Hi there! Thanks for subbing.
Thalassophobia is the clinical term for the intense fear of deep bodies of water. Seems like a pretty reasonable fear to have, right? I mean, the beach is fine, and only going to be better as the weather improves. But being stranded in the middle of the ocean without any land in sight? A pretty discomforting thought to say the least. Now I know clinical phobias don’t really work on that level, what I mean to illustrate is that the ocean sucks.
In many ways anime is like an ocean. For most of my life I’ve been paddling in the shallows of anime, until the pandemic invited me to go deeper. I am now on my way to becoming the Jacques Cousteau of anime, and as I look out of the 360 degree panoramic dome of my future submarine, the sights I behold are magnificent and frightening.
I’ve been working on the second part of my Attack on Titan review for a while now, and as I do I find myself going deeper and deeper into the text and my relationship to it. Unearthing connections, conversations that Attack on Titan engages in with the wider animated medium and with entertainment in general. And It doesn’t end there. There are questions of nationhood and sovereignty, the ego and the realisation of an ego ideal, authorship and intent. What I thought would be a simple post about titan go chomp, Levi go whoosh has become a strain on my time and editing skills. I could just present some surface level take, like how AoT is actually a mecha anime, and be done. But the compulsion to write, to catalogue, to become - through the interpretation of anime - what Hiroki Azuma calls a database animal, is too strong. And as I go deeper, the possibility of turning back begins to shrink, and things get so much scarier.
The scariest part of all is meeting my ridiculous self-imposed deadline and wordcount. Simply out of pride and the gratification of maintaining a streak, I return twice a week, week after week to spill the anime tea. The animaTEAon if you will. Padding my word count with awful jokes and wandering observations. They may not always land, but the satisfaction of wrenching these ambulant formulations from out of nowhere and producing them with accuracy across a keyboard with my fingertips fucking rules. With patience, persistence and a little self-guided rigour, who knows just what depths I will be capable of exploring in time.
Perhaps this is why the game that is currently occupying the portion of my brainspace that isn’t carved out by anime is Subnautica. A release from the post indie game boom period of 2014. It was made gratis on the PSN store as part of their #nevergooutside initiative, or whatever it was called. I’ve alluded to it in a previous post alongside my strong aversion for this style of game; that of open-ended first person survival and resource gathering in a large, procedurally generated environment. A Minecraft-alike, I suppose? Whatever Minecraft is nowadays.
I can certainly understand the draw that such games have. There’s the freedom and total non-linearity of the game structure, the improvisational trial-and-error nature of exploration, the joy of discovery as you slowly uncover parts of the map you lacked the skills, equipment or courage to traverse previously. There’s the element of rugged survival simulation and the self-directed pacing, and - most appealingly - there are no godawful NPCs barking Whedonesque canned lines at you constantly.
Subnautica offers the perfect solitude and terror of the scenario I describe in paragraph 1. With a few futuristic tools you survive and eventually thrive in the lively, bio-diverse ocean of an alien planet. The story is told minimally, through abandoned audiologs, as was the fashion of 2014. With each audio encounter suggesting that the only way to get off this planet is to go deeper. And that’s exactly what I’ve been doing. Subnautica is a confrontation with the deep, the limits of one’s perseverance and ingenuity. Only by understanding what is hidden at the very depths of this world, and thereby ourselves, can we hope to escape its terrible gravity.
Could this be why I am constantly mining at Attack on Titan like a vein of precious ore. If I could somehow uncover what moved this titanic undertaking into being, could I begin to understand myself and what it means to create? Perhaps at the very bottom of anime my salvation awaits me. Anyway here are some reviews I wrote for Food Wars, a show about delicious foods and anime boobs. おあがりよ
Food Wars s01 + s02 (2015 - 2016) | series.
This show makes me miss y'all a lot.
I had really high expectations of this for some reason. Idk why, it's essentially a stock shounen with lots of fanservice. What it does excel at is emitting a sense of warmth and fun. The characters are thin but adorable. There's a clear love of cooking, and the show takes real pleasure in the act of sharing delicious treats with your friends (or enemies). I love how cooking techniques, hype kitchen equipment and different styles of cuisine are creatively fashioned into the shounen power ladder the protagonist climbs to reach the peak of his exclusive culinary high school.
It's a bit dumb in places but always fun, funny, never boring and I always have fun watching it. The comfort food of anime. S01 is an amazing introductory season, by the end s02 it seems to have shown most of its tricks but still offers some surprises. 7.5/7 out of ten.
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Food Wars: The Third Plate + Tohtsuki Train Arc (2017 - 2018) | series | 24 episodes
The third season of Food Wars binds together some of its more disparate elements. A big bad is introduced, lending a sense of urgency and moral stakes to things. The secondary cast, having had little to do, is galvanised. Key players get some desperately needed character depth!
The conflict of culinary elitism vs cooking from the heart takes center stage. Unfortunately the show always seems to make it about Soma, the protagonist, who I don't really like all that much. Story arcs are picked up and abandoned rapidly, new characters appear and are discarded just as quickly, the fan service is misused and gets pretty distasteful in places. I really like this anime but by s03 I get the feeling we have reached the limit of what it potentially has to offer.
That said this season also has some really hype cook offs. It's the most fun when characters are in the kitchen, talking food science, presenting plates etc. And on the occasions when it melds character development with their cooking the show really sings. I now have a constant incurable craving for mapo tofu and I absolutely must go on a tasting tour of Hokkaido. I expect that by season 4 this will be like a shounen battle anime where I'm only in it for the fights, but we'll see when we get there. 7.5/7 out of 10.
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Food Wars: The Fourth Plate (2019) | series | 12 eps.
2 seasons ago I wished Food Wars would skip the unnecessary bits and give me just the fights. Somewhere a monkey's paw curled as I started s04. It's aaall cook offs. At this point it's clear the show has run out of cool tricks. The clothes bursting thing has got stale and I'm kind of desensitised to it now. The use of visual metaphor and physical gags have mostly been side-lined in favour of blatant fanservice. Calamari lingerie! You could have done something funny with that!
S04 sets us up with a band of villains that are humanised and immediately discarded. They didn't even bother to design one of them. I don’t know about the pacing of the manga but events seem so rushed, there's almost no room to savour any of the fun dishes on display. There are moments where the story, character development and cooking come together to make something memorable, but I was let down by the resolution to one main characters arc. One I had high hopes for.
On the other hand the show can't get enough of our oblivious, bone headed lead who I am less and less convinced by. He makes joke food!! Still, the plates look awesome. The show has become the most predictable version of itself, but I love seeing those plates and hearing the surprising, elegant ways they're put together. 6 out 10.
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Food Wars: The Fifth Plate (2020) | series | 12 episodes.
The 5th season of Food Wars features a dominatrix in military attire with a chainsaw that she uses to season her meat with. It is referred to as her "seasoning chainsaw". Later she enhances the flavour of her pastry by exploding it in her exploding oven using flavour grenades or something. I wish I could point out more outrageous moments like that one but unfortunately the rest of this season is pretty lifeless.
The big bad of this season's special power is he can use two knives at the same time. I shrug.
I read somewhere that the author had to wrap up the series ahead of schedule so I guess that explains the uninspired main story, myriad loose plot threads and throwaway cast of baddies.
What sucks the most is that the attention to detail given to cooking and the focus on food is almost entirely gone! Guess they couldn't schedule their celebrity chef consultant. Instead this season relies on tired shounen tropes and types, instead of genuine cooking we get goofy weapons and inexplicable jutsus. The dishes are forgettable and in some cases they just don't even bother showing them at all.
I am grateful to Food Wars though for getting me hype about cooking again. It was lots of fun while it lasted. As embarrassing as it is to say: I have learned things from this anime. I am looking forward to eating with y'all again soon 😭. 5 out of 10
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Normally I would offer a couple of OPs to go along with my reviews, but in the case of Food Wars most of them are kind of trash. I will however share the OP of season 1 which I inexplicably get stuck in my head on occasion, as well as the ED of season 1 which actually fucking bangs. Listen out for my old friend the onomatopoeic ideophone!