If I’m honest, I’m very much of two minds about these latest developments in Shokugeki no Souma.  I mean, I’ve been grousing for a while (though only slightly) that things were beginning to feel a little repetitive, so it seems ungracious to complain about a long-awaited plot shakeup I’ve been asking for.  But the road this series seems to be heading down now is a dangerous one, and this is such uncharted territory for Shokugeki no Souma that I have no confidence that it has the chops to be able to navigate it successfully.

There seems to be no doubt that Nakiri Azami is an abject villain.  I mean, if he had the moustache he’s surely twirl it – he’s got every other part of the act down pat.  Cartoon villains are fine sometimes, and it’s not as though Food Wars is some kind of photo-realistic drama.  But they can also get repetitive (that word again) pretty quickly if there’s not more to them – and so far at least there’s no indication there’s more to Azami.  He seems to be a straight-up elitist scumbag who wants to make Totsuki a hellish place and intimidate his daughter until she’s (once more) abjectly miserable.

I have a couple of other worries, too, starting with the fact that I’ll be quite sad if Shokugeki no Souma stops being a series mostly about food.  It’s the cooking that really makes this show distinctive after all, and while plot is fine it’s never been in the driver’s seat here.  Perhaps even more of an issue is that the scene between Souma-kun and Senzaemon frames this story as being basically all about Erina – and I don’t think it should be all about Erina.  Sure, her dad is a douche, but why should Souma have to make saving her his life’s work (he was already obsessed with getting her praise – isn’t that bad enough)?  And why should what seems to be a massive crisis for the entire school take a back seat to what amounts to a family dispute?

The answer, really, is that despite its protestations to the contrary Shokugeki no Souma is a fundamentally elitist series to the core.  The affairs of the wealthy have always superseded those of the rest of this world – they have servants who obsess over pleasing them, they get to insult and exploit others without any consequence.  So reducing the entire thing to a referendum on the well-being of a pampered heiress is, in that sense, very much in-character.  Souma may be the protagonist and he and Megumi may be more likeable than the rich kids, and Azami may make a convenient dartboard for superficially egalitarian projectiles – but ultimately, Food Wars is much more attuned to his way of thinking than that of the commoners in its midst.

So, taking all that in, there are a lot of potential pratfalls in Shokugeki no Souma’s path to say the least.  But it wouldn’t be fair to proclaim it incapable of avoiding them without giving it the chance to prove it can.  We’ll see how this business of Erina hiding out at Polar Star works out – I suspect Azami will suss that out pretty quickly, and I sincerely hope her time there doesn’t descend into a patronizing tale of her learning folksy wisdom and humility from those beneath her station.  Maybe Food Wars will surprise me here – it hasn’t all that often so far, but it hasn’t really had to.