10 Second Anime - Shokugeki no Soma S2 - Episode 7

Ryo faces Hayama in the other semifinal. The contest between their different dishes finds a surprising finish.

Episode 7 - "Beasts Devouring Each Other"

Heh.

The opening scene of Hayama tied up by Jun is going to be the inspiration of so many doujins...

I would think by now that Hayama only needs to be blindfolded for an aromatic spice test. He doesn't really need to be tied to the chair anymore, does he?

Alice's relationship with Ryo is much more adversarial. She doesn't really like having a stinky boy exercising all the time.

They'd both rather be doing something to each other... I mean with each other... Oh, they're just cooking together competitively.

Anyway, the theme is still Western-style cuisine, and Souma gets to be a spectator again. Which means he has a chance to make Ikumi and Megumi jealous by sitting next to Erina for some reason.

Better yet, cousin Alice gets to help Souma annoy Erina.

Without the weird plot ploy of a copycat cook, this contest between two top chefs is much more straightforward. Hayama's specialty is spice while Ryo's is seafood.

I didn't much care for the analogy of the two chef's playing some kind of battle card game like Yu-Gi-Oh. Chef's gotta cook, not choose certain Pokémon.

Duck versus Eel. I wondered how eel was supposed to be Western, but it was explained that there are French dishes using eel, which shows how versatile Ryo is with seafood. He's not constrained by his port town longshoreman diner background.

Well, he's still got that brusque rudeness about him. I was waiting to see how his rough speech matched up against Taki's tough girl attitude. Pretty funny stuff.

Geh.

Last episode we got some sexiness from the judges during their foodgasms, but Souma took it easy on them and focused on the absurd and the fun in the taste of his stew. That wasn't the case with Hayama and Ryo, who both like to reduce the eater to a quivering puddle of nerves from the sheer sensuality of their dishes.

Are you ready for some duck cosplay?

Hayama's duck dish incorporated the fragrance of his spices to make the judges' mouths water before they even took a bite. Honey was the main sauce tying all the spices and flavors together and the judges were definitely seized by the talons of Hayama's attack eagle metaphor.

Ryo went for a French dish using eel, which meant we were going to get a bunch of electric shock imagery. He pushed it forward by incorporating a flavor bomb of dried plumb, which has sweetness and sourness to make all the senses react. Sonoka got the worst (and the best) of it.

Taki showed that she was seized by Ryo's tiger metaphor.

So, who won? Both Hinako and Fuyumi chose Hayama's duck. Doujima chose Ryo's taste because it was so "masculine," of course. Taki also chose Ryo's eel, although she didn't want to admit it. So tsundere. But then! Sonoka couldn't decide, so it was a tie!

Highly irregular, but now the three finalists match the imagery of the 3-way fight in the opening credits.

The final theme is a dish using Pacific saury, which suits all three chefs. It's a highly fragrant fish, nicely tied to Hayama. It's seafood, which is Ryo's specialty. And before becoming a fish for modern haute cuisine, it was a fish the common Japanese people ate, pointing to Souma's cooking characteristics.

They've got 10 days to come up with a great dish. I'm wondering if we'll have the same judges or a different panel.