(DISCLAIMER: I won't really go into any spoilers with this review, but I will be covering my thoughts on Food Wars through season 3, so it's not limited to season 1)
Food Wars is causing me to suffer through my worst bout of post-anime depression in a long time, maybe ever. It has been so long since I binged a series so hard. The last thing that comes to mind that was comparable was Oregairu last summer, and even Oregairu didn't smack me with as much depression once I finished binging it. The simple fact was that I enjoyed watching Food Wars that much. It was something magical to me even with its absurd premises and foodgasms. No, I don't think it's perfect, but did I enjoy it enough to give it a spot among my favorites? Yes. Yes, I did.

Technically speaking, Food Wars is no marvel in the world of anime. It's animation is solid, nothing spectacular; it's sound is pretty good, not like it needed to blow you away anyway. But musically speaking, Food Wars is great. The Openings and Endings do leave something to be desired beyond the season one's first cour, but they're passable. That being said, the true strength of Food Wars lies in its soundtrack. All the songs involving the battles are perfectly atmospheric, be it the intense cooking songs, or the satisfying victory theme. The character tracks deserve a special mention for their quality as well. They capture the specific character almost flawlessly, the regal theme for Erina being my personal favorite, but Hayama's Indian inspired theme and Ryo's rock theme are great examples too. The soundtrack really drives Food Wars above the rest in terms of hype levels. There are moments that have the potential to fall flat, but are instead elevated to epic levels because of the soundtrack alone. On top of those things alone, the voice acting in Food Wars is superb. Soma's voice actor without question deserves a mountain of praise for how dynamic he is with showcasing Soma's emotions. Not only that, but apparently Erina had a voice actor change in season 3 and I never even noticed, major props for that.

But why do I love Food Wars? It's really simple honestly, it's the characters. It's rare for an anime to make me love nearly every character. Personally, I think the best example of another show doing the same thing is Monogatari. But where Monogatari did it via its arcs dedicated to certain characters, Food Wars does it in a more ensemble way, leading to more shallow side characters, but extremely likable main characters. It helps that most of the main cast is fairly one dimensional, but it's a shounen, there's not a lot of extremely deep characters in shounen in the first place. Even if what I have just described sounds somewhat run-of-the-mill for a show, trust me when I say that it all comes together and works wonders. Who knows, maybe it just appeals to my love of ensemble casts with ecchi harem inspirations, but it just works for me. Maybe it doesn't with others, but to me, this is a perfect cast.

(I really felt like adding this section to my reviews, since characters are such an important factor in anime for me. I'm going to start putting this section in to my reviews from here on out to add a more personal touch!)
Favorite Character: Erina Nakiri

Big surprise, I love the blonde tsundere. Honestly though, I was a hair away from putting Soma here instead. But in the end, I remembered how much I looked forward to Erina's scenes that I realized, even if Soma is my main man, he wasn't the character I loved the most. Soma was the one I cheered for throughout the entire series, experiencing his ups and downs with him and really growing to appreciate his character, despite his tropey clueless nature. But Erina was the character I instantly loved the moment she appeared on screen. I'm a huge sucker for the Soma x Erina ship, I kinda just want season 4 for more of their interactions if I'm being completely honest with myself. Speaking of ships since it's such a huge part of my anime experience, I really liked how Food Wars dealt with such topics, basically confirming that Soma and Erina were a thing in episode 2 ( or was it 1, I can't remember). I just really appreciated letting everyone know that this was the canon ship, keeping us away from the dark waters that could have been Megumi x Soma. Tangent aside, I also considered Alice and Ryo for this, but I figured that even though I really liked both of them, they couldn't hold a candle to Soma or Erina in my book.

With all the praise I've sung about Food Wars, I have to pause a bit and say that this is all personal preference. The ridiculousness of the food battles isn't for everyone. It could get old fast for those who think that it's over the top. All I would say to those people is, if the first episode doesn't appeal to you, you may as well stop, because you're going to get a lot of the same general thing from there on out. But I hope that my enthusiasm for Food Wars has shown and can maybe inspire you to watch it, because in my opinion, it's worth it.``