Shokugeki no Souma bears significance to me as it was the first anime I ever watched. It really was the first shounen cooking anime out there - featuring an underdog protagonist who constantly has to compete with more established chefs.
But lately, ratings have started dropping...which begs the question: Where did it all go wrong?
MAL average for:
-> Season 1: 8.43
-> Season 2: 8.36
-> Season 3: 8.33
-> Season 3 Part 2: 8.26
-> Season 4: 7.84
-> Season 5 (Airing): 7.66
Reason One: Too many arcs
When anime series try to introduce too many arcs, watchers become confused and start to question the logic and timing of these arcs. Food Wars is a prime example of overextending the number of arcs, at the expense of character development. Each antagonist feels too forced - the result being there is no character and no flavour - no bitter hatred, no palpitating anger...which undermines the whole point of being an antagonist. The final arc is so bad it is now universally regarded as the epitome of "final-arc failure" - even the lowest rating manga/anime outperforms it. A bitter disappointment to what was once an excellent series.
Reason Two: No character development
Seasons 1-3 had reasonable character development - not as much as I would have liked, but reasonable nonetheless. Seasons 4 onwards...is just a mess. No character development means empty episodes which means that ratings will go down...which is exactly what happened.
Reason Three: Giving Up
The last point I'll give is speculative but plausible nonetheless. I feel the author gave up after season 3's final arc - was it because of stress, overwork...? I don't know - but the amount of effort given into writing - even its initial "food porn" allure - just vanished. It would seem that the author gave up - depleting Food Wars of all its flavour.
I'll wrap it up here, but I may edit this sometime in the future.
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