Shokugeki no Souma: Ni no Sara

Ni no Sara, continues from where the First Plate of Shokugeki no Souma left off. At the end of the First Plate, selected students competed in the Falls Selection, in a curry theme competition preliminaries, and only eight made the cut to compete in the actual selection. Souma Yukihira, who battles in the first bout against Alice Nakiri. A master in gastronomy cooking, (something that I greatly admire in cooking) and the cousin of Erina Nakiri.

Megumi Tadokoro, who specializes in using high quality end vegetables, dukes it out against Ryou Kurokiba. A real cut-throat who grew up as a head chef on the docks ... and specializes in seafood dishes.

Takumi Aldini, a true Italian, raised in Italian Cuisine, along with his twin brother, Isami Aldini, goes into battle against, Subaru Mimasaka. A sabotagor who specializes in taking the dishes that his opponents are going to make and turn them on its head.

Finally, Hisako Arato, Erina's assistant, childhood friend, and known as the, Medicinal Chef, specializes in using medicinal herbs in her cooking, (which is something that Chinese Emperors had incorporated into their foods for good health and longevity). She goes up against, Akira Hayama, who has the nose of a German Shepard, and is in a league of his own with his skills in incorporating spices into his cooking with remarkable balance.

Pros: The animation and voice acting remains the same. So, there's nothing really to talk about it.

The character development is better in this season as just like in the previous season when the preliminaries began. The finals allow for a more in depth of the other characters and their personalities. Souma is mostly in the background during these times. His development only comes during his battles, along with his opponents.

The music remains as good as it was in the previous season. I really love the opening theme to this season, but still prefer the one from the first season.

Another pro that I really like in this season is that each battle in the finals has a certain theme to it. I love some of the creative ways that each contestant comes up with in how to implement the theme.

Cons: The only con that I have for this season is in regards to the judges. Much like in the preliminaries. We only learn about three out of the five judges and the others are brushed aside. The same thing happens here in the finals, with the exception of the final bout. Take a moment to introduce the other judges and not just brush them off. You don't even have to give them a decent background like you did with the others. Just give a quick stance on where they stand in the culinary industry and move on.

Much like the First Plate, Ni no Sara, is a great continuation for Food Wars. I'd strongly recommened watching the First Plate before watching this season. So you don't miss out on any useful information. Enjoy!

it was pretty good
like i didnt appreciate the fan service and mitos titties bouncing like theyre getting paid to (they probably are tbh) and ig the people getting naked n shit was funny at first but i kinda started ignoring it and read 2 words of text before skipping becoz idk alot of boobage and the woman to man ratio of nakedness was just bad #equality is lacking. but anyways the food was fire and the people saying french words here and there was funny and this anime really gets u on the edge of ur seat for reals and yes anime fire
viewer (me) rating:: ... 3

In the 3 years since I watched season 1 I’ve sat through a lot of cooking shows. Mostly The Great British Bakeoff, which is fairly relaxing, but I’ve garnered a moderate amount of experience with shows like Masterchef as well. Putting aside that my watching of these shows was entirely against my will and that they’re well past their cultural peak, what I can say is that the second season of Shokugeki no Souma is just about as entertaining as its 3D counterparts.

The second season is almost entirely a tournament arc. For the most part it’s not a bad idea but this does come ... at the cost of any character or plot development. Instead each of the characters, which aren’t exactly deep in the first place, are reduced to their absolute barebones elements. Souma is just a generic shounent protagonist with pretty much no personality at all. Every other male character exists to obnoxiously yell all their dialogue which gets pretty tiring after a while. The female characters are a little better although they’re pretty much all tsundere’s and ultimately don’t contribute much to anything. Alice is probably the best of the bunch just because she actually forces some of the characters into banter but when half the banter is just screaming it dies off pretty quick.

Since it’s a tournament arc, every episode plays out exactly the same. And I really do mean exactly the same. The judges never have any faith in the food which is presented before then but then the moment they put it in their mouths they essentially have an orgasm because of how good it tastes. The judges are supposed to be world class and yet every single time they fail to understand exactly what is being presented to them and generally fail in terms of initial quality assessment. I do think the more in depth explanations of the taste profiles and how they’re achieves are a little interesting but it’s not really enough to make up for how shamelessly formulaic it is.

I mentioned that this is extremely similar to any popular cooking competition show which holds in terms of the forced dramatization and whatnot but not so much in the most important part: the food itself. What I think a lot of people don’t realize about the meme about how good anime food looks is that it only actually holds for movies, it’s certainly not the case here. I’m not going to say it looks bad, the visuals in this show are decent, but it’s certainly not enough to base an entire show over. In comparison to the real world versions, in which presentation plays as crucial of a part as the taste of the food itself and Shokugeki no Souma really comes up short. With food, the viewer can only really tell how good they think it looks, they can’t actually taste the food itself. Since every reaction to every dish is going to be exactly the same (the aforementioned orgasm) the only actual tells between dish A and dish B are that one is made by a main character, and how good one looks in comparison to another. Unfortunately it’s so insignificant that you might as well be watching the exact same episode play out 10 times in a row with the bare minimum amount of variance.

I remember season 1 being fairly entertaining for what it is. It fully committed into being a silly show which allows for much more creativity to make its way onto the screen. Season 2 makes the mistake of becoming far too streamlined. It’s essentially a bog standard cooking competition which gently suggests that you should take it seriously by removing all of the elements that made season 1 work at all. The characters are generic and obnoxious, there isn’t really anything notable about the food, and every episode plays out exactly the same. You might as well just watch masterchef.