Hey guys! I've recently discovered Shokugeki no Souma and was very plesantly surprised. Even though the first couple of episodes are cringe, it gets insanely good from episode 3 onward!
It's far from my favourite anime, but I'm astounded by how solid it is on pretty much all fields.
Since the author of the manga worked with a chef, everything regarding food is coherent. The vocabulary, the techniques, the recipes.... I know nothing about food (except that I love eating it), but the fact that the manga had the recipe in every chapter with cooking scenes says a lot. Many Youtubers have even replicated the dishes. The main takeaway is it takes far longer to bake than shown in the anime, and the taste is, of course, not "foodgasmic".
Visually it's extrelemy clean and flashy, there's no need for better animation.
The OST and the stellar casting of seiyuus makes it unbeatable in audio too.
Honestly, my biggest gripe with SnS was the scenario of Central Arc (which is, ironically, central to the whole manga). So any cooking manga coming after that could write a better story... but frankly, would that make it a better cooking manga?
The mere choice of direction could be a deadly blow for the newcomer! Cooking battles aren't unique to SnS, but that manga made the wise decision not to make it the whole story. When we think about it, the students' scolarity is the plot, and Shokugekis are just a means to an end from time to time.
A new cooking manga would have to:
- either do the same (focus on scolarity), but then it would get the obvious reaction : "SnS did it."
- focus on the "battle" side of things and end up still being compared to SnS("SnS did that and much more too").
Basically, imo, focusing on the studies while still keeping a YugiOh-like sort of food battles was the best decision the author could have made. Small arcs like the internship or the training camp are what make it so awesome!
I honestly can't tell how one can write a better cooking manga. Again, SnS is far from perfect, I see the flaws. I'd love to erase most of the ecchi (I usually don't mind ecchi, but in SnS it's neither funny nor sexy, it's just distracting and annoying). Souma gets a bit too cliché midway. Many side characters deserved more development.
But even if a new manga had these improvements... in terms of art, food, vibes, it's gonna be a very tough challenge.
Even just in terms of length, SnS is in a very sweet spot in my opinion. 84 episodes, with five more if you count the OVAs. It's so much that you get to spend time with the characters you love.
A brand new cooking anime can, of course, reach that number and higher... but then, would it have the same animation quality? And even if it's possible in theory.... in practice, there's a high chance that the new anime only gets one cour (12 episodes), maybe two... Even if it's a manga adaptation!
So, what I wanted to say is, well done SnS. I frankly don't see how one can top it. Anytime I'll try a new cooking anime, I think I'll always end up disappointed even if it manages to do better on one thing or another. I've heard of Ben-to, it sounded fun, then I looked at the number of episodes.... It's 12. So even if I end up invested in it, it will only last for four hours... |
