Meng Qi Shi Shen

I really love this!

I think this is a great representation of a super light-hearted donghua/anime, almost slice of life, with a bits of plot here and there, but can still be watched at ease. The animation is also gorgeous and full of life. It 100% will make you watchers hungry too! The story is pretty mediocre, some twists in some parts, but it's still adorable. I'm recommending this to people who are confused of what to watch next, but aren't ready to consume heavy themes or plotless storylines. It's literally the in between.

It's an isekai, to put it shortly. Despite being predictable, it's still very ... enjoyable since the theme is food. The animation... no words. BEAUTIFUL. Especially when they started to cook, it truly is an amazing visual experience. Putting chibi animations once in a while was really a great addition to this donghua, it makes it super fun to watch.

The art style really aligns with the story since it's about food, it has to make the viewers hungry. The cooking scenes were great. The colors, the sound, the lighting, it was really mesmerising.

When talking about slice of life-ish media, this donghua didn't give much depth into the characters. It's only the first season so let's hope that they would add more depth into these characters. Maybe this is a donghua thing, but most interactions between characters were really unrealistic, doesn't mean it isn't enjoyable.

If you like stories, animation, or anything that has to do with cooking or food, I think this donghua is for you! It's also great for you people who's trying out donghua.

great anime, 8/10

The overall premise, an award winning chef gets isekai'ed to ancient China and has to survive and aspires to become a renown chef in the ancient world, is fine. But every thing about this could be done a bit better.

The story is filled with leaps of logic, where the MC gets access to cooking in ways that are totally implausible. She's has no money or resources, and somehow always can just waltz into a fully stocked kitchen and do her magic, for reasons. It throws in silly humor to skip some explanation of some other unlikely happenstances, but the tone feels very fragmented, with silly ... BS happening at one moment, and serious trauma the next. Nevertheless, if you accept the logic, the story works at larger scale. There's no exposition, which is nice, but sometimes there's a short time skip between scenes and we are wondering how did she manage to get there?

The animation is mixed. The staging of scenes is good, and the backgrounds and characters look fine, but it gets pretty choppy at times, with more complex scenes as still frames. The frame rate holds back the otherwise good fight choreography. Some attention is put to food scenes, which look good, though not as good as shokugeki.

The way the MC acts doesn't seem natural for someone in her situation. Relationships happen too fast, without enough development.

That said, it's not all bad, especially if you like food. You get to see an interesting main character overcome obstacles in unusual ways, with a satisfying sense of power whenever she enters the kitchen.

The budget put into animation quality and graphical quality is pretty self explanatory, too bad the source material holds the art back. Its a rather straightforward work overall, you can see hints of its origins as a wuxia/xianxia if you're familiar with the genre, but the worst the original work was removed.

Art & Sound 8/10
The food and cooking is fantastic, with appropriate musical accompaniment. My only complaint is that there isn't enough of it. They barely manage a cooking scene an episode and its really the only reason to watch this anime.

Writing 2/10
Really just nothing much in the writing at all. The first arc is ... an episodic isekai standard of getting to know the world, with a pretty unappealing romantic plot including multiple scenes of the heroine going "wow i really like this handsome guy" as he straight up threatens her. Its made more ridiculous when she actually has more chemistry with a character introduced in the second arc of the season (not that that's much of a romance either, its a low bar). The second arc sort of implies some dramatic plot points will be brought up but it goes no where as does the rest of the plot.

The biggest issue is that there's no feeling of conflict, which is most likely because the original source material just lacked anything substantial.
The first arc is never really explained properly, the conflict ending up pretty much just being a background detail.
The second arc lacks any significant conflict (which is what i feel the series should have just been from the start, just an episodic cooking adventure).
There's the overarcing drama, which is resolved unceremoniously with the sudden appearance of some goons, to generate a damsel in distress rescue.
And there are 2 instances of cooking competition where they barely pretend that the heroine will lose.

Overall its not like it isn't enjoyable, its easy to ignore the lack of any significant writing if you're just in it for the food scenes. There are some rather unfortunate stereotypical issues around playing character sexual orientation for comedy towards the end, which isn't great. Its a good effort on part of the production company and director for improving on what i would have considered an unsalvageable property.