Food Wars!: Shokugeki no Soma
The series follows an aspiring chef who enrolls in an elite culinary school where students take part in cooking competitions.[c] Its students mostly come from Totsuki's junior high school, but transfers are taken provided that they pass the entrance exam.The campus is a wide-ranging resort with many research societies (clubs), cooking classrooms, and large arenas used for competitions.Housing varies, but the most affordable is the Polaris Dormitory, where students have to impress the dorm matron with a dish in order to secure residence.Battles fought in this way could be for cooking utensils, research society facilities, council membership, or even expulsion from the school.Soma is assigned to Polaris Dormitory where he meets other aspiring chefs, including Megumi Tadokoro.Soma and the other first-year students participate in a cooking camp judged by the school's alumni who expels about a third of the entering class.The first-years then participate in week-long stagiaire internships at local restaurants, as well as a large-scale school-wide Moon Festival.[15] A spin-off series, titled Shokugeki no Soma: L'étoile, ran in the Shōnen Jump+ website and app from February 20, 2015, to June 21, 2019.[16][17] A crossover story, titled Shokugeki no Sanji, was developed as a tribute to One Piece and has been published in Weekly Shōnen Jump since July 23, 2018.[22] The anime was directed by Yoshitomo Yonetani at J.C.Staff with Shogo Yasukawa as the series scriptwriter and starred Yoshitsugu Matsuoka as the main character, Sōma Yukihira.[24] Sentai Filmworks licensed the anime for digital and home video release in North America;[25] after the acquisition of Crunchyroll by Sony Pictures Television, Food Wars![45] In July 2019, Sentai Filmworks licensed season 3, which released on home video with an English dub in 2020.[54] In the United States, the series aired the English dub on Adult Swim's Toonami programming block from July 7, 2019, to June 18, 2023.[57] Gameplay requires little interaction from the player as most of the duration of the game is spent on reading the text that appears on the screen which represents either the dialogue between the various characters or the thoughts of the protagonist.[59] Rebecca Silverman of Anime News Network gave the first volume of the manga series a B; praising the art and Soma as a likeable protagonist.[62] Cecilia D'Anastasio writing a piece on fan service for Kotaku also commented that they wouldn't watch the anime, saying it had a "distracting breast-to-food quotient".Top 20 Manga for Male Readers survey,[65] and third in the Nationwide Bookstore Employees' Recommended Comics of 2014.[66] Dan Barnett commented for the UK Anime Network that despite it having a "simplistic structure", the series was "utterly brilliant".[67] However, Helen Knight, also writing for the UK Anime Network likened the series to the marmite slogan "either you love it or hate it".