A few months have passed since I've finished Shokugeki no Souma: Gou no Sara. Back then I didn't do a review, but decided once and for all to put my thoughts on paper. While this review, and the score I've given, is for the last season, being the finale of the series means that I'll be talking about the series as a whole in this review and my experience with it.
It all started many years ago, in 2017. I’m not sure how, but I’ve heard about this Shonen about cooking competitions. Back then I wasn’t that much into cooking, since then I’ve watched some Masterchef
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seasons, but nothing more than that. Yet, when I watched Shokugeki no Souma I was pleasantly surprised. The show made every cooking competition an epic battle full of action and it was a lot of fun to watch.
The characters, while nothing too special, are a fun cast to follow through the seasons as they progress in their studies and hone their abilities, each and every one of them with different styles, techniques and personalities. As far as story goes, it has always been over the top. A gastronomy school where you can bet anything, including expelling, on a cooking contest? That’s nuts. But I don’t think anyone here would disagree that we can, and have, accepted weirder for the sake of entertainment.
One of the main problems with Shokugeki no Souma is the lack of stakes. When you can put averything on the line, it becomes obvious that the protagonist won’t lose. That’s not a problem that’s exclusive for Shokugeki no Souma, tho, after all, do you really think Naruto would ever die in the middle of the series? He can’t die, without Naruto there’s no, well, NARUTO. The way to avoid this problem is to put side characters into danger and make the viewer fear for them, not for the protagonist. To be fair tho, Shokugeki no Souma managed to avoid this issue by having way more grounded situations, where the bets weren’t that big and the win far from guaranteed.
The focus of the show has to be on the cooking. While not always realistic, the way they explain the ingredients, techniques, preparations and how everything comes together to make something bigger than the sum of its parts makes you believe that you could potentially try to replicate those recipes yourself. Even if the result is predictable, the curiosity to see what they will cook next is enough to make you keep watching.
So, with all of that said, what happened? I adored this show, with Stagiare, at the end of Ni no Sara (Season 2), being, in my opinion, the high point of the series. From there, it only went downhill. As the series progressed, stakes got higher and, as such, the story got predictable. If the protagonist can’t lose, then the protagonist won’t lose.
That leads me to the second problem, what a like to call the “Naruto effect”. As the series goes on, Souma becomes more and more the spotlight of the series, being the one to save everyone when things get rough, and when you finally think a side character will have its time to shine, it doesn’t come through. I really wanted to see more of some characters.
The story as a whole became just too surreal. Like I said, it has always been over the top, but it becomes more and more ridiculous as time goes on, to the point where is hard to take anything serious.
Finally, the cooking fights became rushed and dumbed down. We no longer had detailed explanations of ingredients, techniques and such, instead the characters cooked and the side-characters spend a whole bunch of time repeating the same lines over and over to show how good the dish was. With that, the fights became boring and uninteresting. I no longer wanted to see the next dish they would come up with.
All of that is reflected on the score each season received. As of the moment of writing the user scores went, chronologically, 8.28, 8.19, 8.12, 8.06, 7.76 and 7.34, with a noticeable drop at Shin no Sara (Season 4) and Gou no Sara (Season 5). Season 5 in particular highlights everything that went wrong with the series. Character making ridiculous bets, minutes from each episode focused on repetitive character reactions and ecchi scenes, and a story that’s predictable from beginning to end.
Overall, Shokugeki no Souma is a series I will always remember as a series that I loved, with 2 incredibly good seasons at the beginning, but also as the series that disappointed me with its final ones. It’s hard for me to recommend Shokugeki no Souma to new viewers knowing how it ended up, even if I know the first 2 seasons are amazing. With that said, Gou na Sara is a disappointment in so many ways and a horrible ending to what could have been a great series otherwise.
Mar 28, 2021
Shokugeki no Souma: Gou no Sara
(Anime)
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A few months have passed since I've finished Shokugeki no Souma: Gou no Sara. Back then I didn't do a review, but decided once and for all to put my thoughts on paper. While this review, and the score I've given, is for the last season, being the finale of the series means that I'll be talking about the series as a whole in this review and my experience with it.
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