Notes on "Food Wars"
Dec. 18th, 2022 06:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
x_losWhile sick on various occasions, I made it through all five seasons of "Food Wars".
- While needlessly and boringly porny (as in, that's a huge component of this show), the program is surprisingly detailed in its description of culinary techniques. It introduced me to a lot of new-to-me foods, not all of which were Japanese.
- The end central couple (Erina/Soma) comes rather out of nowhere, given that all along, we've had a lesbian thing going on with Erina and her assistant. Soma, meanwhile, has largely been supported and accompanied throughout the narrative by Megumi. I guess the match-up makes sense, especially in light of the show's propensity towards gothic family saga shenanigans. Yet it does feel, in the way of much anime, rather arbitrarily picked out of a hat. Throughout the show, the interpersonal energy and point of view have been situated elsewhere.
- Soma veers between involving himself in everyone's problems and brushing them off callously, seemingly at random. The later is really unappealing, and it's especially strange that he acts that way towards the woman who we are given to understand he will eventually marry and 'devote his cooking to'. Is this inconsistency a translation nuance that escaped the dub team, or is it down to weak writing in the original?
- The show's funniest exchange (this is re: the Nakiri family's Hereditary and Traditional Power to Burst Bystanders' Clothes) is the very late 'what is going ON with the Nakiri family?!' 'Well, you know, these things happen--' 'NO!!' between Akira Hayama and Ryō Kurokiba. So earned.
- An improbable number of people in anime are half-Japanese.
- Japan is evidently obsessed with 'meat smell' and preventing it, a consideration never explicitly addressed in Western cuisine.
- The awful pedagogy of this school haunts me. Evil Dad is right that this fixation on elimination is pointless, even if his own scheme to destroy non-gourmet eateries sounds financially ludicrous.
- The show's 'constant battle' conceit wears you out a bit--"Dragon Ball Z" with mother sauces.
- With most shonen, it's fine that you can't do whatever the overpowered protagonists are doing. You don't expect yourself to get the best grades in the Hero Course at UA, because that is not a thing. With a cooking shonen, however, I get annoyed at my relative lack of ability (i.e., at my realistic human ability because I am not a shonen character).
- While needlessly and boringly porny (as in, that's a huge component of this show), the program is surprisingly detailed in its description of culinary techniques. It introduced me to a lot of new-to-me foods, not all of which were Japanese.
- The end central couple (Erina/Soma) comes rather out of nowhere, given that all along, we've had a lesbian thing going on with Erina and her assistant. Soma, meanwhile, has largely been supported and accompanied throughout the narrative by Megumi. I guess the match-up makes sense, especially in light of the show's propensity towards gothic family saga shenanigans. Yet it does feel, in the way of much anime, rather arbitrarily picked out of a hat. Throughout the show, the interpersonal energy and point of view have been situated elsewhere.
- Soma veers between involving himself in everyone's problems and brushing them off callously, seemingly at random. The later is really unappealing, and it's especially strange that he acts that way towards the woman who we are given to understand he will eventually marry and 'devote his cooking to'. Is this inconsistency a translation nuance that escaped the dub team, or is it down to weak writing in the original?
- The show's funniest exchange (this is re: the Nakiri family's Hereditary and Traditional Power to Burst Bystanders' Clothes) is the very late 'what is going ON with the Nakiri family?!' 'Well, you know, these things happen--' 'NO!!' between Akira Hayama and Ryō Kurokiba. So earned.
- An improbable number of people in anime are half-Japanese.
- Japan is evidently obsessed with 'meat smell' and preventing it, a consideration never explicitly addressed in Western cuisine.
- The awful pedagogy of this school haunts me. Evil Dad is right that this fixation on elimination is pointless, even if his own scheme to destroy non-gourmet eateries sounds financially ludicrous.
- The show's 'constant battle' conceit wears you out a bit--"Dragon Ball Z" with mother sauces.
- With most shonen, it's fine that you can't do whatever the overpowered protagonists are doing. You don't expect yourself to get the best grades in the Hero Course at UA, because that is not a thing. With a cooking shonen, however, I get annoyed at my relative lack of ability (i.e., at my realistic human ability because I am not a shonen character).
