synopsis:

Young Soma Yukihira – who has honed his cooking skills while working as an assistant at “Yukihira,” the family eatery – has successfully entered Totsuki Fine Dining Academy, a cooking school for the ultra elite. At the academy, he meets various chefs and develops his skills while striving to create his own unique brand of cooking. It is during the Lunar Feast, a time-honored Totsuki tradition, that Soma chooses to take on one of the members of The Ten, which comprises the academy’s most accomplished chefs. Meanwhile, Azami Nakiri – the father of one of Soma’s fellow students – has worked behind the scenes to found Central, a pivotal organization dedicated to haute cuisine, yet has remained barred from cooking aside from select recipes taught in his lectures. Finding themselves at opposition with how Central operates, Soma and some of the other Totsuki students decide to stand and confront this threat head-on. As this is going on, Soma and the others will be faced with the Promotional Exam, referred to as one of the greatest hurdles at Totsuki. An even more heated battle is about to begin!

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Sidenotes

Food Wars! Third Plate is the third season of the series Food Wars. This anime has a total of 24 episodes rather than being 13 episodes like season 2. While even though this review will be spoiler-free, I might mention stuff that could be from season 1 and 2. In other words, if you haven’t seen season 1 and 2, you might get slightly spoiled.

Story – Festival Time and Daddy’s home!

The third season is broken into two story sections. The first section involves Soma and his friends competing  to earn customers during the Lunar Festivals and the second story involves with Soma and his friends fighting against Erina’s father and his group called the Central. In the first section, Soma has to compete against the students and earn money during an important festival. To make things worse for Soma, if Soma doesn’t earn enough money with his food, he would have to be expelled from the school. In next section of the story, Erina’s father Azami Nakiri returns to the academy declares new order. Under his jurisdiction, Azami plots to get rid of all the cooking clubs and reform the school in his image. The story shakens more when even Erina is afraid to confront his father and it shows how much power he holds on her. Seeing Erina in despair and hearing the news about the school, Soma and his friends team up and fight against Azami’s new order and his group to protect Totsuki Culinary Academy. As the Food Wars gets intense, Soma is going to need help from the bests in order to win.

Plot – This means Food War! Third times the charm?

Already in the third season and what makes this season different than the others? Well honestly, it doesn’t much of a difference except for a new story plot. If you seen season 1 and 2, you kind of already know the situations with Soma and his friends. However, this new season does add something which involves with Erina and her father. With the introduction of Azami, the story gets serious, plus we get some additional character development. We get to learn about why is Erina is the way she is with tasting food and we get to see a side of her which is different than what we saw of her in the past seasons. Without going into too deep with the plot, we also get more backstory with Soma’s father, Joichiro Yukihira. This season introduces new story telling elements that helps breaks away the monotonous story while also being entertaining. While the show does bring in many returning characters, the main focus is between Soma and Erina.

Verdict

Was this season a hit or miss? While this season wasn’t awful, but it does have the usual cliché from the past seasons. I did enjoy this season and I got heavily invested with the new story plot with Azami and the characters with Soma and Erina. If you don’t mind the usual anime antics such as fanservice and predictability, you will enjoy this series. As far as I know, the season has plenty of episodes that will make you want action. The anime’s cliffhanger will also make you want to start season 4 as the story gets intense. More than likely, I will be looking forward to seeing season 4 and I want to see Soma take on the hard challenges as he fights for his friends.

What do you guys think about this season?