Shokugeki no Souma: San no Sara

The third season of Shokugeki no Souma is the season where the story takes an interesting turn. An antagonist is introducted who changes the dynamic of the entire anime and makes surviving at totsuki a lot harder for Souma and the other protagonists.

The story this season is really interesting because of the introduction of an antagonist. The first half of the season starts off normal with the moon festival which is another cooking event. After that however the story changes and totsuki goes from trying to weed out the weak to trying to weed out dissidents. Overall this is a great change which makes ... the story way more exciting and coherent which elevates this season above the previous two.

The characters are mostly the same apart from the introduction of an antagonist and a more in depth look at the elite 10. The reasoning of the antagonist is sound and he isn't evil for the sake of being evil. He simply has opposing morals that he acts on making him a great character that adds a lot to the anime.

The music, animation and voice acting are all the same or similar as in the previous two seasons.

Overall this is an amazing third season that I enjoyed more than the previous two. It's definitely worth watching if you liked the previous two seasons.

This was a little bit of a let-down in comparison to the previous two seasons, which have remarkably made it into "wow, these are actually really good!" territory.

The biggest issue is with the absolutely exponential increase in the absurdity of the anime's premise. While the first two seasons carefully balanced the lines between parody, ecchi, and a genuinely good gourmet anime, this season decides to ramp up the tension and drama in a way that feels rushed and unnatural. It seems to be taking notes from Kill la Kill without actually taking into consideration why Kill la Kill was so successful with its insane premise ... of an authoritarian school district - Kill la Kill brings a level of absurdity from the very first moment you lay your eyes on the screen, which allows for the increasing insanity of its plot to just feel as though it's another reveal in the world. Unfortunately, Shokugeki no Souma does not have this permission from its audience to suspend their notions of disbelief. It quickly amps up the tension from an incredibly challenging and toxic - but believable - academic environment into a fascist dictatorship on school grounds.

Additionally, the art and animation quality has strangely decreased this season. Perhaps it wasn't as noticeable in the first two, but there seems to be way more use of the chibi forms of the characters than before. It seems like all of the budget was put into the orgasmic food scenes, which is fine, but just greatly contrasts against the rather poor animation in literally every other scene.

The first half of the arc, with the Moon Festival, was genuinely rather interesting and had some good character development for main cast. The second half had me slowly slipping into a state of contempt for how I could predict where the show was taking me.

I am additionally not a fan of what I believe to be the romance the show is trying to hint at developing between Yukihira and Erina. While I love the character development they've both given one another, I personally believe Megumi and Yukihira just make far more sense as a couple. Additionally, I hope that Shokugeki no Souma doesn't intend to rob us of the greatest sapphic relationship of all time between Erina and Hisako. I could really see that blossoming into something even more special down the line. But since Shokugeki is one step away from a harem anime, I am reluctant to put my full hopes into it.

Looking forward to the next season and hoping my critiques here are rectified in both the animation and writing quality.

So what's the big premise of this show? ... to just watch the same happen over and over again? Souma has been winning so many matches lately, and yet it's almost like nothing happens. 3 seasons in, and yet they keep introducing all kinds of
tournaments, where the winner, gets nothing in exchange. The fanservice keeps being the same, every reaction keeps being the same. To be honest, the food gets more development than the actual characters, it's strange. As far as this goes, this one cour has the be the worst of them all, with no progress in the story, and rather, it's filled ... with nonsense to sell more.

The big idea: Souma wants to enter the Elite Ten. How is he going to do it?: No idea, 3 seasons in and nothing has happened. When is he going to do it?: Again 3 seasons in, but apparently seeing people excited and being almost nude because of food seems more interested than the actual "plot", if you can call that a plot.

Story-wise, not much here, in any case, this has been been the worst season of them all. The only big thing is Souma fighting for the place he lives in. After that (And before that) it's a rollercoaster of nonsense, all of these together with no explanation of the actions of some characters, leaving you without 0 clues, so you end up not knowing anything. It's a joke. While this one was 12 episodes it felt like reading the 3 first chapters of a manga. Almost 4 episodes contained what 1 chapter of manga could have, it was slow paced leaving a lot of cliffhangers in the end, so in the next episode they keep doing the same. So, repeat this 2 more times and you are done.

At least this part's art was better than the so garbage part 2. Not to sound rude of course, but the lack of quality in animation has always been part of this show, only concentrating on making face expresions look ridiculously weird and making girls excited from eating. Leaving behind any proper proprortions of the body, leaving behind all the work the Manga creator has put into it, just so the fanservice can take over it. (w)

Sound: I guess it was decent. There isn't anything remarkable at this point, everything seems in place, from the OP to the ED, to Background sounds and music to voice acting. Like previous season, they knew how to remix their music so they don't overlap over the voices. But they forgot that not everything is music, they are using a weird amount of music in every episode it gets annoying, and not exciting as i'm guessing they want it to be.

Character: Again, they keep introducing characters that seem quite interesting, just so they get defeated in some sort of Shokugeki and never appear again. While the main characters have already been developed, it seems they don't care about anyone else.

Enjoyment: Not best experience i've had, i could've dropped the series in the middle, but i decided to continue... i ended regreting not dropping it. It seriously feels like a joke, rather than a "cooking" show. Where's the progress? Oh, I see.

3/10.