Food Wars!: Shokugeki no Soma: The Second Plate Season 2 Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.5

Food Wars!: Shokugeki no Soma: The Second Plate Season 2 Blu-ray Movie Review

Is this plate palatable?

Reviewed by Martin Liebman May 4, 2018

Food Wars! Season 1 cannot be said to be amongst the best the Anime genre has to offer. More a cooking show extravaganza with more than a BAM! of silly excess and less a character building program, it glorified food and its presentation with stylized, sexualized, almost orgasmic bliss. There was fun to be had, and some solid characterization as talented and somewhat cocky and naive main character Soma entered the world of cutthroat culinary classes, but the show certainly almost always chose food-prep fun and insanity over anything else. Season two, shorter than the first by 11 episodes, doubles down on fattening up on its objectification of foodstuffs (and a few chesty characters) and making food preparation and presentation its focus, leaving character growth largely for their waistbands, not their hearts and souls.

With the first year in the books and the student population thinned, only the best of the best remain at the prestigious Totsuki Culinary Academy. Soma has impressed and survived, but he's about to go up against even stiffer competition on even bigger stages. It's time for the Autumn Elections, and Soma finds himself facing off against the cold and calculating Alice, the highly talented and very skilled and learned granddaughter of the school’s director, a genius when it comes to biologically understanding the food she prepares, right down to its essential molecules and how they interact. But even if her food is scientifically perfect, it lacks heart. Soma, as cool a customer as has ever walked through the school’s hallowed halls, is not about to allow Alice’s fancy equipment and science babble to deter him from preparing a winning dish. Competitions are cutthroat across the school, and characters will be pushed to their limits both in the kitchen an in their lives as the temperature rises and only the best -- or perhaps most fierce -- will make it out on top.

Each episode, and the cooking battles in particular, is packed with information about the dishes being prepared and served: what ingredients are used, how and why they compliment one another, the process of preparing and cooking them, why the food tastes delicious when it's done, or at least should taste delicious. All of the dishes are some degree of exotic, even hamburgers, which are the food of choice for a contest in one of the early season episodes. Much of it at least sounds very appetizing, even if the animation isn't always great at capturing the true succulence of any dish, and is of course incapable of allowing audiences to smell the aromas, which is perhaps why the show is so endlessly reliant on verbalizing the food's nose and flavor. Food Wars certainly knows how to whet the palate when it comes to dishing up delectable food items, but it's a bit on the stale side when it comes to characterization.

Shorter than season one and taking even less opportunity to explore the characters in any detail (save, perhaps, for Megumi, the somewhat scatterbrained girl who is a bit out of hear league and has to work extra hard to succeed, unlike characters like Soma and his chief chef rivals for whom cooking comes as second nature), one cannot help but feel somewhat empty after most of the episodes, even as several of the characters walk away very satisfied, having consumed the food prepared for them. The season nevertheless moves along at lightning pace, putting almost all of its attention on the high drama food prep and the chaos that stems from various competitions. Though that necessarily comes with some character growth as they win and lose and learn more about one another and their craft, notably as the season winds down and sets up its third season, the bulk is concerned with carrying along the same sort of over-amplified, stylized, and occasionally sexualized and visually frenzied responses to food and, indeed, food preparation. Food Wars aims to make cooking an action sport, a cutthroat sport, but season two doesn't offer that same sense of immediate drama as season one. It's more food-based reality TV than it is anything else, which still lends it an exciting edge but sacrifices more than manufactured and mostly in-the-moment drama for longer, more arcing angles that dig more deeply into the characters and life at the school, something season one did much better, particularly in its early goings.

Food Wars!: Shokugeki no Soma: The Second Plate Season 2 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Beyond some occasional banding, Food Wars!: Season 2 looks very good. Sentai's 1080p Blu-ray, which spreads all 13 episodes across two discs (nine episodes on disc one, four episodes plus supplements on disc two), handles the material very well. The image is clear with well defined lines and crisp definition. Character models are sharp and organic, uniquely presented with quality detailing to hair and clothes, while more static surfaces like kitchen appliances look very complex and natural. Even as the image grows chaotic during stylized cooking battles, it holds firm and well defined. Colors are impressively bold, particularly in those same frenetic stylized moments, but different colored foods shine with a boldness that is most assuredly only bested by the food's flavoring, which the show describes in great detail. This is a very good presentation from Sentai.

Food Wars!: Shokugeki no Soma: The Second Plate Season 2 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Even with its limited channels, Food Wars!: Season 2's DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 lossless soundtrack is quite impressive. It's very wide and open, a characteristic that is particularly obvious at the cooking competitions that open the season, held in a very large arena where crowd cheers and public announcement reverberation present with authenticity and clarity and a fairly impressive sense of spacial immersion, even if the sound is limited to the front side. Music is consistently dynamic and clear, playing with impressive fidelity, power, and width. Some of the amplified action scenes, such as a number of stylized clashes between cooking contestants at the end of episode two, play with an aggressive posture and plenty of muscle while still maintaining sharp-edged detail. Basic dialogue delivers with excellent clarity and a natural front-center positioning that couldn't be any more focused if the track included a dedicated center channel speaker output.

Food Wars!: Shokugeki no Soma: The Second Plate Season 2 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Food Wars!: Season 2 contains the usual Sentai supplements on disc two.

• Clean Opening Animations (1080p, 16:54): The various opening sequences presented without text (minus the show's title card).
• Clean Closing Animations (1080p, 21:30): The various closing sequences presented without text.
• Also Available from Sentai Filmworks (1080p): Trailers for Tanaka-kun Is Always Listless, Haven't You Heard? I'm Sakamoto, Flying Witch, and Haikyu!!.

Food Wars!: Shokugeki no Soma: The Second Plate Season 2 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Food Wars!: Season 2 is more compact, more intense, more flavorful to use a word from its vernacular. It starts off fast with a number of high stakes and very complex cooking competitions and demonstrations. It's a little thinner on characterization compared to season one, (which was certainly no bastion of characterization), in large part because it's a little thinner on overall runtime, but it's a decently fun, if not mindless, follow-up season that's more aimed at cooking and reality TV aficionados than it is a general Anime fan base. It's well animated and adequately voiced. Sentai's Blu-ray delivers good video and excellent two-channel audio, which often sounds larger than its limited output options. Supplements are the usual Sentai offerings. Recommended in conjunction with season one, and here's hoping season three cooks up a storm on Blu-ray sooner rather than later.