#azami is one of my favs i love him SO MUCH

[stellabyystarlight]

happy azami day!! 💄🫶

[icharchivist]

A series of events:

-One of my closest friend wants to bite the bullet and try up a3 knowing it is so important to me

-Thing is though that friend in question can't bear topics about theater, so he's really just doing it for me. (I did remind him we could drop anytime and that he didn't have to force himself, he just didnt listen)

-After one episode of the anime, he wants to drop it because nothing interested him

-The next day he tells me to watch another one, and go only by a pace of one a day

-Itaru makes his effect. Friend is now clearly watching for me and for Itaru.

-Yes friend made fun of me when i lost it when Chikage was on screen

-Friend made clear he had very little investment in the rest of spring and only cared for Itaru

-He started to feel emotionally hit by Itaru's storyline

-We listen to the a3 musics then. He's notoriously picky about music but ends up vibing with most of the songs, especially Autumn and Winter. He starts to be interested in Autumn.

-We go to Summer, still aiming one episode a day. Friend doesn't like any of the cast except Tenma he loved at first sight

-Tenma resonated with him and suddenly he insisted we binged all of summer in one day. It fucked him up.

-"I am not invested i can quit at anytime" - said a liar

-after Summer he asks to take a break before Autumn because he's scared of them. He didn't expect any of the characters to impact him but knew Autumn would be his type, and now that two characters he didnt expect ripped his heart out he's terrified of what it would mean for him

-He also asks that we resume to one episode a day

-I end up crying about Winter because im normal and i tease him that with the break and the pacing we wont reach him anytime soon, so i was safe

-Evilness oblige he decides that we're going to bing Autumn and Winter on the same fucking day

-Autumn didnt mess him up as much as he thought. At first. In the following days he becomes obsessed and starts to mostly talk about Autumn to me

-He gets bewildered by how little content Hisoka and Azuma had, saying "i thought when you said their arc were cut you were nippicking what the fuck was that"

-He guesses what were the themes of the plotlines by analysing the few we have and the knowledge they're my fav characters. He's 95% spot on. Now he cares winter because he sees me in every characters send help.

-I show him the game's content that was cut from the anime. He appreciates Winter but mostly because of what he can bully me with

-We had planned to stop there, so that he had a baseline to bully me.

-We didn't.

-He got invested in Azami suddenly and asked that we'd read his chapter together

-It messed him up and everything he thought should have hit with Autumn but didn't ended up hitting him a hundred times harder

-Friend gets overly invested. I send him Wandering Ghost. He loses his mind

-We discuss about the fact the song was not translated on yaycupcake

-The next day, as he's very good with Japanese, he decides to translate it and asks me to update his translation to yaycupcake

-he still refuses to acknowledge he's invested.

-Friend also starts to warm up to the cast members he wasnt found of.

-Friend has now asked me to show him Chikage and Guy. I insist that if we do, we read at least Winter 2nd and 3rd play and Spring 3rd.

-Friend complains because as he understands Japanese he's been mainly *listening* to a3 and have a hard time keeping up with the archive's full auto for the unvoiced events

-I bring up the events are voiced on the JPN server

-Friend decide to start playing it

-(i realize i lost my jpn account so i start one along with him)

-We sign in in time for the last 2 days of the spring 9th play event

-Friend decide to go ham

-Friend becomes obsessed with the event song

-Friend translates the song based on lyrics he found, has asked me to post it on yaycupcake (which i willdo when im back home), and is starting to work on a lyrics video for it.

-Friend still insists he's not involved. Despite the fact he regularly brings a3 up out of nowhere and had like 3 existential crisis provoked by characters.

-Friend is frustrated by all that is untranslated on the wiki and wants to help translate more regardless

-Friend is scared shitless about Chikage because i told him about him and he's terrified it's going to fuck him up (As expected from a Sandalphon lover.)

Tldr: i dragged someone into a3, he started out really disliking it, and now he's so worked up by what isnt translated and is working on things.

So there's that.

[madokasoratsugu]

im new to shokugeki and i dont care about spoilers, why is it bad?

a no joke answer bc u deserve this:

tl;dr Shokugeki sucks because it lost its direction halfway through the story, and when Tsukada (the author) realised that he’d bitten off more than he could chew with such a huge cast of characters.

long answer:

here’s the thing. Shokugeki started out good. 

it mostly played off the usual shounen tropes: a challenger would appear, but then they quickly joined the friendship circle, rinse and repeat. but with such a wide cast of characters with differing goals and personalities plus the high stakes of only the top 10% graduating, it made it easy to bank on the character interactions and friendships, which is what the first half of Shokugeki did, heavily so. and it worked ! 

it was a simple set up (protag aims to beat his dad in a cook off, goes to cooking school, meets friends and foes ! a tournament arc ! fun and shenanigans ! yay!), but Shokugeki did it good. it didn’t subvert any expectations, just did according to what it set out to do. nothing felt exaggerated beyond the typical manga stuff, and everything achieved was earned with hard work. with the occasional fluff and friends thrown in, it became a comfy mix for a good shounen manga.

if anything, id say that half the success came from the character’s relationships themselves - the plot wasn’t anything special, but the genuinity that the characters and their friendships and goals (shared or not) were treated with were wholesome and fun.

which is why it was so fucking jarring when it derailed by throwing aside half of its cast and completely stagnating all character development for the remaining half.

(insert infamous Central Arc expulsion joke here)

if you’ve started/are intending to start, id say its the most obvious after the Moon Banquet Festival Arc/beginning of Central Arc. the writing started getting sloppy, as did the handling of the characters. ive mentioned this before, and ill stress this again: i honestly believe that Central Arc is when Tsukada realised what a big miss steak he did in creating such a huge cast, and in the face of Shokugeki’s then success, made some poor authorial choices to keep the hype going (both plot and character wise).

for characters: half the cast was rid of via expulsion, including very competent chefs (which had no proper in canon explanation on how the fuck that happened) who happened to be fan favourites. i mean, Hayama Akira ? fuck, Nakiri Alice, anyone ? plus any poor remaining characters got shafted in lieu of Souma, hard. this became more prominent as the Arcs slowly go on, the ones of which took the worst brunt of it being Takumi and Megumi.

(what do u think is worse. your fav never getting a cameo or your fav being part of the forefront team but constantly getting fucked over because Souma didn’t get the spotlight of the chapter yet. vote now in the replies.)

for plot: higher and higher stakes were introduced that again, just didn’t make sense !! in Central Arc, Souma was expected to win against Eishi, the best chef in his entire school. when two arcs prior he just lost a cooking contest to two of his peers (placed third), and one arc prior struggled to beat Kuga in ticket sales (even then he didn’t win because his cooking was better, so. wasnt even a win on the cooking front). there was no build up ! NOT EVEN A TRAINING ARC. he just went straight from the bottom rung of the ladder to the fucking ceiling. super different from the first half of the series when everything would be shown in careful detail (best example i can think of off the top of my head being the Shokugeki against Mimasaka in the Autumn Election Arc).

also: in the midst of introducing Erina’s character arc and backstory, Tsukada seemed to completely forget (or maybe just didnt know how to link back?) that he’d already established an overarching plotline: Souma’s quest to best Jouichirou. so when Souma began overthrowing these foes that are his seniors said to be leagues ahead of him, the suspension of disbelief was stretching waaay thin. but hey ! its a shounen manga ! we can forgive this much (sarcasm). 

then Tsukada introduces Asahi. mother fucking Asahi. who is basically introduced by beating Jouichirou without breaking a sweat, but oh boy did he break the suspension of disbelief right then and there and completely toss the plot into the fucking fire. because there’s no end goal anymore ! the one thing that our main character has been working so hard for ? non existent. pointless. this no name (at that time) character has done it, pack your bags boys, let’s go home.

(might i note that at this point, Shokugeki was also uuhh nothing like the slice of life comedy it originally was. it became an action-psychological mix that just…doesnt work. and i mean. of course it wouldn’t. there was no foreshadowing, the villians can’t be taken seriously because 1) theyre also teenagers for fuck’s sake 2) Azami’s just a creep, plain and simple. he has no depth. no one cares about an antagonist who’s bad at just being bad.

the themes it began with was completely set aside for really badly written character backstories and angsty edgey bs that i still don’t understand why Tsukada thought would work in retaining hype. especially when considering how pure the premise was.

i honestly also think that its the Blue Arc + Dark Chefs Arc when Tsukada actually realised that his plot had gone haywire, since volume sales were dropping hard and fans clearly hated the direction the series had gone in. but instead of trying to reign it back in, he decided to just let it run buckwild because he just didn’t know how to fix it.)

to rub salt into the wound: so many promised resolutions are shoved into the background, done offscreen, or worse yet, forgotten ! scenes that fans have literally been waiting for. Souma VS Erina Shokugeki. Souma VS Takumi Shokugeki. Nakiri Alice coming back to the series and actually fucking cooking again.

(im sure that there’s more that lead to its downfall but like. shrugs. this is mainly to me why it sucks: it had A Lot going for it (im not ashamed to admit that at one point i actually genuinely believed it could be one of the next Big 3 on Shounen Jump), and it just didnt live up to any of it for no other reason other than Tsukada mixing elements of a story that didn’t work well together, tried to force them to work, and did nothing to fix it when it didn’t.)

so our plot is gone. so are our lovable characters. so is the slice of life comedy that drew most people in in the first place. the potential that it had is now dust. what does Shokugeki have left that makes it unique, that makes people love it ? here’s the answer !

nothing. 

that fact kicks you in the teeth every fucking time you remember how good the first half of the series was. 

then that fact dropkicks you when you realise that Shokugeki no Soma literally started on a 90degree drop into a dumpster fire when the series was at the apex of its popularity and plot buildup.

that’s why it sucks.

[vio1315]

📕🙋📷😔

Ahhh!!! Thanks!

favorite retelling of Azami’s story

Oh this is interesting

Definitely the manga

It gave the appropriate level of time to the story which is great... and... is... by far the most cute

if you could meet 3 kagepro characters who would you pick and what would you do together

Oh, uhh. I'm not someone who usually wants to meet fictional characters, hmm

I'd pick Kano and regret it. He's my fav but I'm a lawful good type, so if he teased anyone outside the group, it'd stress me so much xD

Seto because he just seems like a cool dude

And a "refreshing young man" xD he can return sanity to the group. Also maybe I can learn more about him xP

And you uh, Shintaro. It's risky because he might not wanna hang out and would throw off the whole dynamic, but he's a sweetheart deep down, and if we can draw it out, he'd be cool to have around

I like just hanging out or playing games together, but I'd see if they wanted to go out and do something first. Try to keep everyone happy

favorite design of a character

I'm... biased

Kano's my fav dang it, and my love leeches into his design

I just heart eyes at everything

And I must like it cuz I own his hoodie!

most underappreciated song

Oh, I like all the mainstream ones best xD

Like I'd say Toumei Answer, but the recent poll says that's really popular so!

Gunjou Rain, methinks. It sounds nice

Some of the earlier stuff I don't think has the same benefit

I forget the lyrics honestly but! It sounds nice, so!

[icharchivist]

Hey Icha I hope you'll be alright. honestly Banri has really grown on me alot so i completely understand you're frustration. dunno why people put energy into the hate so much. i mean i guess its a little funny when they make jokes but it does get annoying after awhile. it sucks since Banri had so much development in act 2. I loved the way he was mentoring Azami, and even went to fight for him when he got kidnapped. he's not the same brat he used to be. Plus hes a really good big brother figure to alot of the younger characters too. bless. I loved his interactions with yuki in that one event

Heeyy <33 thank you you’re very sweet... <3

I’m glad to hear Banri did end up growing on you!! like, i mean, i love him and i want people to see his growth but i also understand why people would still, not  care for him much  and i don’t even blame people (my post was just really bc i see too much of those posts LDKJFDF)

I really do feel like i see more posts “joking” negatively about Banri that i see positive jokes about like, characters people actually like, and at some point i’m just. where do you get this energy  😭

Banri really had a lot of development, his dynamic with Azami is really so good and it really shows how he grew. His dynamic with Yuki in Into the Night is still one of my fav scenes eVER and im just so soft about it...

there’s a lot to him i really like in term of development and imo his development also shed light to even some of his flawed behavior in the past. I remember when i was about to watch the Autumn part of the anime i was anxious because i did remember disliking Banri when i first read the Autumn chap and it’s only after he saw Juza’s portrait i started to warm up to him, so i was so anxious the bad behavior that turned me off back then would kick off again, but instead i just remember loving him even more because i could see through the attitude and sees some elements of his storyline i really really love (mainly how a lot of his behavior come from attempt at killing boredom he doesn’t even realize are just that, that his “super easy mode” side ended up vastly isolating him (it’s in act 2 i think he mentions that even his family grew tired of him always winning at some point? which made him lose any passion he could have) and he’s basically just desperately seeking for anything that may give him thrills, and the backlash of failing at something for the first time in a long time, and finally managing to realize that this is where he’s thriving, in being able to have a space in which he can grow without basically being shut off because he’s “the best anyway”, while also getting people who *wants* him around (i’m thinking when he originally talks to Itaru about competing for the video game but Itaru drags him into being his gaming partner for exemple: Banri didn’t even THINK about collaborating, because his “perfectness” isolated him this much, and it was a way also to realize he could exist in a spot just by being, not by being the best).. i have a lot of thoughts about all of this i can’t articulate much today). 

I found it SO interesting that i was too busy thinking about his thoughts about all of those themes that i forgot to be mad at him and instead ended up loving him more in general. 

I also tend to also be a little more defensive with a3 because i think the characters all have complex sides to them people can relate to, which are generally taken in direction that are just... so good by a3, so i get attentive to what sort of issues people can relate to with those. I remember reading a lot of people say they related to Banri with a “burnt out gifted kid syndrome” approach and i think there’s something really interesting in the way a3 decided to tackle it.

So there’s really a lot of things i find really interesting with Banri and he has a lot of dynamics i really love, mainly with Yuki and Azami and even Kumon!!, or even just how he grew into the role of the Leader of his troupe to start with... that i’m just always a little bummed when i only see posts focusing on, let’s be real, his early dynamic with Juza (who honestly has grown more into a banter now than actual animosity anyway) which ends up shaping all of the way people see him despite him interreacting with more characters and having an individual arc on his own, even moreso as one of the leaders.

but again i also don’t want to impose my view of a character on anyone and i still see how his initial dynamic with Juza can leave a very bad taste in people’s mouth and humor is a way to cope, but at this point it’s just, too much, i see too much of those and i’m tired djlfhdFKJLDFL

i wish people were as dedicated making content about the characters they liked as they did dunking on character they don’t like that much

but orz. Hopefully eventually it’ll get better but. we’ll see...