Dorm life is the best.
What They Say:
The Madonna of the Polar Star
Shokugeki no Soma centers on Yukihira Soma, a middle school student who is determined to surpass his father’s culinary skills. One day, his father decides to close down their family restaurant and hone his skills in Europe. Before leaving he enrolls Soma in an elite culinary school that is extremely difficult to enter with a graduation rate of only 10 percent. Will Souma be able to improve his skills, or will the kitchen prove to be too hot?
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Soma has been accepted to Totsuki and even had time to show off his skills in a class taught by an extremely strict teacher. But something he hadn’t yet done, which you might think would come before that second part, is find a place to live. Obviously this is the kind of school that consumes one’s entire life during his or her tenure, so that means Soma is going to experience one of the most unique things imaginable: dorm life! Being a transfer student and a poor kid by this academy’s standards, it’s only natural that, like most protagonists in his shoes, he end up at the bottom-of-the-list, most run-down dorm on an otherwise impeccable campus. It’s a good thing that’s always where the most interesting characters live.
It wouldn’t be an episode of Food Wars! if Soma didn’t have to fight against the odds and whip up an incredible dish, so naturally the requirement for living in the Polar Star dorm is doing just that, and impressing the scary old dorm mother with the outcome. Like many cooking shows of different degrees of reality, Food Wars! likes to show what kind of magic can be done with very sparse, uninspiring excuses for ingredients. Soma ends up in such a situation, using every leftover scrap available in the dorm’s kitchen to create a masterpiece that proves once more how incredible a chef he already is. This show isn’t afraid to be equal opportunity in its over-the-top fanservice as far as genders go (which we see a bit more of in an especially comedic sense thanks to an unusual kind of naked apron scene), and since most of the characters are fifteen, that’s the age we see the most nudity and sexuality from, although at least most of them look a bit older. It’s not quite down with going to that level with the elderly, though, as the dorm mother remains fully clothed during her internal monologue over the exquisite taste of Soma’s cooking. It does take the chance to have her flash back to her younger days, making sure it can still fill its quota for sensuality and culminating in a rather comical return to reality.
Series like Maison Ikkoku, The Pet Girl of Sakurasou, and The Kawai Complex know that this kind of setup needs the wildest bunch of eccentrics to work, and while it’s only a single aspect of Food Wars!, we can already tell that it’s taken the right cues to get that down. These characters are intensely fun to hang out with, and honestly that could’ve taken up the entire episode without much complaint. This latter half of the episode is not without its plot importance, though, as it goes into much more detail regarding the Elite Ten that had been teased before, reminding us once again that this is by all means a shounen battle series through and through.
In Summary:
It’s time to start dorm life, and that means there are a lot more of these crazy characters to introduce. The quantity may be getting a little out of hand, but the dynamics forming in this group are beyond fun, and the plot implications keep it relevant, if also quite by-the-book.
Grade: B
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
HP Envy 14.
