Shokugeki no Souma: San no Sara – 06, 07

「囚われの女王」 (Toraware no Joou)
“The Imprisoned Queen”

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「火蓋は切られた」 (Hibuta wa Kira Reta)
“It Begins”

So this post is very much delayed… and I’ve been apologizing a lot these days for my tardiness but better late than never! I have a thousand and one excuses as to why my posts have been so late, but it all boils down to a new job and the holiday season (which is super busy for my company). I don’t want to make false promises that my posts from here on out will be on time… because that might just lead to disappointment but I will try! I will try very hard to keep it timely for the duration of the season.

Now on to the actual episode…
Which has been lacking of food porn lately! Super disappointing for a food anime! Normally I dedicate a large portion of the post to the food that was cooked or prepared, but this time, even two episodes later, I still don’t have much to say. It would be interesting to see what Souma prepares in a battle against Etsuya, but since they haven’t announced what the theme is yet, I can’t say much about that. Let’s just hope that there’s more orgasmic and delicious food for us to stare at and drool over next week; otherwise I’ll be very disappointed.

The Erina-centric episode was two weeks ago and I still feel like even though I’ve seen it several times over now, it lacks a bit of impact to me. I’m not the hugest Erina fan (as many readers will already know) but they definitely rushed through her traumatic past with her father. I wish they slowed down a bit just to see how much it damaged Erina’s childhood. It also doesn’t really explain why Azami is such a dictator or what stemmed his obsession with “finer” foods, ultimately leading to the brainwashing of his kid. I think this might be explored later – or I’m just supposed to accept that that’s part of his character – but I’d like to think there’s more to it than painting him as the villain for this arc. He’s clearly already the “bad guy” but what makes for a good villain (especially when all the “bad guys” in Shokugeki no Souma have been given good character development) is how the viewer can understand them and that’s the part that’s missing for me with Azami right now. He’s a pretty flat and 2D antagonist for the time being. Erina on the other hand, even though there’s a whole episode dedicated to her, I feel has taken a back seat this arc. Her father is up on the center stage and her presence so far, has really diminished along with her control of the situation.

With the latest episode, we see more of Eizan Etsuya (Suita Tomokazu) which is unusual since we haven’t seen him do much of anything since the first season. For those of you that don’t remember, he’s the ninth seat on the Elite Ten and almost like a business person rather than a chef because of his connections to many people outside the school and his family. Etsuya pulls the strings behind a lot of the scheming in the earlier arcs of Shokugeki no Souma but we never see him actually cook until now which is different. I don’t deny that he’s probably a good chef in his own way, but I don’t know what his style is, his choice of cuisine or if he has a particular uniqueness (like Subaru) unless it’s simply the fact that he pulls a lot of the strings behind the scenes. Bribing the judges and those around him to get what he wants… that could be a tactic and why he has a seat among the Elite Ten to begin with. However, now it’s becoming more of a story of corruption within the school and not so much about the actual talent of the students (which is a shame).

I don’t know what Azami has planned for the school, but he’s definitely starting to behave like a dictator that thinks he knows best and rids of school of anything that’s against him. He’s set new rules in places that he thinks are what the students should a bid by and also shuts down literally all freedom the students have. No choice of what you cook, or how you cook it; no choice in your clubs or activities and he’s focusing more on the final product of the food than the journey of how to get there. Now I feel like I’m preaching or something, but seriously, in this day and age, no one will agree to that type of “learning”.

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