Food Wars! The Second Plate

Episode 8

Coming from a culture that takes fish and makes something that looks and smells like cat food out of it, the sole directive I ever received on how to pick a good one at market was “make sure it doesn't smell too much like fish.” That made this episode of Food Wars! particularly fascinating to me. Last week, when the three-way tie between Soma, Akira, and Ryo was declared, the theme of their final face-off was announced to be Pacific saury, a fish uniquely suited to all three contestants in different ways. Now with ten days before the finale of the Autumn Elections, each boy has to not only figure out how to prepare the fish, but also how to pick the very best one for his cooking. Soma thinks he's got a grasp on the situation, only to find out that he's just barely more informed than me on the subject. There's far more to picking the perfect Pacific saury than what Soma's dad taught him, and he quickly realizes that he's seriously outclassed here, even with help from fishing village girl Megumi.

This may be the first time that we've seen Soma come so close to admitting that he's not up to a challenge. The gap between his knowledge of fresh fish and the other two's is so wide that it's impossible to brazen his way out of acknowledging it. When he first meets Ryo at the market, the other chef challenges him head-on to test which of them has chosen the better fish, and Soma being Soma, he quickly accepts…only to learn that this was not a sashimi contest he had any hope of winning. Megumi acting as the judge is the final nail in the coffin – unlike the snootier Totsuki students, she can be counted on to give an honest, unbiased opinion.

Soma's sudden despair feels like a major turning point for him in the series, the first time he's realized that maybe he's not quite as awesome as he thinks he is. While he's always taken defeats really well, seeing them as learning opportunities rather than outright failures, there's something different about this one, possibly because of what's at stake – putting himself on the same level as Erina by winning a seat on the council. Because of this, I'd have liked to see a little more time devoted to his inner turmoil than we get – not a full-out angst fest, but perhaps at least through the end of the episode rather than powering through to start the final phase of the Autumn Elections. It's definitely par for the course for this season, but disappointing nonetheless.

Despite this, we do have two stand-out vocal performances this week, both from female members of the cast. This episode introduces us to Alice's Danish mom, Leonora Nakiri, whose Japanese is somewhat less than perfect (and whose eyes are terrifying). Sayaka Ōhara does a terrific job at sounding like she's not a native speaker of her own language, better than most attempts I can remember hearing. (It no doubt helps that she's a proficient English speaker too.) While it sounds a little affected, it's still strikingly well done. The other shout-out goes to Minami Takahashi as Megumi, whose squeals of delight when she eats fish are particularly good – rather than a foodgasm, they sound like she's actually eating something she's enjoying. Unrelatedly, we also see Megumi with her hair down briefly, which is pretty cute.

My pacing complaints aside, this episode does end well, with each of the contestants whipping out their choice of fish. Soma's is so drastically different than the others so as to make it look almost Monty Python-esque, or in the parlance of the show, as if he brought a stick to a swordfight. We know he hasn't really given up, so seeing what he has up his sleeve should be worth waiting for.

Rating: B

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