Forum - View topicREVIEW: Food for the Soul Anime Series Review
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Kiwi93
Posts: 536 |
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This and Mono were my comfort animes last season.
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Yune Amagiri
 Posts: 1325 Location: France |
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I regret that they didn't take more advantage of Mako's food sommelier face; I just loved it. Anyway, all of last season's feel-good anime were precious. My soul is saying Gachisousama for the soul appetizer ( now time to watch today's Crazy Detectives and have my soul suffering from the opening ).
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darkchibi07
 Posts: 5585 |
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Yeah, compared to mono that aired in the same season, Food for the Soul felt far more focused in the subject matter and characters. And I do like that these girls are college-aged since they can do more stuff that you don't usually do as high schoolers like Shinon and Kurea getting their driver's license and driving.
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Covnam
 Posts: 4398 |
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This turned out to be really great. Hopefully we'll get more in the future =D
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MiniMarps
 Posts: 187 |
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Food for the Soul and Mono are, through the circumstance of being two relatively similar anime that premiered on the very same day, bound to always be compared to each other despite coming from two very different places. For me personally though, it was not even a close competition. I didn't dislike Mono, to be clear, but Food for the Soul trumped it by all measures imo. Things like soundtrack and art, for starters, but the biggest difference for me was the characters. Mono's weekly plots could've more-or-less happened to anyone, but Food for the Soul put in the effort to establish specific characters that the audience would actually care about.
I would be excited about a second season. I would say it's unlikely, but this is the same team that squeezed three seasons and a feature film out of Non Non Biyori, after all. |
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VirgilTB4
 SubscriberPosts: 48 |
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Food For The Soul lived up to everything I had hoped for given that it was coming from the team that gave us Non Non Biyori. As has been already pointed out the characters were each fleshed out and the situations were fun and relatable.
And let's not forget the admin who saw thru the " club that does nothing" plan immediately. She's my favorite side character. I have to agree with the others that this out shined Mono. While I enjoyed it, it did seem to just be riding on Laid Back Camp’s coattails, right down to the easter eggs which were probably the best part of the show. Though we probably all hope to be half as cool as Rin's grandpa. |
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IronWish
 Posts: 243 Location: Ukraine |
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TBH, I think besides driving segments them being college-aged was completely irrelevant to the plot. For the most part it just allows a unique clothing for each character instead of school uniform. Other than than they could have been a middle schoolers as well, both with respect to the plot and to character designs. Shootout to Tsutsuji, she's my GOAT, this girl spent her whole life gremlin-maxing. Is there any better reasons to live than for ukulele and energy drinks? Unlike most commenters I still prefer Mono over FftS for a few reasons. Primarily its vastly superior animation, but also that it had the gall to throw its initial premise in the dumpster by episode 2, and just immediately skipped to various shenanigans. I know that lots of people used this as a point of critique, but I appreciate the audacity of "we came here to shoot photos and dick around, and well, we're all out of film". Meanwhile here food segments were arguably weakest parts of most episodes. Never felt forced, but just going through the motions, and while food looks nice it never reached "I would kill to eat this right now" anime food-porn level. Food for the Soul does have more well rounded cast of dorks who bounce of each other more organically, like her single brain cell bounces around Oshinko's skull, so I get why lots of people liked it better. Although Mono has Sakurako, and Sakurako is love, Sakurako is life. |
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Northlander
 Posts: 923 |
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Let me be the second one to join the "prefer mono over Food for the Soul" club, then, because I did. For one, mono (and by that extent, Laid-Back Camp) has a much better sense for comedy than Food for the Soul did. Laid-Back Camp had some exquisite banter between the characters, ahd you still see some of that in mono. (My favorite being the part where they visited the dam and learned about the people who built it.)
I kinda get why Food for the Soul is compared to mono, but mono's hurdle is basically being measured to Laid-Back Camp, one of my absolutely biggest favorites of all time, and that's the show it doesn't quite measure up to, not FftS. (Kinda like how Kozue Amano had to contend with her own Aria when she made Amanchu.) Now, I liked Food for the Soul. It is an endearing show that didn't end up being the drag I kinda feared it would be, so don't take my preferance for mono as a slight here. I didn't gel as much with FftS's comedy, but it did have a nice atmosphere to it, which is equally important for your quiet slice-of-life show. Tsutsuji is indeed the GOAT of that show -- her sudden stint of providing the end of the... second episode, I think? ...with some nice music to go with the cooking honestly made me smile -- and I also second the person who gave a nod to the admin who very deftly sabotaged Shinon's plan to make a sanctuary for laziness. So yeah, I liked Food for the Soul a lot. I liked mono a bit more than that. Honestly, if there was a disappointment for me in the slice-of-life department, that would probably be Zatsu Tabi. |
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MiniMarps
Posts: 187 |
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My preference for Food for the Soul over Mono has nothing to do with YuruCamp, but I’ll put it out there that my main complaint about Mono is one I’ve also levied against YuruCamp in the past. While the individual girls in YuruCamp may have distinct personalities, almost all their interactions ultimately boil down to “we are doing our hobby together.” (And heck, sometimes they don't even do it together.) The story is about the camping, not about the campers, and thus can feel rather impersonal at times. Mono, while less focused on one specific activity, fell into a similar trap: the various stories were about the situations, not the people in them. It didn’t matter who was eating the shaved ice – it could’ve been anyone else and it wouldn’t have made a difference, because the story was about eating shaved ice. Contrast this with the writing of Food for the Soul. It had the same basic sitcom structure, but these stories were about the characters who were in the situations. The focus wasn’t on the school festival; it was on Mako and her friends participating in the school festival. If the characters were completely different, the story would have been completely different. The situations in Food for the Soul existed for the sake of highlighting the characters, not the other way around, and at least for me, emotionally investing in people comes far more naturally than emotionally investing in events. |
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