Food Wars! The Fourth Plate

Food Wars! The Fourth Plate is the fourth season of the cooking anime Food Wars! Shokugeki no Soma. It aired 12 episodes on Tokyo MX from October to December 2019. It was made by J.C.Staff and directed by Yoshitomo Yonetani. The opening theme is "Chronos" by Stereo Dive Foundation, and the ending is "Emblem" by Nano Ripe. The series is based on the manga written by Yuto Tsukuda and drawn by Shun Saeki, which ran in Weekly Shonen Jump from 2012 to 2019. A real chef, Yuki Morisaki, helped create the recipes, so many dishes in the show can be cooked at home.

The whole series takes place at Totsuki, a very strict and famous cooking school in Japan. Only a few students make it to graduation. At Totsuki, students settle arguments with cooking duels called shokugeki, where judges taste two dishes and pick a winner. The hero, Soma Yukihira, grew up cooking in his father's small family diner. His goal is to become a better chef than his dad. He is bold, cheerful, and loves trying odd ideas in the kitchen.

This season jumps straight into the middle of a huge battle, so it is meant for viewers who saw the third season. A group called Central has taken over the school. It is led by Azami Nakiri, the father of Erina Nakiri, the top student with a perfect sense of taste. Azami wants to shape all cooking in Japan around his own strict ideas, and the best students in the school, the Elite Ten, mostly stand on his side. To fight back, a team of rebels forms around Soma and Erina. The two sides face off in a team contest called the Regiment de Cuisine, a series of rounds where many cooks compete at once.

The rebel team includes friends from earlier seasons, such as Megumi Tadokoro, a shy but skilled cook, and Takumi Aldini, an Italian-Japanese chef who sees Soma as his rival. Kuga, a former Elite Ten member, also fights with them because he wants to beat Tsukasa, the top student of the Elite Ten. On the Central side are strong figures like Tsukasa Eishi, a quiet perfectionist, and Rindo Kobayashi, who loves rare and unusual ingredients. Each round puts a new pair of cooks against each other, and each dish shows who they are as people.

Like earlier seasons, this one turns cooking into something close to a sports or battle anime. The food is drawn in great detail. Judges often react to a tasty dish with over-the-top and sometimes cheeky fantasy scenes, which is part of the show's well-known humor. Under the jokes, the season is about teamwork, standing up to people with power, and the idea that cooking should be free and creative.

Reviews of this season were mixed. Some viewers felt a few matches moved too fast, while others liked how many side characters got a chance to shine. A fifth and final season, The Fifth Plate, followed in 2020.