Shokugeki no Souma Season Five

“The Last Plate”

It might seem a bit funny, ironic even, to see that most questions raised on the final season of Shokugeki no Souma paint it as bad, almost nullifying the good rep it’s held in the previous seasons.

In the previous seasons, we got unique and inventive content from it. At the beginning of this season, all we got were inconsequential fillers that had nothing to add to the story. The context and peculiar approach to “battles” gave it the look of a simple shounen, except the usual combat and gory scenes we get to see every time.

I'm about done with this after 73 episodes. Over and over again, I've watched Souma be arrogant and ultimately win the competition, Megumi stumbles when she realizes how gifted she truly is, and some anonymous underclassman challenging Souma for no rationale.

This even brings to mind a question that has been on everyone’s minds when Season Four came to an end, and Soma became the first of the Elite Top Ten. And we all just wondered what exactly were the writers and producers bringing to the table with season five? Especially as season four didn’t end in any spectacularly suspenseful manner.

I get that the program needs a warm-up for the new season, but this was a waste of time. Assuming control of a restaurant and being pressured to fulfill quotas while suffering the ill effects of a cynical adviser is nothing new.

In the first episode, I'd have liked to see more of the fascinating side characters (like that black-haired freshman whose name I can't recall) or learn more about what it's like to be a member of the Elite 10. On the other hand, this year’s exam was exactly the same as last year's.

And on the talk of recurrent problems, if you’ve seen the previous seasons, you’d have come to understand that every Shokugeki always has the losing party liable to immediate expulsion. In its own way, this knowledge automatically kills the suspense, as the viewers already know there is no way any of the main cast would lose and therefore get expelled, so they’ll surely emerge victoriously.

Take into account the Team Shokugeki held in the previous season and how everyone would’ve expected the Top Elite Seat One and Two to have won against Erina and Soma, but yet, the reverse was the case. There’s no gainsaying that a good percentage of the viewers expected some kind of twist to come in at that particular moment to act as a saving grace for Soma and Erina.

Season five began with a single threat: failing an exam, which would obviously never happen. There was almost no possibility that Souma would miss out on BLUE in the second round. Because the cast is so dispersed and lacking in development, there was no one else for us to cheer for but ourselves.

I was a little bored by most of these episodes, which didn't give the spectator any cause to care. There must be some kind of climax to the show's overall conflict presented at the end of the episode. If Souma loses, it won't be any repercussions because it's an unofficial "friendly competition."

Guess it’s pretty okay to say this season’s plot was just completely off. It just didn’t give us what we expected, based on what we’ve seen from previous seasons. And at this point, the foodgasms and exaggerated reactions to delicacies got sort of boring, so much so they don’t even appeal to the audience as they used to back in the first three seasons.

One other thing you just couldn’t help but notice is how grainy the graphics had become. It’s now like saying that the animation and art of the anime were at their best form at Season One, and it just started getting worse and worse till it got to Season Five. In conjunction with the whacky story, this fact just seems to place viewers on edge, so much, so all you want to do is just fast forward it and get to the more interesting part (if at all there is any).

I don’t have issues introducing new villains in the final season, but then just making up flimsy stories about them, who aren’t badass, was just off. Fine, they first came off as real challenges and almost undefeatable. Still, as expected, the “all-powerful Soma” would surely bring them down on their knees and overcome whatever challenges come his way, which somehow reminds me of One Punch Man.

The only thing that remained a tad bit okay in this season is the element of music. And as music soothes the soul, it often neutralizes the bore that the actual story of the anime gives; otherwise, a sizeable number of viewers would just watch it halfway without even bothering to finish the anime.