Fifteen year old Yukihira Souma has spent most of his life helping his father in their family restaurant. Through this he has acquired many culinary skills and has become a very competent chef, but he is still unable to outmatch his father, and prove he is a worthy successor. When one day his father gets a job that requires him to travel around the world, so he enrols his son into the prestigious Tootsuki Culinary Academy. When he comes to the academy to take the transfer exam he is to cook for Erina Nakiri the academy’s best student, who is mightily impressed by Souma’s dish, but for some unknown reason does not want to show that she liked it, and tries to fail him, but Souma still manages to be accepted. Here at Tootsuki Academy he faces many a challenge that put all of his prior training to the test, but he takes them all head on, and manages to make tons of good friends in the prosess.
The story while decent is nothing out of the ordinary and has to be the weakest aspect of the anime. At first the storytelling is great but slowly as the story progresses the pacing begins to suffer and the story starts to occasionally drag a bit. This is most prominent during the cooking duels as they last for several episodes and feature annoying cliffhangers. Even though I have had my complaints, they are all minor and are typical for the shounen genre as a whole. The ending was satisfactory, but only in the case we are to get a second season, which is likely as the anime has gotten some great ratings
The anime’s main highlight are its characters. There hasn't been many shows with so many interesting and fun characters, and surprisingly I have to say that I liked them all. Our main character Yukihira Souma has to be one of the best leads I have seen in a while, he is just a whole lot of fun. The way he interacts with the other characters with his extreme confidence and easygoing demeanour is just perfect. Sadly we lack a lot of insight into his past and he experiences little to no growth through the course of this season, but the others sure make up for this and.
The main female character is Tadokoro Megumi and she is just as great as Soumaif not better. At first she is this extremely shy and nervous girl who wants to avoid getting into trouble and thus wants to stay away from Souma, but gets stuck with him in class, and later finds out they also reside in the same dorm. They form this great duo as they are almost polar opposites at first, but later Souma becomes a major influence on her, and slowly she starts gaining confidence and evolves into a fabulous chef. Her development is fantastic and the way she slowly grows as a person is great, and we are able to clearly see the influences other people make on her.
One of the more important characters is Erina Nakiri, academy’s best student and Souma’s main rival. The two of them met right in the beginning as she was the one overseeing the entrance exam. We can see almost at once that se is attracted to Souma, but she is repressing her feelings and so we can see some interesting moments between the two, Souma being outgoing as always, trying to communicate with her, while she is struggling not to open up to him.
Next we have a whole host of secondary characters which are all amazingly well done, and even though there are so many of them each and every one of them feels distinct, if not unique. I especially liked the other residents of North Star Dormitory, the way they all interact with each other is just prefect and the one who stands tall above all others is Isshiki Sempai, the only upperclassman in the dorm, who is an exhibitionist. The other highlight of the anime is Souma’s self-proclaimed rival Takumi Aldini, the only other student in the academy with prior experience with working in a restaurant, who always wants to compete with Souma, but Souma never takes him seriously.
Next up we have the audio-visual side of things and first off I want to say it is amazing, especially the art. The art is just so well done that I have to congratulate J.C.Staff for this amazing display, but one has to wonder what they were doing with Shimoneta to Iu Gainen ga Sonzai Shinai Taikutsu na Sekai that they aired at the same time as this, as the gap in quality is so great. The thing some people have complained over is the abundance of fan-service and while it can be a bit annoying at times, I found it to be used perfectly as they managed to convey the feelings of the characters while they were eating some seriously yummy looking food. I have to say this is not an anime one should watch while hungry, as the food on screen looks just too delicious, so I frequently got hungry while watching. There is one more point that I have to praise, and that would be the character expressions as they managed to look just perfect.
The soundtrack was, while not amazing, perfectly adequate for this kind of anime. The openings and endings were all well done but with the exception of the first opening, which was nothing short of amazing, they were nothing too special.
What more can I say, Shokugeki no Souma has to be one of the highlights of this year’s anime and deserves a high score of a nine out of ten. Do I recommend this anime? Well yes of course I do, everyone searching for a nice comedy should seriously consider seeing this. The only reason why I would sometimes withhold my recommendation would be in connection with the fan-service as I it might be to much for some people. Actually the only thing that kept this anime from getting a perfect rating was the lack of a sensible ending, however that can be alleviated by a second season, and when that comes out I will gladly change my score into a ten.
Thanks for reading my review, please leave some feedback as I am trying to improve my writing and then you are going to be able to get more of my quality reviews.
