Food Wars! Shokugeki no Soma - The Third Plate is this third season that’s based on the cooking manga. It is back to being a longer 24 episode season. After the exciting second season, there is no rest and The Third Plate continues to up the game. The anime follows Soma, a talented chef attending the prestigious Totsuki Academy to improve his cooking. His aim is to claim the top seat of the Elite Ten and this time around, the Moon Festival has arrived. Seeing an opportunity to be able to challenge one of the Elite Ten, he wagers and opens his own stall in order to get the top sales.
You might think that Soma already has a plan and will easily succeed, but reality hits time and time again. Soma can be a little too confident that things will work themselves out at times, although this is when Soma is at his best, being forced to think up of creative or ingenious solutions to his predicaments. Naturally, since Soma doesn’t have the name power (everyone still underestimates him) nor the flashiness that his rivals do, his stall suffers, and failing at the Moon Festival will mean expulsion.
One thing you can feel is that the anime feels lighter than before. There is still tension and pressure in the atmosphere but it handles this a lot better through clever gags. The humor has evolved to the point where it is genuinely funny and natural, taking into considering the personalities of each characters. They don’t feel awkwardly inserted into a scene at all and this is a marked improvement compared to previous seasons.
The Moon Festival arc quickly comes to an end though and the next arc introduces for the first time, a clear antagonist (or antagonists). Unlike previous opponents that Soma faces, these new characters have no redeeming qualities. Their vision is one of suppression and an even worse hierarchy than the existing one. They will cheat and use dirty tricks in order to advance their own agenda.
With the new antagonists also comes a new approach to the story. Up until now, it was a relatively simple school life where Soma is slowly working his way up, overcoming obstacles, challenging opponents, making friends, and continuously improving his own cooking style. However, the arc in this season gets rid of this lighter touch and feels a lot of oppressive as a result. It inserts various politics and power struggles within the Totsuki Academy itself. The anime is still compelling though, and it continues to eagerly await the next episode, but at the same time, it feels quite different to before.
The whole structure of Totuski Academy is flipped around and Soma has to navigate the twists and turns that result from it. This isn’t a good thing because of the way that this is handled. Before, Soma was always disadvantaged, but it was believable that Soma can overcome them. At the very least, it was fair and relied on Soma’s abilities. Now, Soma’s opponents are blatantly cheating, he’s put into impossible situations, and yet somehow we are still led to believe that there is hope that he’ll be able to make it out. While this is true and Soma does continue to proceed, it can feel too much of a stretch at times.
The anime also starts to splinter, forming two groups. There’s the group of allies that Soma has, and then there’s the group that’s viciously against him. There’s no more enemies becoming friends type of thing going on, rather it can feel like a betrayal. This gives a different tone and sense of feeling to the anime, where it’s a bit more cold than before.
After teasing for all this time, this is the season where the feud between Nakiri Erina and Soma is finally resolved. A lot of backstory is revealed about Erina, although it maybe is not all for the better. This is because while Erina does have a sad history, at the same time, what she experienced during her childhood, kind of feels at odds with her demeanour and attitude that she had shone thus far. She was portrayed as a snobby prodigy full of confidence, but we find out that she’s actually a person who’s had her will brutally crushed and has a weak mental self as a result.
At the end, you’ll come to realize that most of the season was building towards the season finale. After a significant amount of character building, where in addition to Erina’s relationship with Soma is somewhat cleared, we find out things about the Elite Ten, Soma’s father, and of course, the antagonist. It’s all interesting stuff, albeit not as much fun as the actual cooking battles. We’re not disappointed though as that comes right at the end, with an epic line up, and it’s at this point that you realize that Soma may actually reach his goal of being at the top of the Elite Ten might be within reach.
It’s a shame then that the anime is once again forced to cut the arc short and leave it for the next season. It ends at a point where it’s right in the middle of thing, similar to how Season 1 ended and was picked up by Season 2. What we did get was a taste of things to come, hitting you right in the feels. Soma shows off how perceptive he is, exercising the things he had learnt. It’s still annoying when everyone still looks down at him due to not being from a prestigious restaurant or a powerhouse family, so that can get old, fast. Still, despite being nearly 100% certain that Soma has to win otherwise it’s the end of the story, his opponents are so strong that you can’t help but still have that tiny bit of doubt that maybe he’ll lose again.
Overall, Food Wars! Shokugeki no Soma - The Third Plate is a bit of a mixed season. All in all, it’s still strong and as good as previous seasons, but the middle can feel bogged down with the shift in focus from the normal (or as normal can be at Totsuki Academy) day to day stuff to one that feels more sinister and political. On the flipside, this allowed a ton of character development to occur, and ended up setting up the scene for an all-out, no holds barred, battle between our group of protagonists against the antagonists. It’s just a shame sometimes with the time constraints and with handling such a big cast, that the focus (rightly) had to focus on Soma and the characters we’ve come to love, rather than equally on everything (and drag it out, risking it becoming tedious like the end of Season 1).
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