishes you could ever think of.
Readers of the manga know what to expect with this series, newcomers be warned though! While the story is family friendly, when a character is essentially having an orgasm over food with very graphic scenes to accompany this, be prepared to hit the off button if in the company of non-anime watchers, as this may be a tough one to explain.