Food Wars Shokugeki No Soma

2012anime / manga seriesclassic

Food Wars! Shokugeki no Soma is a Japanese cooking-themed shonen manga and anime about a young chef battling his way through an elite culinary academy, notorious online for its over-the-top reaction scenes where characters react to food in sexually charged 'foodgasm' poses. The manga launched in Weekly Shonen Jump in November 2012 and its anime adaptation began streaming on Crunchyroll in April 2015, becoming a widely memed staple of anime fan communities.

Overview

Food Wars! Shokugeki no Soma is a Japanese cooking-themed shonen manga and anime that follows Soma Yukihira, a diner cook's son who enrolls at Totsuki Culinary Academy, an elite school where only 1% of students graduate1. The plot centers on Yukihira climbing the ranks toward the Elite Ten council through 'shokugeki', formal cooking duels judged by tasters who evaluate each dish3.

Online, the series became a fixture of anime meme circles less for its plot beats and more for its signature reaction scenes, where judges tasting a dish are drawn in exaggerated, sexually charged poses often called 'foodgasms'3. This fanservice framing of food, combined with actual recipe detail, gave the show its distinct online identity and made screencaps easy to share out of context1.

How It Spread

After its Crunchyroll debut, Food Wars! Shokugeki no Soma built an active English-language fandom around its cooking duels and reaction gags. Follow-up seasons kept the momentum going, with season two airing between July 2nd and September 24th, 2016, and season three running from October 4th to December 20th, 20171.

Critical reception on aggregator sites helped legitimize the series alongside its meme footprint. It holds a rating of 8.5/10 on MyAnimeList from over 351,000 users and 8.3/10 on IMDb, and Anime News Network gave positive reviews to episodes 15 through 2424. In Japan, the manga was ranked number 12 in the Kono Manga ga Sugoi! Top 20 Manga for Male Readers survey and number three in the 2014 Nationwide Bookstore Employees' Recommended Comics list3.

The fandom's online footprint grew alongside the show. A subreddit dedicated to the series, r/ShokugekiNoSoma, gathered over 25,000 subscribers, and a devoted Wikia became a hub for character and recipe info56. YouTube analysis channel Mother's Basement covered the show on November 10th, 2017, and a fourth season was confirmed for spring 201837.

How to Use This Meme

The most common meme use pulls a screencap of a judge or side character in mid-foodgasm and pairs it with a caption about tasting something absurdly mundane3. Reaction images from Yukihira and rival chefs also circulate as generic 'this dish slaps' or 'this cooking is unhinged' responses on anime Twitter and Reddit threads6.

Frequently Asked Questions