Food Wars! Shokugeki no Soma

Episode 21

It's always interesting (to me, at least) how closely an adaptation will stick to the original. Food Wars! has largely been close to its source manga without being overly faithful, making changes where it needs to in order to make the story flow. This week, however, the twenty-first episode is so close to manga volume seven that even the lines spoken by the characters seem identical to those written in Viz's translation of the manga. Now, it's totally possible that there just aren't that many potential Japanese-to-English translations for the lines this week, making for a closer-sounding adaptation than we've previously seen, but the more important issue here is whether or not it works.

The answer is “mostly.” In fact, I'd even go with “largely,” because this is primarily the end of the cooking portion of the competition and the start of the Group B judging, and there simply aren't that many different ways to play with that apart from the color scheme, and that is done quite well, with mostly curry-powder yellow as a theme. (Nao's moment of dismal glory is in bruise-purple and black, naturally.) The only thing that isn't quite up to snuff is the tension, which felt greater on the page than the screen. However given that this is the arc the anime looks like it will finish with, it has to be made to fill the remaining episodes.

The beginning of the episode returns us to the Miyoko/Megumi issue that was brought up when the two met. Miyoko, as you may recall, was disappointed in what she viewed as Megumi's wimpy dependence on Soma, and this week she's in for a surprise. After a few scenes of Megumi bumbling and stumbling around the cooking area, she wheels out a triangular structure, which is quickly revealed to contain a huge monkfish suspended by a hook. To the judges, it is immediately apparent that she means to clean the fish in the traditional way – as it hangs, swaying, from the hook. It takes a lot of skill and is typically done by men, so Megumi's knowledge and skill serve as notice to everyone that she's not just the wilting wallflower they've been assuming. A short flashback reveals that she learned to do this in order to help the family business, presenting herself to a burly fisherman and refusing to give up when he told her that girls couldn't do it. Here, then, is what Miyoko was looking for, but where she has to make a show of it and needs her superiority (or just equality) to be in everyone's faces, Megumi just quietly goes out and proves it. She isn't necessarily cleaning the monkfish like this for a show (although that may be a consideration); she's doing it because that's how they clean monkfish where she's from. We know that Megumi's hometown is very important to her and that she's a local girl through and through – therefore her traditional cleaning of the fish is just as likely to be because she wants to show how her hometown does things, not because she feels the need to draw the judges' attention. It's a big difference from all the flashy seasoning and sautéeing we've seen from the other contestants, and it's very true to her character.

Once the tasting begins, we get back into the meat of the show – people reacting to amazing dishes while the skills and techniques of the cooks are expounded upon. Nao and Hisako go head to head this week, and while Nao's food-induced hallucinations are funnier and more explicit (watch the sound effects), getting to see what Hisako can actually do is pretty amazing. There's a reason Erina keeps her around, and it turns out that's not just because she likes to have someone toady up to her.

Next week will be the battle of the Aldini brothers, and since we've seen Isami cook about as much as Hisako, that's worth looking forward to. Of course, the series is going to have to be careful to keep things moving quickly and interesting, because otherwise three or four weeks of X vs Y cooking competitions in the exact same setting could begin to drag. And that's a risk of sticking so close to a print source material in an animated adaptation – but even the fried chicken controversy turned out fine, so perhaps we should give the show the benefit of the doubt.

Rating: B

Food Wars! Shokugeki no Soma is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Rebecca Silverman is ANN's senior manga critic.