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Food Wars Series Review – There Are Foodgasms Galore

Posted on August 4, 2021July 30, 2021 by Karandi

Food Wars Overview:

Imagine Master Chef as an anime where tasting incredible food is an orgasm inducing experience. Then put in a cocky male lead and the usual shounen tropes for the other students and staff members, an absentee father, and lots of intense trash talk between students. There we have it, Food Wars.

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Food Wars Review:

Food Wars is an anime that surprised me. Mostly because I hate watching cooking shows. About the only one I’ve ever really gotten into is Iron Chef and largely that was because I found the way the judges described the food they were tasting so over-the-top ridiculous it was absolutely hilarious.

And that’s kind of part of what ended up selling me on Food Wars. Everybody in the story takes things so incredibly seriously and yet its really all very trivial given the worst case scenario is they’ll end up being asked to leave a school that by any real measure seems demonstrably broken as an educational institute. And honestly, that was kind of why I gave up on the franchise eventually but I did watch season two.

However, outside of the general humour and over the top nature of the premise, Food Wars neither particularly amazes me or annoys. It was pleasantly surprising in that it was a very enjoyable watch the first time through and I had a lot of fun the second time around (though a lot of that was from laughing at my friend’s reactions to the anime rather than the show itself – this is why you should always watch anime with someone).

Seriously, if you don’t pre-warn someone about the Foodgasms, watching Food Wars with someone because one of the most hysterical events you can imagine.

Soma (our protagonist) is cocky, hotheaded, and frequently gets himself into unnecessary complications due to his lack of ability to emphasise with others (let’s face it if it isn’t food, Soma is clueless) and yet he is actually surprisingly pleasant. He isn’t the shouting protagonist or the crying one. When he fails in a cook off (which does happen even though we usually forget that it does because it wasn’t an official cook off) he faces genuine frustrations but doesn’t fall into the trap of bottomless and depression inducing despair.

The fact that he also uses all of his experiences as a chance to learn and he helps build up the confidence of those around him (provided they fall into the magic category of protagonist’s friend or dorm-mate) makes him quite a fun character to watch mess around in a kitchen for a season.

But for all that I’ll sing the praises of Soma too many of the other characters are nothing more than a one dimensional idea of a character.

This is the nervous one, this is the elitist one, this is the angry one, this is the clumsy one, etc. While some of the support cast (particularly Megumi) do start to flesh out within the series, most of the others don’t escape being hit with one colour brush stroke and staying put for the duration.

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Though part of the problem is there are a lot of characters. Soma’s home town friends and the other shop owners, the excessively large student body at the school, the staff members, the former students of the school, and on and on it goes. When large chunks of episodes are devoted to cooking there isn’t a huge amount of time to give these characters much depth.

Then again, despite the characters feeling a little flat, the humour works more often than it fails.

Soma’s ongoing attempts to create the worst recipe as well as his tallying his wins and losses against his father, the over the top commentary during the food battles themselves, the outfits some of the students wear in the kitchens, Soma’s reactions when hearing the actual names for cooking techniques, and most of the other student’s reactions to Soma’s more ordinary food; all of these elements work to keep a smile on your face if they don’t make you laugh out loud.

Also, we have the foodgasms which are so over-the-top the only possible reaction is laughter. Okay, you could also be offended but I somehow doubt someone would stick with this anime if they found that offensive so minor issue.

So we have flat characters but a lot of laughs. And because this one is very much leaning into comedy, other than Soma wanting to be number 1, there really doesn’t feel like there’s much at stake here.

So if he fails a challenge he’ll be expelled? And? There are other cooking schools. That’s what bothered me the whole time watching this. These kids are killing themselves to avoid expulsion (because a school can certainly continue to operate by excluding the majority of its student body – not) and while they keep reminding us how exclusive this school is and how prestigious, the kids already know how to cook and they can do it well. There is nothing stopping any of them just leaving and getting an apprenticeship and becoming chefs.

Basically, stakes not so high. While the characters keep viewing this prospect as a fate worse than death, for the audience it really doesn’t feel like much is at stake and there’s really no drive beyond pride for most of the characters.

Of course I do appreciate food shots.

Rokuhoudou Yotsuiro Biyori Series Review: Bliss Out With Cafe Food

Posted on August 13, 2018January 6, 2020 by Karandi

While Rokuhoudou Yotsuiro Biyori isn’t the most original, exciting, or beautiful anime out there, this one ended up being a surprisingly good anime just to chill out to each week during the Spring 2018 anime season.

Review:

This is another one of those shows where I genuinely went into the first episode expecting to drop it at the end, maybe write up an impressions post, and never think about it ever again. However, I think I phrased it best in my First Impressions post where I said:

…I really just fell into a happy watching coma while watching this…

And yeah, that’s more or less the experience of watching these four guys serving tea and really great looking anime food in a cafe using plates and cups made by one of the guys while serving latte art that is kind of terrifyingly bad.

It isn’t as though this show didn’t have a few mis-fires. While some people really enjoy Gure’s character, I found him kind of the painful weak link in the set of four and when we were thrown an episode that entirely focused on him it kind of broke my general calm mood while watching. The other three characters, Sui, Tokitaka and Tsubaki all have their moments and I quite enjoyed watching their interactions. Even Gure was fine when diluted by the rest of the cast. It’s only when the show focuses on him for a longer period that it started damaging my calm.

Visually this anime isn’t exceptional. The cafe, Rokuhoudou, is a beautiful cafe and I’d love to actually know somewhere like that to eat because just going there would be an experience. However, other than a fairly washed out colour palette for everything except the food, there’s nothing really distinguishing about how this looks. With character designs they are all pretty ordinary so a lot of the support cast and cafe guests end up blending together, not that it matters all that much.

For the most part this is a slice of life and just follows the general daily business of the guys at the cafe so don’t expect much in the way of a compelling story. There is an ongoing plot involving Sui and his family but it kind of gets introduced in the first couple of episodes and then abandoned save for minor mentions here and there until the very end. This isn’t a plot driven drama so if you are looking for a story that moves, look elsewhere. Normally I would, and yet I really did have fun here.

Biyori5b — Do not watch this show while hungry.

Maybe it was just good timing because I happened to watch the first episode while really stressed and to be honest, there’s literally no way you can remain stressed while watching this. There were a number of episodes where I just completely spaced out while watching altogether and while that might not normally equal a recommendation, it was more or less exactly what I needed at the time.

If you want a clear idea of what you are getting into, each episode is basically split into two parts. Normally one of the guys will mention something or be thinking about something that will somehow connect to some customer problem or issue and then everyone will band together to drink tea until the problem goes away. Okay, that is somewhat sarcastic, but really they don’t go about solving all the world’s problems and they do like to think about things, usually while sipping on tea.

How much mileage individuals viewers will get out of these episodes will depend entirely on how well they like the focus character and the customer that they are helping. What that means is that some episodes will strike home better than others, but the series as a whole is pretty consistent in terms of tone and quality. The exception is episode 5 that goes off on some weird tangent that I still haven’t figured out. Just weird.

Overall though, I’d recommend giving this show a shot unless you absolutely despise slice of life stories. I’m not normally a fan of anime that lack a driving plot, but this one worked for me and at the very least it isn’t another cute girls doing cute things slice of life.

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Karandi James

18if Episodes 4 + 5: No More Curry, Ever

Posted on August 6, 2017August 5, 2017 by Karandi

Review Episode 4:

As you may have picked up while I was watching March Comes in Like a Lion, I’m not a big fan of simple, catchy children’s songs mid-episode (let the shogi cat song disappear from my memory) and this episode of 18if hammers us with a song about curry. Over and over and over again. It was almost enough to make me stop watching the episode except that there is a definite question I have about Haruto that I want an answer to and I don’t want to miss it should they give it to us one random episode so skipping or passing on parts of episodes is definitely out.

This episode follows same basic formula of previous episodes in that there’s a witch and Haruto ultimately helps her get over her drama so she stops being a witch. Only in this case she wasn’t in a coma. She was just a normal girl who got dumped by her boyfriend. She kept waking up and going to her job. And then at night…

Well, everyone has some weird hobbies I guess and at least she’s asleep. But what about Haruto? Does he ever wake up in the real world? And why is he so special in dream land? Also, what’s Lily’s deal? I’m really wanting to know what his deal is and the show is persistent in not going there.

Review Episode 5:

Another episode, another witch. This one apparently escaping the burden of being a famous ice skater and somehow losing her love of skating because of all the other things that come with being famous. Too bad her dream leads her right back to the idea that she belongs on the ice.

Haruto is once again caught up in the witch’s dream, though it is interesting that some witches just seem to be playing out their fantasy while others seem to be actively controlling their dream and effecting people outside of their dream.

Still, it was Lily’s involvement in this episode that really starts you asking questions about where this is going. Lily keeps showing up and she calls Haruto brother but what is she actually up to? Why exactly did she infiltrate this witch’s dream and help send her back to reality (and why did no one mention to Haruto what reality was waiting for the witch)?