Souma reveals a new menu item and completes his restaurant with staff and decor for the last day of the Moon Festival.
Episode 4 - "Pride of Young Lions"
Hmm.
This is a shounen battle manga in its structure and elements, so it's not surprising how deep in a hole Souma starts out in his contest with Kuga. Those heroes always have to fight adversity through talent and hard work to score their final one-shot victory over the gifted enemy with tons of advantages. What I liked is how the concept of a restaurant's soft opening meshed well with the shounen structure.
As Souma told Kuga, he's got about 10 years of experience over him in running a restaurant. In the first three days, Souma advertised his concept, did market and location research, assembled staff and decorations, and unleashed it all on the last day. Imagine how much we would have beat Kuga by if his final menu, staff, and restaurant design had been there from the start. But this is not that kind of story and Souma's emphasis on adapting to the customer instead of dictating the chef's tastes to the masses is a major theme of the overall story.
I also have to admire how well the story introduced dribs and drabs of information to give us hints of what Souma had in mind. The Mimasaka character was especially entertaining, because there was the mysterious stranger with Souma's key to the Yukihira Diner. Mimasaka's creepy tracing technique gave us a good laugh and his unveiling as Souma had even more impact because of the mystery involved.
One other thing that impressed me was how the imagery of lions was planned out from the start. From Souma being a little cat to Kuga's big lion to Souma's final choice of tweaking the Taiwanese Lion's Head meatball dish to be filled with curry and to play with the other spices he used for the other dishes. The menu even had the red-headed Souma lion on the food stall's sign! This was just a well done story arc.
Heh.
Wow. Kuga can be really annoying. That's okay. It's a funny kind of annoying coming from a place of confidence instead of malice.
Souma's sharp eye picked up on Kuga's complaining customers.
Oh? Souma and Megumi are calling in favors. I sense a plan coming together.
This Moon Festival isn't just all food booths. They've got cooking themed ranger shows and otaku goods. I didn't see any cooking themed doujins in there...
Ah ha! Souma's friend from back home delivered a whole bunch of benches and tables. This solves the numbers game, but can two staff handle all those people?
Aw come on. Our only foodgasm from Souma's curry meatball is from a dude? Oh well. Having a sexy lady show her cartoon skeleton would have killed the mood.
Kuga's restaurant reminds me of the House of Nanking in San Francisco. You get your food, sit in one of the few tables, eat it up in 20 minutes, get out. The line goes around the block, but then you are rushed and wait too long. That's not good customer service. At least at Nanking they took your orders while you were in line and let you have a beer on the sidewalk.
Souma's soft opening became a grand opening on the last day. Bring it!
But Souma and Megumi can't handle all those people... enter Mimasaka!
Oh man! Mimasaka tracing Souma is hilarious!
Megumi can now handle customer service while Souma and Mimasaka do the cooking.
Hoh. They're already setting up the next arc. Tattoo guy doesn't seem happy to see Ryou with Alice. And Erina leaves an open table at her location just in case a surprise visitor comes by. That guy looks familiar...
Nice. Megumi's club made lanterns, so now Souma's street vendor theme looks complete for night time dining.
This is still shounen battle anime, so a hero's friends need to arrive in the nick of time. First up - Ikumi! The Aldini's were close behind. Step it up, Takumi. Ikumi is getting ahead of you...
Rindou's fang... very important.
And Souma won, big surprise. The satisfaction comes in seeing how he did it.
Oh, and thank goodness Ryou, Hayama, and Alice aren't going to get expelled. Their booth finally made a profit with their chocolate curry.
Next up, Elite 10 fallout from the festival.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please don't comment on posts more than 4 years old. They will be deleted.