Food Wars! The Second Plate

Episode 1

Are you hungry? I sure hope so, because Food Wars! is back, and you may want to watch it around lunch time, because the Fall Elections (or Fall Classic if you read the manga; I do prefer that translation) are still in full swing, and the first dish for the competition is bento. As fits the opening of the second season, first up is Soma versus Alice, which not only puts the main hero right back in the action, but also gives us the closest approximation to Erina, Soma's primary rival, since she herself has been barred from participation in the event thanks to the events of season one.

I love that this second season of Food Wars! isn't wasting any time on filler or recapping – there's some brief narration in place of the opening theme, and then we just jump right into the story as if it hadn't been a year since season one. While this could ostensibly backfire if you don't remember the end of the first season or all of the characters especially well, it is less likely to be an issue simply because this storyline is immediately tense and the food is breathtaking. Alice is a molecular chef – she reduces foods to their base elements and plays with them to create visually stunning dishes that look more like works of art than ordinary edibles. She's also overwhelmingly confident, and it's easy to see why – the sushi bento she quite literally whips up is gorgeous, especially when compared to Soma's more pedestrian dish.

Of course, as Soma points out, the bento is a pedestrian dish – it's an everyday, familiar kind of lunchbox. The trick is to make it exciting and unexpected while still keeping it an everyday meal, like when my mother put chocolate chips on my peanut butter sandwich instead of honey in middle school. This is what Alice doesn't understand, and that actually makes a lot of sense. She was raised in a high-class world, so the ordinary bento is beyond her worldview. We see this not only in her failure to grasp what Soma knows instinctively, but also when she doesn't know about the candy that inspired one of the main components of Soma's dish – given his explanation, it seems like a pretty common snack for regular kids. It's also been an ongoing theme of Food Wars! as a whole that Soma's (and Megumi's) so-called common roots actually give them an edge in understanding people, while the high class cooks at Totsuki lack a basic understanding of the humanity in cooking.

As with the second cour of the first season, this episode is pretty tame in the foodgasm department – they appear to be sticking with the silly rather than the tentacular. If you prefer the fanservice foodgasms, I wouldn't worry too much – the ending theme, which will presumably become the opening theme next week, has a shot of Erina totally nude but for some ribbons caught between her legs and around her breasts, with a look of ecstasy on her face. I assume this means that there will be at least one or two of the old-style foodgasms to come. The art and animation look largely the same as before, with a definite improvement in terms of how breasts are drawn under chef's coats – while there's still some instability in terms of fluctuating size, they largely look attached to the body rather than the coat itself like in season one.

Overall, this is a really good reintroduction for viewers of the first season. We're given a quick and easy reminder of everyone's personalities, from Megumi's freak-out over what to pack, to Erina's insufferable attitude, to Soma's cool put-downs, and then the action just picks right up. I'm looking forward to another season of delectable dishes paired with real character growth and over-the-top reactions and music, now with the added fun of people flying around on kitchen knives in the opening theme. Fire up the grill - Food Wars! is back in top form.

Rating: A-

Food Wars! The Second Plate is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.