Food Wars! Shokugeki no Soma

Episode 11

Okay, now that's just mean – this episode of Food Wars! features the shokugeki Soma challenged Shinomiya to last week, with Tadokoro's expulsion as the prize: should Soma lose, she's out, but if he wins, Shinomiya has to rescind his verdict. Shinomiya refuses (because he's just so awesome that he doesn't have anything to prove), but Dojima intervenes, clearly agreeing with Soma that Shinomiya was out of line, or at least just being an asshole. Thus the shokugeki is set with the alums present as judges...but Dojima's condition is that Tadokoro, not Soma, be the head chef. Panic ensues on one side and sneering on the other before Shinomiya serves his dish, triggering foodgasms that start out closer to the earlier objectionable ones of episode one before morphing into some magical. Now it is Tadokoro's turn to serve. She plates the dish, lays it before the judges...and that's it. End of the episode.

Like I said, mean. But also a very good device to keep us watching, as it takes the tension from last week, raises it a couple of notches, and then once again leaves us hanging. The episode also does a lot to invest us in the cook-off – Tadokoro has been a reasonably sympathetic character thus far, a polar opposite to Erina, but it's Soma we're more interested in. Dojima's declaration that he must play sous chef risks taking our interest in the fight and watering it down, but what it instead does is give us more insight into both Tadokoro and what it means to share a kitchen. Many of us have probably heard the expression “too many cooks spoil the broth,” but in his supporting role, Soma proves that having a good helper can drastically reduce the time it takes to prepare a dish and that a sous chef attuned to his superior can anticipate when everything will be needed, smoothing out the process or making up for mistakes or mishaps on the part of the cook. In this case he also serves to ground Tadokoro, who spends a good many minutes in the middle of a full-blown panic attack. This is well depicted, at least in my experience: she focuses in on the ingredients, unable to see anything else as the world closes in on her. She can't move and her breathing is ragged, but she's so stuck in her head that she can barely understand anything going on around her. It is only the voice of someone she trusts that can help to bring her out of it. This sort of intense panic shows us that Tadokoro is more than merely shy; she has a hurdle that she needs to learn to get around in order to succeed. (In some ways I suspect it would be a relief to her to be expelled from Totsuki, although that would come with its own anxiety-inducing issues.) Soma is able to help her, and the moment she snaps out of it is quietly triumphant.

On the other side of the coin, if you didn't like Shinomiya before, be prepared to really hate him this week. He constantly belittles the panicking Tadokoro, calling her a “half-wit” while she's in the middle of her anxiety attack, showing a callous disregard for her clear psychological issue, and is overall just a smug bastard. We do learn how he got to where he is today, and it's probably true that he couldn't have succeeded without his abrasive qualities and overwhelming ego, but those are things that work much less well in a classroom setting. More amusingly, all of his fellow alums seem to really dislike him as well, especially Hinako, who serves as the comic relief this episode. It is something of a relief that he is intended to be unlikable, although the fact that he shares a lot of personality traits and qualities with Erina makes an interesting statement about what is acceptable in whom.

The other major moment of note this week is that Dojima clearly is the one person affiliated with the school who believes in Soma. (Perhaps he feels he sufficiently intimidated him last week when he shoved his groin in Soma's face?) He admits his talent and he tries to guide him in order to help Soma gain a better understanding of what it means to work in or run a kitchen. By making be the sous chef during the shokugeki, he forces Soma to realize how important it is to work together sometimes and to let someone else take the lead role (a lesson clearly lost on Shinomiya, judging by his face) and he seems to be hoping that Soma will take something away from this battle that will help him to be a better chef. Doubtless this will be important later on as the story continues; it never hurts to have someone big in your corner.

All of that, of course, can't quite take the sting out of having to wait until next week to find out the outcome of Tadokoro's dish. Hopefully it will be handled well, but until then, don't forget to eat your cabbage.

Rating: A-

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

Rebecca Silverman is ANN's senior manga critic.