by Casey A. Yeomans|@CaseyAYeomans

[Spoilers: Shokugeki no Soma S3:e4]

I’m gonna talk about the ending of a certain episode of a certain anime to illustrate a point. It’s not really the focus of this article, so don’t worry if it sounds like weeb gibberish for a little bit.

So, the first arc of season 3 of Shokugeki no Soma, an anime about culinary students in a highly competitive cooking academy, follows Soma (the protagonist) attempting to out-sell one of the highest rated chefs at the school during the annual “Moon Festival,” an event where students can set up pop-up restaurants and compete with their food to turn the highest profit among their classmates. Good and clear conflict, obvious measure of success and failure- it’s a good start to an arc.

But the landing was more or less fudged when you look into the logistics of the fiction.

Kuga- the aforementioned top rated chef- is shown to have one major weakness in his restaurant: he is accumulating too much business, and therefore generating too long a line out of his establishment. In an act of cleverness, Soma capitalizes on this weakness by setting up a stall right next door, selling food of a similar kind to Kuga, and stealing away his customers. It’s a difficult won battle, but with some help from his friends, Soma is able to satisfy the hungry customers waiting in line for Kuga’s restaurant, giving them the quality, speed, and service they couldn’t find next door. In the end, Soma does indeed end up outselling Kuga. It’s a classic anime, “Use the antagonist’s strength to strike him down,” move.

Except… How?

The issue is that there are just too many customers for even a crew of several dozen identical cooks working in unison to handle.

It’s not the quality of the food, the service, or even the speed it’s being delivered. The issue is that there’s simply too many people for the restaurant to feasibly feed everyone. Even if the food was prepared instantaneously, the processes of seating, serving, and having the customers finish eating would be the underlying issues. It’s a pure problem of logistics, not culinary skill.

However, the show doesn’t address this issue. By some work of mystery, a booth with five chefs and one server was able to handle the logistical workload that a fully sized and staffed restaurant could not. It never fully explains how they accomplish this, except that they get some picnic tables for whatever that’s supposed to help accomplish. Maybe the fact that it was a booth where customers didn’t need to sit after getting their meal instead of the rigid structure of a seated restaurant was the key, but if it was, the show made no attempt to display that point.

(This is the part where I stop talking about Shokugeki no Soma, thank you for being patient.)

My first question to myself was, “Why didn’t this show address such an obvious issue that ruins the viewer’s suspension of disbelief?”

My second question to myself was, “Does it really?”

Usually, I get bothered by people asking the latter question. “Why do you care about [example of breaking the laws of physics] in a [show/movie/book] about [fantasy/sci-fi theme]?” I always felt like it was a dismissive way to write carelessly and not have to think critically about the stories you ingest. And sometimes, that critique is warranted. Sometimes it does have greater implications to the story as a whole.

But does it here?

We all knew the outcome from the beginning. The protagonist wins using the hubris of the antagonist. It’s a theme so obvious that you know the outcome of episode 4 before episode 1 even ends. The point of the arc is to demonstrate that tactical cleverness of the main character and the trials one can overcome with the help of friends and colleagues. That’s really the important part, right?

So why does it even bother me? Should it bother me?

I think this is an important question to ask before you start nitpicking. I have a hairpin trigger for pointing out flaws in stories. If something doesn’t add up, it catches my attention, and it’s hard for me to refocus on the actual point of the narrative. It’s easy enough to blame the writers in that situation. If they had just written a better script, I wouldn’t have gotten distracted, yeah?

Sure. Maybe. But is it really worth it?

You have to choose the hill you’re willing to die on. That’s really what it comes down to. If it really bothers you that much, make a fuss about it. If it’s something so egregious in your eyes that you have to demand an answer from whoever is responsible, go for it.

But if it doesn’t, then the only thing ruining the story for you is you. Or me, sometimes. Sorry about that.

You have to realize that critique of a piece can often ruin your appreciation of that piece as much as the flaw itself. Scripts are still written by people, and every person is flawed- so naturally, there’s hardly ever going to be a story that’s air tight. That doesn’t dismiss pieces with glaring flaws, but the decision of how much a mistake has to bother you is up to you. You can acknowledge a mistake, even bring it up verbally or online. But getting upset about it- letting it “ruin” the piece for you, well.

That’s entirely up to you.