So here we have a cooking manga, running in Shonen Jump, set in high school, with a straightforward headstrong protagonist, some ecchi, some tsunderes, and it's all drawn by an artist known for mainly for hentai. But hey, it's about cooking!! Haven't seen THAT in Jump before. No cliches here, right? ... RIght?!

Shokugeki no Soma isn't some mold-breaking, era-defining shonen manga. In fact, I would go so far as to say it's often formulaic and predictable. But my god is it entertaining. Every chapter, from the very beginning, has never failed to be exciting and memorable. And despite being a bit formulaic, there are some interesting and unique elements explored here that you won't find in other shounen manga.

The story is set in Totsuki Academy, a competitive culinary high school where grades, popularity, and job outlooks are all determined by cooking skills and cooking competitions (called Shokugeki). Our crimson-haired main character, Soma, enters the academy in order to one day surpass his dad in cooking. At the academy, he meets a hosh posh of different cooks, some of which he befriends, some of which he competes against, and maybe there's even some romance involved??... Anyways, all in all it's a pretty straightforward story. The pacing is quick, and there are plenty of nail-biting twists and turns, but there aren't many complications or strange deviations from what's been done before. Hence why I say the story is predictable. The tension is there, but the result is never beyond the realm of expectations.

Compared to most other shounen manga, the art in Soma is very clean-cut and detailed. The backgrounds aren't much to look at, but the character designs are consistent and appealing. The food is also realistic enough to make me hungry. Especially the food that Soma himself makes, specifically the Japanese style dishes. The mackerel dish he makes in chapter 8 made me drool a little. No joke.

As for the characters, it's hard to point out a unique one among the bunch. You have your tsundere (a couple of them actually), the clumsy girl, the determined male protagonist, the malicious looking one with glasses, so on and so forth. That's not to say they're not likable though. Despite their stereotypes, there's enough comedy and personality quirks to keep their interactions entertaining and refreshing. It takes a while for any substantial character development to kick in, but it's quite rewarding when it does. There are a handful of characters that have begun to show a lot of room for development, especially in the latest arc, as the characters begin to fumble through surprisingly down to earth experiences to hone their skills.

There's something to be said about Shokugeki no Soma's use of cooking as its form of competition. Unlike in sports or combat, cooking is an art form appealing to the taste buds, the results of which are often subjective. So an interesting issue arises with a manga about cooking: how does someone visually express the subjective experience of taste? Of course, you can just have the characters explain what they're feeling. But Soma goes beyond that and truly makes an effort to utilize the visual story-telling aspect inherent to manga. At firsts, these expressions of taste were very simple. Characters would have pornographic "mouth orgasms" in response to to the taste of good food, which I often found to be hilarious, but a little bit out of place. As the story goes on, these sensory experiences become expressed through vivid, often fantastical mini-stories and set-pieces, some of which are evocative, and others of which are hilariously bizarre.

So, in my opinion, should you read Shokugeki no Soma?

Yes. Yes you should.