Cafe Snowbelle: Anime ATM 68 Shokugeki no Souma Season 2

Don't you just love when you forget you've watched an anime and then you rewatch it and it seems really familiar but you just continue watching it all the way through and go "oh yeah, I did watch this!"? Because that was me. I forgot that I finished watching it because I remember starting to watch it, but had no idea how it ended.

{Spoilers??? Idk man this is a cooking competition bildungsroman so take it as you will}

Anyways to summarize this whole season it would just be a continuation of Souma's growth. And the finale of the Autumn Tournament. What made it so interesting to watch though was how intense those food reactions were. I forgot how crazy it got and so when it got to that point I was like "oh yeah, that happened." Maybe my memory is just bad, but it did enhance my rewatching experience so there's a plus. So plot-wise, nothing much happened. I think the real star was the character development.

Obviously this is all based around Souma and his personal growth, but it also has a reflection into the lives of other chefs, or just other people in general. I think that this show sends out a really important message that just happens to be about food. Certainly there's a lot of good food techniques you can pick up from this and inspire a few people to take up cooking as a profession or to learn to cook some good quality food for themselves, but it's also the learning process. Each and every one of them has something to learn and glean from one another. They all have their specialties, but they also incorporate other people's specialties when necessary to diversify their food. I think this show has a clear message about not just food and the general blanket statement that satisfies the definition of a bildungsroman, but also the growth that occurs with the hunger to learn. A lot of times I think we think about learning and growth and improvement as "Oh I can do this, but I'll never be as good as Person X over there" and that mindset of comparison is so detrimental to the learning process. That's why it's good to exemplify an underdog, a diner boy, someone who everyone disregards as worthless because he doesn't have a pedigree. Souma's not that guy that's been necessarily shaped into a winner, but it's his hunger to learn and improve that's been pushing him and helping him through his failures. And it's his general charisma, his eagerness and friendliness that are tools that he utilizes to make the most out of his experiences at Totsuki.

I could say a lot more about the other characters and each of their individual quirks, but honestly I think the main takeaway is to aspire to be like Souma. Especially now that I'm at university I can definitely say that the hunger to learn is the best motivation. Stay hungry, stay curious.