I never thought that an anime filled with food blowing off peoples’ clothes would help me pick myself off the ground.
I’ll admit I’ve always been hesitant to start Food Wars because it just seemed trashy with it’s excessive nude scenes. For any of you that don’t know, Shokugeki no Soma visualizes how delicious a dish is by having it strip the eater’s clothes off upon first bite, essentially painting an epitome of the term ‘foodgasm’. Surprisingly the plot, characters, camaraderie and music are all amazingly done. The story follows Soma Yukihara, a normal kid who grew up working with his dad in their diner, as he aims to be the #1 chef at the cooking academy. Along the way he overcomes adversity, takes huge risks to save his friends, and has people start to develop feelings for him. You know. Like every other Shounen protagonist.
The difference is that the theme of Soma Yukihara revolves around having no special power or prodigious upbringing, but simply being unyielding in the face of failure. If anything, I think that provides more of a relatable source of inspiration than most MCs out there. Last I checked, I did not have unlimited energy from a nine-tailed fox.
“Soma-kun’s cooking inspirations aren’t from natural genius or anything like that. He just thinks things through. He keeps testing and retesting his recipes. Everyone can do that, but not everyone actually does.”
Maybe it’s just me. Maybe it was timing. Whatever the case, I can’t deny that while watching Shokugeki no Soma, it helped me bounce back from failing a certification exam I took recently, inspiring me to immediately reschedule another try and start studying using a different method. Happy to say that I passed the second time around!
The Life Lesson
The majority of us are normal. We’re average. Most of us aren’t prodigies and weren’t born under some lucky star. But that doesn’t mean we can’t achieve great things. We may have a bigger learning curve, need a specific method to truly learn, and fail a few times. It’s from these mistakes and failures that we grow. No one is constantly monitoring everything you do and giving you feedback so you can improve. Even worse, we tend to not want to listen to feedback because admitting your faults is incredibly difficult. In that sense, the best lesson of all, is to fuck up.
I’m not saying we should all start aiming to be Olympic medalists or the next Einstein, but more so that we need to twist our way of thinking. You can learn and do anything if you put your mind to it. If one route doesn’t work, switch directions. Backtrack and start over. Zigzag. Change colors. Your roadmap from start to finish is going to look like a 2-year old’s crayon scribbles, but what matters is that you got from your start to your finish, however long it took, and you can look back and be proud of the entire journey.
Yes, this is the clichéd, “learn from your mistakes” lesson here, in weeb form.
As you finish reading this, I just want to put a disclaimer out there. I’m not saying that we’re weak if we cry and break under failure or pressure, or we give up on trying to learn something halfway. That is okay. What’s important is that you don’t let failure get in the way of achieving your dream. Because let’s be real. If I was on Hell’s Kitchen and Gordon Ramsey was yelling at me, I’d probably be scarred from stepping into the kitchen for MONTHS.
