If there were two standouts from the spring season for me it would be Ore Monogatari and Shokugeki no Soma (Food Wars).

If you follow my blog you know that I, and my boys, love Ore Monongatari and often watch it together. That, however, is not the case with Shokugeki no Soma. My 11 year old keeps asking to watch it and I keep saying: “No!”. I am a mean dad who never lets his kids watch anything, but I am comfortable with this fact (please read as sarcasm). But I do have my reasons.

Shokugeki no Soma follows Soma Yukihira, a boy who grew up cooking along side his dad (Joichiro) in his dad’s small restaurant. He wants to surpass his dad’s skills and take over the restaurant one day. As Soma is about to start high school, Joichiro shuts down the restaurant to work overseas and enrolls Soma in an elite,and highly competitive culinary school where only a small percentage of the students graduate.

While shocked, Soma adapts and decides to do his best. Of course making enemies of the first day of school by telling everyone that he’ll be better than them.

I am a bit of a “foodie”. I love to cook. I have worked in the food industry for a long time, so this show hits the spot for me. It is really, in my mind, a cross between a school anime and Iron Chef with a bit of shounen posturing and ecchi-ness thrown in for good measure.

I wish I had these kinds of knife skills!

The show is often focused around a cooking challenge of some sort designed to test student’s technical skills or creativity under pressure.

Besides being entertaining I find Soma’s determination and confidence while having some humility as an appealing aspect to the show. He likes when he has satisfied a person eating his food and is supportive of his classmates while still striving to be the best he can be.

If that was all there was to it, I’d let my 11 year old watch it. But then there are scenes like these:

Which perhaps wouldn’t be so bad, but it resulted in this:

While I find this hilariously absurd, it is something he probably should wait on. The kid is in puberty for god’s sake: How might this mess with his budding development? (I’m kidding).

Scenes like these aren’t going to help either (especially if I have to explain to his mother what I let him watch).

So I tell him:

“No.”

“Stop asking.” 

“No.”

“You already know the answer. Why are you still asking?”

Attention Parents: This show is ecchi at times. Most of the the show is actually pretty tame, but then they eat and you get scenes like the above and below.

That being said. I love the show and am glad it was running on into the summer as well!

Thanks for reading! Hope you liked it!

-I do not own any of the images in this post.