Food Wars and the Secret Ingredient to Good Fights 

steaks

this. we get it. please stop now.

I don't. Can you please explain it again?

He did not. Follow. The Rule of Three. It stopped being funny.

Yes, thank you. I fell in love with food Wars for two reasons. 1) even though the stakes could be ridiculous at times, their battles felt to me like a real battle. I found myself rooting for characters who I know we're going to either win or lose but I was still biting my nail in hope that they would win. It was mainly due to how each character with their own philosophy, idealism, and skills would fight in each of their particular battles. It's like I got to look at an in-depth analysis of each character. The second reason was for the characters and the fanservice. Hey, at least I'm willing to admit to it.

@@allisondempsey982 this is also seen in Ngnl tazerlad made a vid on it

Pretty much, I'm there just 90% for the pageantry and spectacle and food porn. I wasn't concerned about battle mechanics or back and forth or etc. Just as long as what was presented on screen was interesting...and it was! They kept coming up with new cool stuff that was just familiar enough for me to know about a little but just exotic enough to be really interesting.

@@e-male896 thanks for the recommendation. I finally just found the video that you mention plus the RU-vidr, and I'm thoroughly enjoying it right now.

@@allisondempsey982 Nice he's so underrated

You've earned a like.

Steak puns: A rarely well-done medium.

@@ExplanationPointAnime I hate both of you

That was ALMOST perfect. The only missed opportunity is not turning 'fun' into 'fond'. Because that's also a meat thing. 9/10, you are a scholar and a gentlemen good sir and/or ma'am.

I think you're making people have the Schnitz with you. Good work :D

It appears he didn't....RAISE THE STAKES

I think they were "well done"

Those kinda of jokes are “Rare” and often barley “Meat” expectations

Can y'all stop grilling me about this, your searing comments are more than just sizzling attention grabs

I remember tomo vs spice king. They literally said that spice king food was better but because it wasn't made with friends tomorrow wins

Lmfao i was scrolling through the comments and actually laughed out loud when I realized what happened.

I only understood it once the visuals shifted away from Ed and Father and my brain could focus on just the names. It was actually kinda distracting and made me miss some of what he was saying.

timestamp?

Who was the father? I’ve seen FMA and Bebop but not whatever that other one was

@@stellam8936 it was father from codename:kids next door.

You're always everywhere and it triggers me

@SoulReaper 85 I miss some guy without a mustache he was cooler

@@RavingRaven887 I like to think that they’re all one person or robot

So almost every shounen now

5:48 ... that is Wrath (FMAB) ...

Yeah, that's always the weird thing, because as long as the series gives enough focus on the characters and what this means to them then it works way better. At the heart of a shonen battle, it doesn't really matter as much how people are fighting or what they're doing as much as who they are and why you want to root for them. That's part of why Early Naruto was so effective, because the strategies Naruto used to beat Kiba and Neji are really stupid, but you care because you're invested in these characters. You know Naruto isn't going to lose against Neji, but you still want to see him win because Neji's a cold asshole who needs to be kicked down a peg. But the problem is always kind-of there in Food Wars, where every fight has to basically be the same to the point where it becomes stupidly easy to predict that Soma's going to have some surprise in his dish that's going to give him the win. And what I think really went wrong was partially the characters and planning part of it, but the bigger thing is that having a tournament arc with lots of disposable nobodies in a system like this was always a really bad idea because there's no way to really vary things up. So when the writing falters in other areas, it strips back the layers A LOT and makes you realize just how similar these matches have to be. The fight where Megumi beats a random nobody who cooks with lobster and Soma's big final cook-off against his most dangrous foe to date feel IDENTICAL, and that's a pretty big underlying problem with the format of these encounters overall because one of these fights is meant to be a way bigger deal than the other. I think at the end of the day, Food Wars was always going to be kind-of unsustainable because they needed to evolve past their usual formula and get into actually growing these characters and having them directly compete with other resteraunts or they needed to introduce different ways of judging success, like maybe do best-of-3 matches or something. But while it tries to mix things up every now and then, it always goes back to the same style of cook-off and it gets just so tiring and repetitive by the end.

Food wars was arguably at its worse when it went all battle shounen in season 5 compared to season 3 and 4, season 5 stakes a pretty much the least theyve been, new bad guy wants to marry erina, really she can just say no, winning the blue doesnt automatically make them get married so really its just soma trying to prove hes a great chef at the end of the day, unless the tension is "oh no somas love interest could get stolen away" which is a terrible stake in a show where the majority came into it because of the actual cooking techniques yes soma will be kicked out of school if he fails ever gets old but it also makes sense as we see in the stagiare arc where failure is the same as getting fired and even summer camp was under the same rules of failure is the same as getting fired, totsuki is preparing them for the real world and real kitchen setting, messing up can make everyone fall behind or worse food not coming out in time can make customers leave All in all Food Wars did something with the shounen setting that not many shows can do, you cant do kamehameha in real life but you can cook a steak with the techniques shown and ill miss it a lot

@@sdbzfan1 I genuinely never get why Asahi was expecting any of this to work? Like okay, I can buy that maybe if everything goes according to plan then he can get Erina to marry him through force because he knows some dangerous people. Alright. But this guy does realize that doesn't mean she's suddenly going to like him or something, right? Like she's probably going to be pretty bitter. Heck, she'd probably make his life a living hell however she can, assuming they even live together, which is something she can just refuse to do! This girl doesn't even have to sleep with you, you're guaranteed to get NOTHING out of this deal! And if anyone she knows finds out about it then it's not like Erina doesn't have ties to people with money or something, she could totally afford a divorce lawyer the second she manages to get away. It's like the only framing this plan makes sense in is if you look at it from the perspective of "Asahi is Soma's evil counterpart, so he makes bad plans because this is the type of short-sighted thing Soma would come up with." Which isn't really great, because it means you have to justify your villain's actions through saying they're incompetent.

@@dracocrusher right, the manga already had pretty weird laws to follow you just go along with like, Totsuki shouldn't be the only culinary school, even if it's the best we never hear about people gong anywhere else, like we could have gotten an arc when they all became second years about how other schools don't like how Totsuki gets all the praise just because it's some elite school and see how that effects the world like 2 people trying to get a job but because one came from totsuki the employer hires them even though the other one could be just as skilled if not more, after all Soma and aldini grew up already in the working business which compensated for the skills other kids got from coming from Middle school totsuki I just really don't like how the only arc beside the autumn elections where "hey the stakes aren't you're kicked out of school" had to be "but you love interest could be taken away" the hell the show was never a romance so why does that matter suddenly, especially when Soma's never put Erina before himself ever, if anything he risked expulsion for Megumi a girl he met in episode 3, after Erina who just happened to be in the same dorm as him, she was a friend but the same way you make friends with people on the first day of school, he doesn't know her past, she could have killed someone from food poisoning once, even still he wasn't gonna let her get expelled because Shinomiya decided to be a dick that day Erina on the other hand hasn't had Soma go out of the way for her and her alone in seasons 1-4 because he's a sore loser and just wanted to make her call his food delicious, nothing about either of them showed an interest in the other beyond rivals if anything, even if it was onesided, Erina had an actual crush on Joichiro and the show made it very obvious, man Season 5 could have been interesting but the author had to resort to pandering, no wonder people started to fall off when the show swapped focus from Soma trying to increase his skill and surpass his dad to, super powers and love triangles

@@sdbzfan1 The big thing that seems to have happened is that the actual food advisor who was helping to write the manga fell off because of maternity leave and, because it's a weekly series, things were already planned out and kind-of done in the final arc before she could come back. So suddenly, you have an entire tournament where people have to do Food Wars without the food insight. This PROBABLY killed the pacing pretty hard, too, because now they have to rush through everything, and I feel like the plot suffering so much is probably a big byproduct of this. Not saying there weren't warning signs of things going south before in the Azami arc, but it seems like as soon as they lost the person behind the main focus of the series, things went to hell fast because cook-offs had to happen, but nobody's actually able to explain what the dishes are or why they're good anymore, and it's obvious that the mangaka, himself, doesn't really know how this shit works, either. So we go from a big explanation of how each flavor is intricately balanced between these specific elements to the final boss serving Shark fin ice-cream soup or something??? And that's just the final best dish in the series????? This dude beat Tsukasa offscreen. It's kind-of obvious why that happened when you realize the guy writing the series doesn't have insight on food anymore.

I think that's a big thing, because 90% of shonen is basically just this. Goku isn't going to just lose to Frieza because then Frieza's worldview would be right, but how that fight actually goes down is interesting. If you start focusing on your meta knowledge of "Well, the hero has to win because they're the hero" then you're going to miss out on the journey getting to that point and just how clever or meaningful that can be.

The problem with that line of thinking is that it makes the entire show predictable. Yes, I understand that you're trying to argue that's irrelevant, but it really isn't. Even if the choreography, the pacing, the atmosphere, and everything else about a fight is perfect, knwoing who'a going to win removes tension, which while it's certainly an aspect in all action anime, it's the building block of shounen. If the fight's going to end with the protagonist winning, then that cheap trick the antagonist pulled to turn the tables instantly means nothing, and as a result, the viewer's either going to be bored out of their mind at having to waste another 5 minutes on a red herring or get frustrated in the same regard. Dragon Ball Z was mentioned, and honestly that's a really good example for my point, for two reasons. First, it's got nothing going for it besides its fights and its occasional humor. Its soundtrack is forgettable, its characters are less than one-dimensional, its pacing is honestly horrid, and aside from the choreography being every once in a while interesting it has no resemblance to the martial arts anime that spawned it. Secone, it's the single most popular anime in the west. Despite all of its flaws, despite the vomit-inducing 291 episode count for 5 arcs including the Garlick Jr. filler arc, despite the fact that not a Kai-damn person alive remembers Spopavitch who was a plot-introducing antagonist, despite the fact that its canon power scaling is horribly inconsistent at the best of times and outright impossible at the worst of times, the ONE thing it does right? The main character can die, and he isn't guaranteed to protect everyone. Episode 4 (which comes after one padded out fight and an outright filler episode for its series introduction, how did we not see the signs?) is when Goku first dies. His friends all die later that arc, and some of them die again in the next one. Earth actually gets obliterated once, too. Now, none of these changes are permanent, the name of the franchise being why, but the fact remains that to a kid in the 90's, seeing Goku with a hole straight through his chest (that hit his internal organs, yes, *all of them*) sets the tone that death is a possibility.

@@imaginaryboy2000 "the ONE thing it does right? The main character can die, and he isn't guaranteed to protect everyone." I want to throw a big counterpoint to that, which is that in DBZ, death means basically nothing. Even when Goku's dead, he can just come back and keep fighting without even using the Dragonballs. It does keep Goku away from time to time, but that's the thing... the series HAS to keep finding ways to keep Goku away because he's way too powerful, so keeping Goku away is the only way for other characters to actually do stuff. Which is why when they stop doing those tricks in Super, it feels even worse because now Goku actually is the only one who can do stuff because why would Tien or Gohan get to be useful when Goku just keeps getting stronger? I also want to throw another wrench into this with One Piece. In One Piece, outside of backstories, death almost never happens. I can count the number of One Piece deaths on one hand, and that's across almost 1,000 chapters/episodes. BUT, the big thing is that Luffy can lose and it's made clear that people other than Luffy do get their own fights and moments, where they can also be at risk. So even if you expect Luffy to win, you're going to get a unique feeling climax every time because there's always so much in play between all the characters and the unique elements, and even if everything comes together in a unique fight, like Luffy vs Eneru, there's still no guarantee that Luffy's going to come out on top. Heck, there's three seperate Luffy v Crocodile fights and it's just as engaging every single time because he has a completely different strategy and approach for each one until you get to the super badass satisfying conclusion where Crocodile finally goes down for good.

@@imaginaryboy2000 predictability isn't necessarily a bad thing tho. Not at all actually. I mean, taking Naruto as an example, when Naruto goes up against Neji in the Chuunin exams, it's set up so that we know for a fact that Neji is the favorite to win this one, since he has a powerful Kekkei Genkai, the Byakkugan, since he's part of the most powerful clan in the village, and he's known as a genius even among said clan. Neji is incredibly powerful, and Naruto up until that point hadn't really done anything all too impressive yet, but we still know that Naruto is going to win this one, because there's no way the main character is losing in the first match of the tournament, especially after we've just spend a good number of episodes focusing on Naruto's Chakra training. We know before the fight even starts that Naruto is going to win, and that he's going to teach Neji why his worldview is flawed by defeating him in battle. The characters in the show however, do not know this. They believe for sure that Neji is going to win because so far he's clearly shown to be the better fighter, and that's what adds interest. Sure, us as viewers can predict that Naruto is going to win, but because of how the fight is set up, we're not sure how he's gonna do it, and that is what makes us want to see it. If all that mattered was the outcome, then yes I would agree with you, a predictable outcome generally makes things boring, but in cases like this, it can be interesting even if you know the outcome, because you don't know how it ended up like that. Goku defeating Frieza was also obvious from the start, I mean of course he was going to win, he wasn't just going to lose to Frieza after everything that had happened, but even tho the outcome is predictable to us and we know he's gonna win, we still want to watch it because we don't know how it will happen.

@@Da_Swifta You're just reiterating the same point that was said before. Alroght, my bad, instead of explaining around it, I should have plowed right through it. In that situation you described, the fact that the viewer knows the outcome doesn't make it any more enjoyable or engaging, whereas having the air of mystery does. Knowing for a fact that Naruto will win probably because of friendship (haven't watched the show but come on, early-00's anime) doesn't improve the fight, since the question of "how will the protagonist win?" is asked either way, and in the long run it hurts the show's pacing and tone a lot because the question can never be answered with "they don't." -The character interactions work better when the viewer's reacting along with them, as opposed to the viewer getting bored by the fact that the sideliners haven't figured out the outcome a mile in advance -The fight's pacing works better when its not apparent that exactly half of the upsets in a given fight are irrelevant, or at least don't serve the fight in any meaningful way -The story as a whole suffers a lot less if the outcomes if the major fights aren't set in stone before they begin, since it allows the writers more creativity to deal with loss (which by the way, in Shokugeki no Souma in particular is a core theme that's just abandoned on the main character despite being one of his core characteristics, how about that huh?). Now, that's not to say that a guaranteed victory or loss can't be interesting. It can, absolutely, but only when written for that outcome. If the writer specifically paces and plans for the fight to be an apparent loss or victory, they can work with the emotions of the characters much more interestingly, as well as making the whole flow of combat more involved. However, most shounen don't operate this way, and in fact the example you brought up sounds like a perfect one to use. Of course, I wouldn't know, and you likely wouldn't admit it of your own accord, so let me just take a guess: Naruto fights Neji, almost loses, has some revalation about friendship or whatnot, finds the strength to fight and wins using a technique he was taught by his master earlier that arc, or maybe an arc before. Am I more or less accurate?

Ah, the good ole G-8 arc. Best filler arc in anime, let alone OP. Every single person I've managed to get through OP has really enjoyed G-8 with Sanji's food war being one of the notable highlights.

It's like food porn that's really more about the spectacle than it is about anything else. I don't care who wins really, I just want to see them explain the taste and impact of it in ludicrous ways like 5 japanese men dressed up as cabbage versions of sailor moon.

I agree. For Food Wars, the winner is almost guaranteed, even when Soma isn't fighting, but seeing how those young chefs go about winning is inspiring. For the majority of the show, they use real techniques that chefs actually use. A lot of what they cook can be done in our homes. It's not how everyone watches the show, but that is how I watch it. And yes, it is a shonen. It ran in Shonen Jump before it was an anime.

but it is a shounen? it was literally published in shounen jump. i think you're mixing up demographics and genre. a shounen by itself is just a manga for teen boys, i think you mean food wars isn't a battle manga in your view. (I never got past the first three episodes and that was years ago so i cant debate on the quality of the battles lol)

@@kate2282 yeah that's it lmao. Thanks! I'm literally so bad at vocalizing my thoughts so I'm glad you figured out what I was trying to say hahaha

@@mangetsu9725 oh no it’s cool lol it’s just something i see a lot of manga fans mix up. like chihayafuru is a high school sports anime but is a josei manga (meaning it’s marketed towards adult women) so while a shounen or a shojo has expected plot elements it’s doesn’t define what genre it is y’know. sailor moon is an action series but also a shojo manga and nisekoi is a romance but also a shounen manga

I would make the same critique about Kakegurui that ExPoint makes about Food Wars. The lack of stakes make for a spectacle with no tension. It *can* be fun to somebody, but I certainly didn't find it fun. Btw just because you ran in Shonen Jump doesn't mean you're "a Shounen". The word is being used in 2 seperate contexts, both to describe stories written for young boys and to describe a particular genre of *Battle* Shonen. Shounen Jump runs manga that isn't Battle Shounen.

Taylor Hebert: JUST DO IT! DON'T STOP ESCALATING!

GURREN: WITH FIGHTING SPIRIT!!!

Good luck with that, your words won't hit as hard if people don't understand them

Indeed

Ah but see here's the thing. Death combat is more than a binary pass-fail scenario. Deku isn't allowed to die, but he is allowed to be horribly injured, there's nothing stopping side characters from dying or otherwise getting long term incapacitated, and the stakes are often about emotion or relationships rather than life and death. It's entirely possible for Deku to have loss conditions that don't end the narrative, or to win at great cost. Soma can do neither of these things most of the time. The best the show ever was was in the fancy cooking competition specifically because that asinine expulsion clause was gone.

@@hockeater Much like the tournament arc is often a flimsy excuse to force fights so was the expulsion threat. Essentially the expulsion threat just created a tournament arc :P.

@@Ralathar44 The reason the actual tournament arc was good was that nothing would permanently end if a main character lost, and lo and behold the show took this allowance to have its main characters lose. For one blessed arc the biggest problem in the show didn't exist.

@@hockeater No, it was because the excellent character development going into it plus the slick animation. We cared about the combatants and what they wanted. There are different KINDS of appeals to tournament arcs. For example Baki The Grappler of Kengan Ashura survive almost completely just on the majesty of how well the fights are choreographed, animated, and sold. MHA depends mostly on character stories and slick animation but outside of that the fights are very basic. Hunter X Hunter is done well in many ways but one of the largest appeals is HOW the fights are won via creative power usage. Deep Purple being a prime example of that. Saying one style or another of what a tournament arc lives in is better is like saying one style of art is better than another or like one food is better than another. There are many different good kinds of tournament arcs that run by slightly different rules of what makes them good.

@@Ralathar44 Wait you actually cared about the rock simple characters in food wars as people? The only things interesting in most of food wars were interesting cooking techniques, and simple humor. And for all of one arc actual tension due to inability to predict outcome.

A year, almost two, later... I decided to watch season 3 and I continue to be hungry.

It doesn't fail at it. EP somehow missed it.