Being on a diet and watching the “Fourth Plate” (Fourth Season) of Food Wars is not the ideal situation. I’ve had food in anime (see the films of Hayao Miyazaki as an example) where the food looks good enough to eat, but Food Wars takes that to the extreme so much so, that over the last few years I’ve started to see videos with attempts to duplicate the recipes from the show (as an aside I would not try those myself haha).

With this season the stakes have been raised. The battle continues between Souma’s rebels and the elite lead by Azami Nakiri. The show is pretty much the same as it’s always been building up competition as they compete or build up to competition as tensions build.

Of course the thing that makes this season, and this show, aside from the amazing dishes being produced is the characters and their progressions. The plot is typical shonen stuff you’ve seen in sports animes, you’ve seen it in fighting animes, you’ve seen it in 3 seasons here where the team needs to determine a strategy on how they’re going to win, and enact it. But then watching the micro-arcs of each character is a lot of fun and how they progress not just in this season, but across all 4 seasons of the show.

The animation is fantastic as it’s been the entire time. It really brings the culinary creations to life as well as the characters. The music fits the tone of the show, though you probably won’t be finding I caught in your head it’s still pretty great.

Sentai Filmworks presents Food Wars – Fourth Plate in a very nice 1:78:1 1080p AVC encoded transfer preserving the OAR of the original broadcast. Everything looks really great here, colors pop, detail is excellent, and I can’t find much in the way of issues. Audio is handled by DTS-HD 2.0 tracks in English and Japanese both sound fantastic, and come through crisp and clear. Extras include a clean opening and closing. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.