Back to Sonikdium's Profile Sonikdium's Profile

This is going to be a very long banter so feel free to ignore this completely. I am just sharing my experience with the series "Shokugeki no Soma" or "Food Wars", the one anime that made me engrossed with this media.

Disclaimer: Rather than an 'appreciation' post, I should mention that this is a blabber about my experience with animes and mangas and how did Food Wars manage to make me discover, explore and make me completely fell in love with this form of media.

If you have read upto here after reading the first line of caution and seeing the length of the post, ... then ig you will continue reading the article so, there are no spoilers in the entire article, feel free to read it if you have not watched or read the series and want to give it a try.

So this dates back to April,2019 when I had watched about 10-20 animes and read max 5 mangas. I was the type of guy who would first watch some clips related to an anime on yt, read some reviews of the anime(both high rated as well as low rated reviews) on MAL to get a rough idea abt the anime and then start watching it. Suddenly, I got recommended a video on yt titled " Shokugeki no Soma Season 3 - Erina and Azami Finds Out Yukihira's Father (I will not post the link of the video because of reasons you might have guessed and I don't want that clip to be taken down from yt), and I watched it. If you have seen the clip or the food wars series, you will know what it is about and the way it is revealed with the ed in between the revelation is one of the best scenes of the entire series. I was captivated by that moment and have rewatched it again and again. I decided to give the series a go and honestly the first two episodes were kind of a bummer. Then the third episode comes and the scene with Soma's challenge to the entire Totsuki student community along with his first class where he teamed up with Megumi comes.

I had literal goosebumps while watching this entire episode, first from shock and madness and then of pure satisfaction and bliss. I continued and the series kept on getting better and better, the autumn elections arc is one hell of a tournament arc with so many good match-ups, even the side characters of the series introduced are none that you would ever hate and would be considered as one of the best rivals the entire anime community has to offer and you can mark my words for it. Hayama Akira, Kurokiba Ryo, Alice Nakiri, Mito Ikumi, Satoshi Isshiki, Kobayashi Rindou are all top tier characters who were if made the main characters of their own series, would definitely pose a serious threat to a lot of main characters the community has to offer.
Moving on, comes the second season of the anime where the autumn elections arc comes to its conclusion and ultimately ends up with the stagiaire arc, which is my personal favourite arc and the arc where the series hits its peak. The first part of the arc, where he wins over Hisako Arato is damn wholesome, and the second part of the arc, where he makes Shinomiya Kojiro acknowledge him is completely op and interesting which keeps you hooked up to the anime. Then starts the third season of the anime with the moon festival arc and the ending episode with the revelation which got me started on this anime in the first place, which finally leads to the central arc or the rentai Shokugeki arc, which is an entire big tournament arc where we see the first big villain of the series.

If you have followed me upto here, you would understand that this is where the S3 of the anime ended in April-May, 2019, the time I got into the anime series but I was so hooked up on this particular anime that I decided to give its manga a try and follow a manga for the first time, even though I am a binge type of guy and prefer binging a series, rather than following it. This was the time when the central arc had ended in the manga and the next arc, the blue arc had started. When I started the manga, it had released upto 308 chapters and I read them in one go in abt 3 days. I understood that the quality of the story had been deteriorating but I thought that I would be satisfied if the endgame would be good. Here the manga really slaps you damn hard as if you had done a mistake following this series upto now. The manga series ended around August 2019 with 10 chapters published after I was following the series.

The series ended with chapter 315 but they gave a news that there will be 3 epilogue chapters which will be published monthly and with larger chapters than the normal ones. I was so fucking excited that they can still redeem the series even after such a bad ending to the actual manga to be completely disappointed with the complete open ending of the manga.

All in all, the story left much to be desired and left a very big void in my heart, to search for series that can give me same amount of excitement, the same amount of thrill as I felt while watching this series, which made me completely fall in love with this anime and manga form of media, something which I made a fun of when some of my friends followed it and I did not. I am now 250+ animes and 500+ mangas in and yes, I have discovered a lot of series that made me excited, but still, if I ever see a clip or any post related to food wars anywhere, I still feel a tingle in my chest and recall my memories regarding the series which gives me nostalgia as well as goosebumps. It also made me realise that the genre that I like the most is non-action 'battle' and that no matter how hard you try, if you have fallen in love with a series that has actually made you dive in deeper and deeper into this form of media, you will never find a series that can completely satisfy you and fill the void created in your heart due to that particular series.

If you have felt a desire to read the manga of the series or watch the anime of the series, even if you are new to the community, I would definitely recommend giving it a go but I would still recommend you to watch this series only till season 4 or read the manga only till chapter 264 of the manga. It will provide a satisfactory end to the series for you and you would definitely like it.