Shokugeki no Souma was that underdog that I wanted to see succeed real badly. I knew it wasn't the best that shounen had to offer nor was it super groundbreaking by any means, but it had a lot of spark and charisma from that first few volumes that made me really root for it.

It's a genuine surprise to see Shokugeki end so soon. The amount of set-up and world-building that Shokugeki was initially laying out in the first half of the manga seemed like it was supposed to stick around for a couple of years longer. However, now that it's concluded I can safely say that this was one of the goofiest and most self-destructive last half of a manga I've ever read. If you thought the initial beginning of Shokugeki was stupid then you have not seen a damn thing until the last half of this manga. People always joke about Kubo Tite and Akira Toriyama not having any idea where they're going when they write a story but this manga somehow blows all of that shit out of the water.

You get random elements of magic thrown in when a character can steal another chefs techniques by touching their knife, characters who's blessings somehow makes other characters around them lose their clothes when they acknowledge a dish, a character that uses fucking TNT and sledgehammers to bake cakes, clown and drag queen cooks, etc. The power escalation is actually mind blowingly hilarious and had me raise an eyebrow with every plot twist and new element introduced in the manga, chapter 293 is literally only one step down from being a looney tunes sketch. I haven't felt genuine tension in wondering if Souma could beat another character in a Shokugeki for a solid 100 or so chapters. Every villain after Azami is just a braindead one-dimensional moron that thinks every chef besides them sucks until they lose and say "b-but how.." The whole arrogant villain act really becomes tiring in this manga, it wasn't even good with Azami. I've never seen a manga destroy itself this hard in 40 chapters like this before. All the hype moments of character tension and old things that were teased like the foreign schools competing or Souma returning to the diner is just immediately forgotten. So many loose ends are just straight up ignored by the ending that I actually end up preferring Naruto and Bleach's shitty "everything is happy and good" endings. Every side character and major plot point just gets dicked for a cliffhanger that leaves everything up to the imagination. I'm hoping the epilogue chapters will redeem the story at least a little bit but I'm not even optimistic about that.

As much shit as I can give Shokugeki, at least I was never bored watching this shit storm unfold. It's like watching an intermission at some sports event where clowns start jumping on trampolines and hitting each other with toy hammers. It's really out of place and stupid but you can't stop watching it. This definitely isn't worth finishing if you've already dropped it at some point, but if you're still craving a good cooking manga then Dungeon Meshi is pretty nice. Sad to see this series send off like this but at least the mad train ride is over.