10 Second Anime - Shokugeki no Soma S4 - Episode 4

Megumi gets support from Chef Shinomiya in her cooking match against Momo.

Episode 4 - "Aim for Victory!"

Feh.

The writing for Megumi's motivational inspiration, placing herself and Shinomiya into the plot of her favorite table tennis manga, was just awful. Nowhere had it ever been mentioned what manga Megumi read, even though it had been established that Souma liked to borrow from her library. Also, the only time table tennis had been shown before was during one of the onsen trips which was turned into a second season OAD. Megumi claimed she was good at table tennis because she grew up in an inn and they had a table set up for guests. Such lazy writing.

Even worse, this table tennis thing looked like it was ad hoc, because we went from one sports reference to a different one in the course of her cooking match against Momo. Shinomiya had been her sparkly-eyed table tennis coach up until he randomly turned into her boxing coach. What? This is terrible. We couldn't keep the table tennis imagery going? Why not make the paddle look like an apple and smash those judges with a ping pong ball? Just terrible writing.

Adding one final insult to this whole failure was how Momo's only big prior cooking performance in the anime adaptation was in another OAD. People who only watch this show instead of also buying a manga volume off a rack in Japan wouldn't get Momo's past dealings with apples either, which is why it was supposed to be such a bad deal for Megumi. Also, Momo floating around in that tub was another reference to an OAD. All the producers' adaptation choices came back to bite them in this one episode.

Heh.

Momo's repeated "Bucchi" joke was good. Shinomiya wants to see how his cute pupil does.

Shoujo table tennis manga? Coach? "Aim for the Smash!" Now we know where the title comes from. Megumi totally freaked out with Shinomiya teaching her. She somehow got shoujo table tennis in her mind, because Shinomiya looked like the coach?

Huddle up! Team Shokugeki! Erina can't start sounding like Alice now. Ryou can only stand having one Alice in his ear.

Takumi made something special for Megumi's dish. Foreshadowing!

The aroma coming from Momo's dish makes the girls tremble. It cleansed the darkness from Dark Urara and she's back to normal. Momo Bucchi Love Attack!

They reference Momo's apple dessert in the meet and greet, which was only in an OAD.

Megumi made a plain looking dorayaki, pancake with apple filling. Apple butter made Momo go hmm. And Megumi has her "Love!" attack!

Keep eating judges. Megumi's specialty is the long game of flavor. Boxing all of a sudden instead of table tennis... Why? Double "Love!" attack!

Cliffhanger! These end cards aren't interesting any more, so I'll just quit doing those.