10 Second Anime - Shokugeki no Soma S4 - Episode 12 [END]

The Rebels officially win against Azami and Central. Toutsuki Academy gets new leadership as the seniors in the Elite 10 graduate. Season Finale.

Episode 12 - "The New 'Toutsuki Elite Ten'"

Heh.

Everyone celebrates, but Erina and Souma still argue. They're consistent. Isshiki knows those two had the most fun cooking the entire time. Azami's old buddies Gin and Jouichirou reconnect and settle him down. Dark Urara got her mean voice back, but how about tossing that whole Central persona away, now that her side lost?

Erina wants Souma to be the First Seat. Souma takes his revenge by making his first act appointing her School Director. Alice's dad says it's fine with him. These Nakiri men sure do love their daughters.

Epilogue time. Megumi writes a letter to her mom.

Momo started a cake shop, making cute cakes. Rindou and Eishi are on an ingredient safari together. As long as they're having fun, things are okay.

The students have all changed their hair a little bit. Everyone's busy with shokugeki, following Souma's example. Nene has a masochistic fan club. Mimasaka is still trying to find his own style and specialty separate from his tracing ability. Erina and Hisako try to use nicknames with each other, but that's still too much for them. Erina and Souma still aggravate each other in an endearing way.

Eh?!

They animated the start of the next arc where Megumi and Souma beat a Dark Chef to take back an inn? That was the most interesting part of the next volume before it turned into another battle tournament story. Plus that Saiba guy who starts teaching at Toutsuki is here too. Season 5 is a lock for Spring 2020.

Final Thoughts.

This season was just the continuation of the 3rd season, with no changes in art direction or writing, so you can just read my final thoughts there. J.C. Staff continued the picture drama style of animation with the manga as its storyboard in a dutiful adaptation. Worse, I was surprised to see the prologue chapters of the 2nd volume of Souma's story animated here instead of the announced 5th season coming in April 2020. Those concluding chapters for the manga's story were controversial among its readers, especially for how quickly it devolved into another battle style tournament and then ended the whole thing in such a rushed manner. If J.C. Staff decides on a creative adaptation and art direction, that just might make a spectacle, because there were some visually interesting characters and settings, plus there was satisfactory treatment of the mothers of both Souma and Erina. I don't have much confidence in that hope because we only have three months before it starts up. I fully expect to see another couple of seasons of the same boring scrolling static images.

The story at this point had a natural ending, at least for solving the mystery of Souma's father. The first volume of Shokugeki no Soma was all about the Wasteland of Flavor and how the fathers of the main characters made their way through it. Erina's father hoped to rescue Souma's father after he was lost in it. Souma's father found his compass through the Wasteland when he found someone to cook for. Souma himself has already found his compass in Erina, so that story arc as it relates to fathers is done. The second volume of the story took on the mothers of Shokugeki's main characters so, thematically, that seemed to be the natural direction for the story to go. We shall see how successful, or not, the story of cooking for love goes during the fifth season's anime adaptation.