Food Wars: Shokugeki no Soma-Overview

Out of all of the current Weekly Shonen Jump series that I'm currently reading, none hits closer to home than; Food Wars: Shokugeki no Soma. Since being a Shueisha title it is printed in English by Viz, but this is one title I am glad they translated and put out into English.

Food Wars: Shokugeki no Soma Volume 1 Cover

Food Wars: Shokugeki no Soma deals with a story of a young boy by the name of Soma Yukihira who works in the kitchen of his father's restaurant. Soma's lineage of working in a common place kitchen restaurant leads people to believe he's not an actual cook and deals with common place food and has no ideals of traditional cooking techniques or even the grace of actual lineage.

Soma by the request of his father, encourages his son to leave the nest and safety net of Yukihira (the family restaurant bears the same name as the family) and join Japan's top cooking school Totsuki Academy. Passing his exams and being a bit haughty during the entrance ceremony leads Soma to have a bad reputation among many classmates, but throughout the manga it is emphasized that those without the ability to make their dreams reality and who will not keep pushing forward are going to be expelled and not worth it. And with a final graduation rate of only 10%, Totsuki Academy makes good word on what they say.

While many traditional shounen pieces depict leveling up and traditional battles Food Wars: Shokugeki no Soma does their battling in the kitchen akin to Iron Chef (the good one, the one made in Japan). The actual title in the English release being called Food Wars most likely stems from the meaning of the Japanese work Shokugeki. While I have never heard the word before this manga, shoku means food and geki can be used for fighting with weapons, or weaponry itself.

But within these battles aren't just a way to test which dish reigns supreme, they come with some of the highest risks imaginable. Whenever a Shokugeki is decided people put things or even themselves on the line, therefore creating more tension within the actual story. While the Shokugeki isn't used very much within the start of the manga, it is used over and over and is a central point of all deciding factors within Totsuki Academy.

 A group of first year students from Totsuki Academy

The characters in in this manga are varied within the manga, the image is just a small sample of how varied the characters are; people are various body sizes and ages. You won't get characters mixed up which is a great thing, because now a days distinct characters are a good thing since I remember reading a lot of manga and getting various characters confused because of how similar they look in both body and face.

This manga is a breath of fresh air in the shounen genre, while it has it's serious moments and some ideas not grounded in reality, it strikes a good balance between the two. If you like cooking manga like Bambino or What Did You Eat Yesterday, this might be a manga to look into picking up. As a currently weekly publication, it currently is on about Chapter 138 in the WSJ print and Volume 9 in English print. Just be warned that there are ecchi themes within the manga, so that's just something you have to deal with.