Duck: I have got my knitting. I have got my hot chocolate. I'm ready to learn about Japan.
Dia: I have a little cup of tea in a mug with pumpkins because despite the fact it's been an accident, I have consistently had some kind of set dressing in the tent that is related to the episode.
Duck: Its fate.
Dia: I swear I have not-- actually I did deliberately wear all my Yugioh jewellery for the Yugioh episode.
Duck: Yeah, that was that was participatory.
Dia: But I did own the Yugioh jewellery for unrelated reasons.
Duck: Right, you owned the, I assume for Yugioh reasons.
Dia: Most of it for Yugioh reasons. Some of it just because I'm a little magpie and if you want to buy something from a stall at Comicon, and they have Yugioh stuff, I will probably buy it.
Duck: It's going to be the shiniest thing there.
Dia: And I only need so many Naruto hitae-ates. I will say if you if you have access to buy a Naruto hitae-ate they they are exactly the right size to put on your cat. So I do recommend owning at least one if you have a cat.
Duck: I don't even know what they are. I'm just imagining your cat.
Dia: Theyre-- If you've seen like art and charity, you know they have those like rectangular metal things with symbols on them.
Duck: I do not know them
Dia: You have seen them, they’re on every single Naruto character you just didn't care because you don't care about Naruto. You’ve probably scrolled past it on Tumblr or seen a picture of it…
Duck: Not with any conscious knowledge of it being Naruto.
Dia: It is a thing you have seen and not absorbed because it was not relevant to your life.
Duck: This is true of so many things that are not in my life.
Dia: But it is one of several items that I have kept for no reason other than to annoy my cat.
Duck: That is true cat owner behaviour and isreally what a cat toy is.
Dia: Most of which are hats.
Duck: Hats are very good for cats.
Dia: Because cats in different hats are adorable.
Duck: What are their soft little heads for if not little hats?
Dia: Why, if no wear hat, why have cute little face?
Duck: Right! So, today’s…
Dia: Do you wanna talk about anime?
Duck: Yes, let's talk about anime. I think we should talk about anime I think that is the purpose of our presence.
Dia: What a plot twist it would be if I just kept talking about Naruto for the entire…
Duck: I’m doing an archaeological reading of Naruto now, I've just changed my mind.
Dia: Actually you need to find out about Naruto.
Duck: Should we introduce ourselves first?
Dia: Yes, we should do that.
Duck: Hello listener I am Duck I go by he/them pronouns.
Dia: I'm Dia. I use they them pronouns.
[both]: And this is Analysis Roulette.
Dia: That was cute.
Duck: Yeah.
Dia: One day, we're going to do that in sync.
Duck: One day we’re gonna do that in sync. This is the show where we analyse stuff.
Dia: Yeah, we analyse stuff and interrupt each other a lot because we both have a lot of strong opinions about anime and other things.
Duck: How have I become a person who has strong opinions about anime? I mean, I’m not denying that I have, but how did this happen to me?
Dia: I know how it happened to me, which is I was forced to join anime society by my head of year in secondary school.
Duck: I tried to join anime society for like my first couple of weeks in university. And-- have you ever had the experience of kind of walking into like someone else's prayer meeting or even just like committee meeting and you get that… Well, we're not you know, not allowed to be here but nobody actually wants you here. You don't fit in. You never will.
Dia: Yeah.
Duck: We're not interested in helping you animate society with some kind of non recruiting cults such that it was not possible to actually join.
Dia: People… I say this as someone who came from comic book fandom anime people are incredibly hostile to new anime people.
Duck: Right. That was the thing, if I'd come in and list-- started listing off the 26 seasons that I had in full on my thumbdrive I'm sure I would have been accepted. But I was like, I would like to like anime and they were like you scum. Leave our presence.
Dia: This is the thing is I was quite genuinely pressganged into finding out about anime because I did not want to join anime club at my school. It clashed with my choir practice. I didn't want to be there. I didn't know anyone.
Duck: And then someone dropped Yugioh jewellery in your tea and you were forced.
Dia: No, um, there was a person in that club who had gone to the school saying that they were like, not doing great socially. It was our first year at school. And my school had a friendship buddy system. So somebody just pulled me aside--
Duck: You were assigned--
Dia: Pulled me aside and said go to anime society someone needs a friend.
Duck: Assigned anime at high school.
Dia: Literally, I was just like pulled out of class like you have to join anime society. What are you doing Monday lunchtime, and I'm like choir practise! No you're not. You're doing anime.
Duck: That sucks, choir’s better!
Dia: To be fair, we’re still friends to this day.
Duck: I'm glad it was a you know, a correct matchmaker judgement but but even so!
Dia: The buddy system worked perfectly. But now I care about anime against my will.
Duck: And you can't stop, literary-- literacy is a curse and so it turns out is access anime.
Dia: I was reading quite a lot of Yugioh fanfiction at that age, but I had not actually watched Yugioh. I just read Yugioh fanfiction.
Duck: I assume on the basis of good tags rather than…
Dia: Pretty, pretty much I mean was in like late Live Journal early fanfic.net days…
Duck: Tagging was not a highly advanced science.
Dia: And you found fanfiction basically by stumbling upon archives.
Duck: Yeah, fanfiction was not centralised and tagging was not a highly refined technology.
Dia: Yeah, and in my case in specific I found a particularly good archive of Yugioh fanfic. And I just read it.
Duck: You were like, I’ve found a library. I’m reading the library.
Dia: Like, these are just books and then once I joined anime society, for better or for worse, I found out that there was a show. I went and watched it.
Duck: That's what they look like. That's what they sound like?
Dia: That was not what I was picturing. But you know.
Duck: We're willing to adapt.
Dia: You know, we make do with what we got.
Duck: Today we are talking about anime.
Dia: Yes, this month I have been watching a new anime which is Food Wars Shokugeki No Soma.
Duck: It's one of my favourite animes because I'm an insane person.
Dia: Would you like to introduce the listeners to Food Wars?
Duck: Certainly, Food Wars is so you know, school sports anime? This is one of those. But the sport is cooking.
Dia: Which to be fair already gives it a step above school sports anime in my book/
Duck: It's cooking for me personally, is much more fun to watch even in animated form than sports, which is partly why I love this show. It's a very, very high school anime, by which I mean it is very low stakes framed as high stakes. We have a fairly large cast of characters central to which is the eponymous Soma, who is the son of a diner chef he is extremely proud of being a diner chef. He has been enrolled in the fanciest food school in more or less the world. Not entirely against his will, but certainly by surprise. And we watch, we observe his adventures as he totally fails to fit in. But you know, makes friends anyway by being himself and cooking his own way, and engages in a vast number of Shokugeki Food Wars, cooking battles. This school runs on the basis of cooking battles, you can gamble anything you like on a cooking battle with the agreement of your opponent, which means in particular, that the all powerful 10 seats of the student council who effectively run the school are routinely won by means of cooking contests. Whether people get expelled or not is also routinely on the basis of cooking contests, a lot of people get expelled, because they lose one of these cooking contests, land and buildings change hands. The right to run student groups is won or lost through cooking contests. Every single one of these is portrayed as the highest stakes thing that has ever happened. The stakes do increase over the course of the series as we go from this is just make it through your first term, to we're having an all school contest tournament for fame and glory, to we are having our first year exams, which for some reason involves us trekking the all across Japan on a train and having different tests at different locations, to we're having a big group tournament to decide whether all of us get expelled, or all of our opponents have to admit that we win and let us stay and reform the school on our terms. Because they're trying to take over the school for Unfair Terms, which will be much less fun. There's a whole semi fascist organisation whose whole thing is cooking. actually cooking is suffering and should not be treated like fun. And everyone will be happy if they just stop trying to have fun. It's an interesting philosophy. Our heroes do not subscribe to it. Of course they win and then the fifth season, the stakes actually increase sort of in that it's just a big international food contest. But it's a big food contest to which the mafia has been invited. And also, if our hero doesn't win, the princess has to marry the bad guy.
Dia: Which she seems remarkably fine with.
Duck: I think it's a combination of she has a little bit got the hots for teacher because teacher is young and, young and handsome and you know, seductive in a way that no one else in her life because everyone else in her life is either her grandfather or a teenage boy. No one else in her life is suave and seductive. A combination of that and simply a genuine philosophical commitment to the most important thing in the world is cooking skills. So if he is the best cook that I know I should marry him.
Dia: Yeah, it's just a very weird character beat to add to ‘and we must save her from forced marriage’ to have her not really care.
Duck: Right. She's just like, I have bigger things to worry about because she's mostly worried about saving her mother from the spiritual ennui of being too good at judging food.
Dia: Honestly, I relate.
Duck: I should have mentioned the weird superpowers.
Dia: Yes.
Duck: Various people in this world have weird cooking superpowers. This starts off near the beginning of the series as regular people have their own specialties. And they're really good at their thing that they're good at, we have the person whose thing is fermentation and the person who smokes stuff, and the person who's really good at curry, you know, these things make sense. And then these evolved into kind of, this person can psychically trace you to imitate you perfectly so that they make the same dishes you before you even figured out what you're going to make. And then they can improve one step on it. And then they win. The various mafia chefs all have deeply silly specialist cooking implements that are treated like these superpowers. And the, throughout the series there is, in the fifth season, it's a plot point, up until then, it's just the reason that the princess is the princess, which is a combination of she comes from a profoundly famous and successful cooking dynasty. Which to be fair is a thing that can exist, you know, restaurants passing down through families is particularly a thing. I'm not sure…
Dia: Yeah.
Duck: --Food critic is a thing that passes down to families quite so traditionally, but I'm willing to concede the possibility. But the reason it does this is that their family is occasionally blessed with the god tongue, which is simply an objectively correct judgement of all items of food. She will taste your dish and she will tell you that it needs more butter and she will objectively by the laws of the universe be right because she has the god tongue.
Dia: Yeah.
Duck: This is just there, the whole series. Eventually it also comes out that people from this family separately from whether they have the god tongue if they eat food that's really good, their clothes fall off.
Dia: Yes.
Duck: And then this evolves to if they eat food, that's really good. And they are particularly gifted in the make your clothes fall off gift. Then when they eat really good food, your clothes fall off.
Dia: And eventually explode.
Duck: Everyone's clothes in waves of nakedness through the stadium because the food was just--
Dia: Leaving tatters of clothes on the floor.
Duck: The clothes just explode off your body because someone else ate fried rice that was just that good.
Dia: Why would you attend this event? If that's a possibility?
Duck: I mean-- I think normally that doesn't happen. Because it’s only that one family that can make that happen and they normally don't participate.
Dia: That’s fair.
Duck: But it's not a known risk. I'm sure it will be more lightly attended next year. And people will be more likely to have brought dressing gowns in their backpacks.
Dia: Yeah. Or conversely it would be very well attended.
Duck: But by a different crowd.
Dia: Yes.
Duck: Yeah.
Dia: At what point is that lowering the tone of your cooking competition.
Duck: But then the anime itself has just random clothes off moments.
Dia: So much, I have to say I've watched some horny anime. I've never come across an anime that threw me every single time it got horny.
Duck: Yes, this is an anime that is not in itself horny, it has some awkward teenage romance is like the worst that it gets. Even that is like the awkward teenage pining kind of romance.
Dia: Yeah.
Duck: Except the least once that episode somebody eats food and goes off into an imaginative reverie illustrating their inner reactions to the wonderfulness of the food and without fail these are extremely naked and extremely horny.
Dia: Except for a couple of times when it is literal children as opposed to teenager children who don't count.
Duck: Yes, the teenagers get heavily sexualized in the scenes and at no other point.
Dia: Yeah.
Duck: Which is itself a little weird. There’s a couple of points where it, there's a couple of points where there's a couple of there's a couple of like 10 year old kids and they don't get naked.
Dia: I’m now questioning if tat’s the Food Wars universe equivalent of like your daemon settling is the first time you have the foodgasm--
Duck: The naked imaginings.
Dia: Like do you tell people like I'm a grown up now.
Duck: Sorry, I'm just, I'm just suddenly swept up by the Food Wars daemon crossover universe. And it's wonderful. These all these superpowers are their daemons.
Dia: So, archaeology. IIf you were not here for the dice roll, which I assume you were, but anyway, we've got an archaeological reading of Food Wars for you today. And we're going to define that in specificity. So archaeological reading can be used to mean a lot of things. One of the most prominent is actually using a reading of existing texts to understand what other texts must exist. So like, could I glean the existence of the film, The Omen or the book the Bible from the TV show Good Omens, which is itself an adaptation of a different book, which is based on, you get what I mean?
Duck: Right.
Dia: That’s not what we’re doing here.
Duck: Could you have learned of the Yugioh series based on the Yugio fanfic.
Dia: Uhhhh, I mean could--
Duck: Could you is a different question than could you from an archaeological…
Dia: Yeah, could I as an adult, possibly me age seven, I just accepted stuff. You do when you're seven, so much is already happening.
Duck: Nothing makes sense.
Dia: You remember being seven when people just told you stuff, and you had to just accept that and move on with your life.
Duck: Yeah.
Dia: Anyway, that's not what we're doing.
Duck: Not what we’re doing.
Dia: Because that would take so much. What we're doing is an archaeological reading in the sense of looking at a text to see what it can tell us about the society it came from. So a more common version of this might be reading Ovid’s Metamorphoses to understand what we can about ancient Rome. And you would not based on that text, assume that people were turning into trees and statues and dolphins left, right and centre, you'd read between the lines more than that, you don't assume that the story is an immediate representation of the society as it actually exists.
Duck: No.
Dia: But that it contains within it, beliefs and understandings about the nature of reality and social structures, maybe even physical structures, which are real in the world where that text was written.
Duck: Yes, we're trying to take this text as a text that has been produced at a time and in a place. But the time and place were in the real world.
Dia: Yes.
Duck: And that sets our expectations of what was probably true about that time and place. But nonetheless, they produced this text, which may have things that didn't really exist.
Dia: Yes. And that's not trying to find out things about the author in specific, it's about the broader society in which this text was created.
Duck: Yeah. It's saying what kind of society gives rise to the MCU? And what does that tell us about this thing called Hollywood?
Dia: So many things. Um. Massive caveat to this episode?
Duck: Yes, please give the caveat. The caveat is important.
Dia: We are aware that Japan exists.
Duck: We do, we do know of the existence of Japan, this anime was not our first discovery of Japan as a place.
Dia: No, that was Yugioh.
Duck: I do not personally recall when I first learned of the existence of Japan, but I assure you listener that I have become aware of it in my life.
Dia: But my point is, we are aware that any question we are asking about the nature of Japan--
Duck: We could just ask Google.
Dia: This is no the best way to answer that question.
Duck: Right. Right. This is a stupid way to learn about Japan. We are doing this as an imaginative exercise.
Dia: This is--
Duck: Rather than an actual investigation into actual Japan, because we can ask some Japanese people who are real and easily available.
Dia: Even if they don't know the answers, they'll probably know more than I do after watching Food Wars.
Duck: Right. It's not intended as an educational, it's not a documentary.
Dia: Yeah. So we're doing this as a lens by which to view this text, not a lens by which to view Japan. And I think that is an important distinction to make.
Duck: Yes. Please, do not send us hate mail about how we're wrong about Japan. We know that's not what we're trying to be right about.
Dia: Yeah.
Duck: Also, please do not post anything we deduce from Food Wars. If you have not previously heard of Japan, this is not a good way for you to learn.
Dia: No, if you want to learn about Japan, please go and do that. Don't ask us.
Duck: We are going to be wrong.
Dia: And I want to stress there are some I've got my notes in front of me there are some suppositions I've put in there that I know are not true. But I think are interesting that you might get from watching this.
Duck: I'm excited to hear these.
Dia: Yeah.
Duck: Because I have, of course watched all of Food Wars at least twice. And Dia has watched selected episodes that I tried to choose on the basis of things that would have interesting setting points. So we we skipped basically all of to season four, because it's just food wars happening one after another. But I picked episodes in season five, partly based on which of these has the convenience store in it, which tells you that there's such a thing as a convenience store.
Dia: I also did watch a few extra episodes on top of the ones you recommended to me pretty much at random while I was writing my notes just to get some more food wars in there. So this is going to be divided into two rough sections, one of which is quite short, but I think will be fun and one which is quite long and I think will be more analytical.
Duck: Okay.
Dia: We're gonna start with the short one. The short one is about food.
Duck: I mean, this both makes sense, is very contrary to the anime, which is mostly about the food.
Dia: Yes. So if you were taking this text as an archaeological exhibit by which you wanted to glean something about Japan, probably the most interesting element of material culture is that it tells you a lot about the food systems and the social context of food that exists in Japan.
Duck: Yes, I think that is a fair reading because it's not. It's not doing anything particularly strange or… it's attempting to depict basically, either real Japanese cooking or real Japanese approaches to non Japanese cooking. In all the food it portrays. It's not like it's not trying to give you elf meals.
Dia: No. And it is actually-- there was a food consultant whose name I have in my notes. He is a celebrity chef in Japan.
Duck: Also, we should say beautifully animated, it will make you hungry.
Dia: It will, I watched almost all of it whilst cooking dinner because there's no other way to watch it.
Duck: Their sizzle sound effect technicians were really skilled.
Dia: Yuki Morisaki that was the contributor who provided the recipes. Apparently he is a Japanese celebrity chef, whom I had not heard of. But.
Duck: I haven't but I don't think I've heard of a single Japanese-- I have now heard of a single Japanese celebrity chef. It not being my field of expertise.
Dia: I also had not but I did Google like--
Duck: It's the way to find these things.
Dia: Who writes this?
Duck: Whose fault is this?
Dia: Who caused this to exist? So yeah, relatively realistic.# on the food side. I will say, Dia’s life caveat, I come from a foodie family. I come from a family of people who work in hospitality. I definitely grew up in the context of the food industry, like 90 to 100% of these characters.
Duck: Right. You also grew up around chefs and their ways.
Dia: Yes. And I will say, I do occasionally play a little game when I see TV chefs of how accurate is this and in terms of like actual rules of reality, not very in terms of personality? Yeah, this is pretty accurate. I think that's more because real life chefs behave like anime characters then because this is making any attempt to behave like real life chefs.
Duck: Okay, interesting distinction.
Dia: So the food culture in this is pretty global.
Duck: Yes, it's very international food
Dia: Very international food.
Duck: It’s from a Japanese perspective but it is actually very, there's lots of pasta, there's lots of like, actually there's a lot of Italian. There's an Italian, semi rival character. So we get a lot of Italian. But there's also a lot of curry and Indian food.
Dia: Yeah. There are characters from technically all over the world. And by all over the world, I mean, several food hotspots.
Duck: Yeah.
Dia: There are main characters from Japan and Italy. Mostly. And a couple of Americans.
Duck: Yeah. I mean, it becomes more clear, the more you've watched. There's also there's a main character who's actually from France.
Dia: Oh, yeah, I'd forgotten that. I actually did know that.
Duck: He has a fully Japanese name, so it doesn't let you stand out. But Rio is actually French. And of course. Oh, gosh. What's his name? This is my name being bad at names problem. The curry guy? Yeah. From season two onwards there's a there's a, you know, supernaturally good at smelling curry spices guy who began as an Indian street kid, so why not?
Dia: Of course, he was a street kid. Um.
Duck: Right. He was rescued by the curry teacher who is a tiny girl. There has to be one, it’s and anime.
Dia: Of course. Anyway. We do actually climax with the Five Great cuisines of the world, which is a very argued about but existent thing.
Duck: It's the first time it’s in the anime, by the way.
Dia: It is, I also, this is not the point at all, but it made me laugh. When he mentions he's making a dish from each of the five great cuisines and the dish he makes to represent France is a mirepoix.
Duck: It's just like some pastry.
Dia: It’s not even some pastry, a mirepoix is like, step one.
Duck: Sorry, yeah, it’s--
Dia: It’s step one of a recipe.
Duck: He does some carrots and celery and onions. And he's like France! I have embodied it.
Dia: It's it's kind of like saying like to represent American cuisine. I will produce my meal: A deep fat fryer. You’re just, I'm not saying that isn't good American fried food. There's very good American fried food, but you do know it’s not the oil that is the meal, right?
Duck: You have not actually produced the dish.
Dia: You have not produced a dish you have produced a single ingredient.
Duck: Yes. It's…
Dia: Not the point. But very funny to me. It's so clearly…
Duck: They had to make a dish that was going to work.
Dia: They had to make a dish that was gonna work. And also I did get the impression throughout the show that they're aware that French cuisine is very highly regarded and like world-famous, etc. But the writers just didn't like it that much because none of the French dishes sound as good as the other dishes. In the ones I watched.
Duck: It's never really showcased. There is a wonderful bit where they're like and now we will do French cuisine. And Soma is like great. I've got these candied chestnuts that I was carrying round as a snack and they’re to be the basis of my French finishing dish. Which is not what you do when you fully respect the cuisine.
Dia: Yeah, just like some stuff I had in my pocket. Here's some fucking celery, eat up. La France! Again, it's not important. It's not a part of my reading. It's just very noticeable. If you're watching this and taking notes on the food culture, you do start to notice how much they just don't give a shit about French food.
Duck: More, more damning, to be honest, this is the only time we ever hear about, because I think one of the great cuisines they mentioned it's like Turkish or Persian.
Dia: Yeah, never come up.
Duck: This is the only time it is ever mentioned. Or anything from that cult that food culture is ever really made.
Dia: Yeah. And this is the thing. You can tell a little bit from this little point about Japanese food culture, which is you can make an assumption that it doesn't seem like a glaring omission not to talk about Persian or Turkic food culture.
Duck: Right. It is probably the case that that food culture is not heavily represented in the foods of Japan as currently eaten.
Dia: Yes. Whereas the fact that they do consistently return to and bring up French food despite clearly hating it indicates that it would be seen as a misstep to discuss the great foods of the world without including French food.
Duck: Right and there's enough Italian in there that probably people have decided pasta and pizza good.
Dia: Yeah. Oh, what is interesting is the stuff you can tell about the physical material culture from it. Like one thing that I really noticed was there are quite a few dishes where they talk about seafood and wanting it not to be too fishy. Or they talk about seafood, seafood ingredients in dishes that are not considered seafood, which are both really good signs that this is an island culture, or at least a shore culture. Because…
Duck: Yeah, this culture where seafood is both abundant and therefore not prized for its seafoodiness.
Dia: Yeah, like you do not want to be eating fishy food every single day. There is a reason that up until relatively recently, like working contracts for servants in the British Isles specified a maximum number of lobster they could be made to eat.
Duck: Right. Because actually, if you, if you're eating-- shellfish is fairly strongly flavoured and it gets very samey very quickly if it is instead of luxury food. A bag of oysters being your equivalent of a bag of chips on the way home from the pub. Cheap street food. It's yeah, it's context. It’s all context and yeah, fishy shellfish gets tiresome.
Dia: And you can say similar things about which foods are treated as-- as so abundant and obvious that they don't even need mentioned like quite frequently, you will see the entire cooking process of addition and some rice will materialise next to it.
Duck: Yes, rice just happens.
Dia: The production of it is just not worth mentioning.
Duck: There is just also some rice here. Because it just…
Dia: Which indicates naturally that rice is an accepted staple of every single meal. Like it might be absent, I wouldn't be massively noteworthy, but you don't need to mention that you're including rice, the way that you might not need to mention that you're including salt or pepper.
Duck: Right. You don't need to justify your inclusion of rice as the basis for your whatever delicious sauce you've made. Obviously, you can put it on rice.
Dia: Exactly. You can tell a lot also from what flavours they discuss. I don't think a cooking anime equivalent set in the UK would use the word umami nearly this much.
Duck: No, not even translating it to savoury would it be quite that prominent.
Dia: No, because we don't talk about the savoriness of dishes. It's just something that is not commented upon.
Duck: No, but it's probably true that we would say things like meaty much more than they do.
Dia: Exactly.
Duck: Even for dishes that didn't have any meat in we will talk about making your mushrooms seem meaty.
Dia: And I have to say this is just me being a vegetarian about it, but oh my god. Even the people who were told it like oh specialises in subtle vegetables are just like and here is an entire chicken thigh.
Duck: Right but one that is flavoured with the subtle vegetables.
Dia: Oh, the subtle vegetable flavour will inform how the beef tastes, well it’s gonna taste of beef isn't it? Oh, the subtle vegetable flavour, that is an entire fish!
Duck: It's true actually various of the most praised vegetable dishes are steamed vegetables around an entire fish.
Dia: It's, it's very notable because it's not that there aren't any vegetarian dishes in the entire show. There are most of them are desserts, but they are there. It's that meat is very much a centrepiece, which can be taken in several ways.
Duck: Everything has got meat in it as a rule.
Dia: Yeah, you could say this is a society therefore where the acquisition of meat or fish is a sign of high value that maybe…
Duck: It;s in all the gourmet stuff, yeah.
Dia: Yep. Or that maybe it might be conversely be a society where meat and fish is so abundant as for it to be odd if it is not included.
Duck: In the same way as we're trying to make the fish less fishy because we eat fish every day. There's always some form of meat or fish in the dish. So obviously, there's just just always there. I can see that.
Dia: Yeah, either of those could be true of the society that produced the show, because we are only really seeing high value food.
Duck: Yes.
Dia: Even when we are seeing high value versions of staple foods. This is sort of the main crux of the dish in the second episode, which is essentially fancy eggs and rice.
Duck: Yes, but it's been fancified. It's been gourmetified.
Dia: And it's been called gourmetified by adding chicken.
Duck: Yes, fully. We've put chicken in the eggs and rice. And now it's good.
Dia: How do you make egg fancy? Introduce the mother.
Duck: Well, now you've made it creepy.
Dia: I don't eat chicken. I don't have to feel weird about it. Yes, I will say also, there's very little reference to dietary restriction, which is not unusual in cooking shows, even cooking reality shows don't tend to introduce it very much. But it is interesting if you think about this in the context of a cooking school where people are being trained to be chefs.
Duck: Right, And there's, and you're right there is even in the full. If you even if you watch every episode, which I have done. At least twice. There's I think maybe one mention of allergies. And it's offhand someone reporting back on a scene we didn't watch. It's there's nothing there's no make a gluten free pastry course.
Dia: I'm just saying their entire education at this school does not meet the rigorous standards of the Great British Bake Off.
Duck: But it would it would be great to make them do Mexican week.
Dia: Oh, God, it'll be--
Duck: At least as good as the British Bake Off.
Dia: Oh, God, I'm never gonna emotionally recover from Mexican week.
Duck: I wisely decided I did not need to watch it because I saw online reactions. And I was like, you know what? I get the gist.
Dia: That's very valid of you. But yes. And you can guess a lot of things from the fact that it doesn't look at diet restrictions. You can for example, say, Well, this is maybe not a society that cares deeply about catering to dietary restrictions. You could also say, this is a society where there are fewer dietary restrictions, which is a thing that happens like rates of vegetarianism, rates of allergies, rates of gluten intolerance are all flexible across societies, and nobody really knows why.
Duck: Sure, and it also, you of course, have the issue, not the issue, but that the difference, demographic difference of how much immigration there has historically and recently been, will, in turn affects like your religious restrictions and your cultural restrictions. If you're taking a bunch of English school kids to France, you do need to mention that the menu should not be based around horse, not because they're in any way allergic to horse, or even religiously opposed to horse meat. It's just a cultural we don't tend to eat horse meat. It upsets people thing.
Dia: Yeah. We had a whole scandal about horse meat which everyone I know, in countries where they eat horse went… what's the problem? It’s a labelling issue.
Duck: Right. They understood that labelling the beef as horse was not, the horse as beef was not great because the labelling was wrong, but they did not understand the way you so horrified at the idea that you might have accidentally eaten horse.
Dia: I do remember being very smug as someone who did not eat beef because I wasn't a vegetarian at that point. I just specifically didn't eat beef….
Duck: You were like, I've never eaten horse.
Dia: Oh, I felt on top of the world. You've eaten horse, you've eaten horse.
Duck: We have not seen horse eaten in food worlds.
Dia: We do not. There are lots of dishes that we do not see eaten. I have decided not to go through all of them. But I am going to flag up a couple of-- I do have a list in my notes of a couple of notable ones. We can dive into that now. Dairy products, really fascinating. Dairy products exist. We witness dairy products, we see a lot of butter. A reasonable amount of cream. A bit of milk. Bare minimum of cheese.
Duck: We see cheese in the Italian dishes and mostly as a garnish. Yeah. The cheeses we do see are actually really interesting. So this is a cool thing you can say about cultures which don't have a huge dairy culture is-- it tends to surprise people what cheese are the least popular in most of them. Parmesan. Most places that have any kind of fermented foods are fine with like strong cheeses, parmesan, blue cheese, all of which we see in this.
Duck: Yeah, I mean, that makes sense. Because if you think about sort of, sort of like miso paste.
Dia: Yeah.
Duck: It's got a lot of the same notes as a strong cheese. You could use it in similar ways in terms of put a put a spoonful of it in the sauce and let it permeate.
Dia: Exactly. I've heard this is stepping out of character and being someone who's heard of Japan again. For a moment.
Duck: Go for it.
Dia: I've heard comparisons of Japanese people between natto fermented soybeans and strong blue cheeses, which I don't personally see as someone who's not a huge fan of either, but I can kind of get where you're coming from with it.
Duck: Yeah, there's there's a particular acidic kick to strong cheese as well, which would tally with other fermented things.
Dia: And we do see strong cheeses and ovals. What we don't tend to see is the milkier, softer cheeses. There's not much cheddar. There's not much mozzarella. There's not really like a gorgonzola. Even.
Duck: No one's ever eating feta.
Dia: No, no one's eating feta or Edam. We're not seeing cheeses that is considered mild to a sort of cheese eating culture.
Duck: Yeah. And a lot of fermented flavour, but not a lot of the taste of milk.
Dia: Exactly. Yeah. And I have heard, again, this is all secondhand information from random chefs, that mozzarella in particular, and sort of those that I'm using mozzarella is a sort of emblem of an entire family of cheeses, because I'm not gonna sit here and list them. But that kind of cheese the kind that comes in a little sachet of liquid and is tearable and--
Duck: Wet cheese.
Dia: Wet cheeses, which is a horrible turn of phrase--
Duck: Sorry.
Dia: Are the ones that tend to really ick out people from a very low dairy culture because it's like off milk. Which it is.
Duck: Because it is it's coagulated milk. Yeah.
Dia: And I understand why if you are not cheesy to buy upbringing, you would go, what? No, that's what happens to milk when you let it go nasty. I don't want to eat that.
Duck: Right. I mean, broadly speaking, coagulation is not an appetising term.
Dia: No, nobody wants to be told that their dinner is freshly coagulated.
Duck: Right. Like see how that might make burrata somewhat appealing, because it's literally just we have made the milk stiff. And here it is.
Dia: Yeah. So yeah, no, the dairy is an interesting one, because you can actually tell quite a lot which is that this is a culture that has historically not had either any or large amounts of dairy, but has had it introduced because we see it in foreign cuisines and we see it minimally in native cuisines.
Duck: Yes, it’s, um
Dia: So these things have been introduced, they have been welcomed in some forms. But there are certain elements of it which are unappetising still.
Duck: Yeah, cheese is foreign.
Dia: Yeah. Yeah. And that is interesting, because it tells us about the culture. We also see what ingredients are considered relatively rare and which are considered ubiquitous. We see dried ingredients being shipped to… Megumi is her name?
Duck: Yeah. Megumi’s great. She's the one who is nice.
Dia: Yeah. I love how in school animes you can have a character who is just the one who's not a dick.
Duck: Right, Megumi is the nice one.
Dia: Yeah, we see dried ingredients being shipped to her, which tells us quite a bit about seasonality, and shipping and how food is transported because shipping fresh vegetables to someone is an ordeal. We see foods from other food cultures like olive oil that are considered like, emblematic of that food culture. There’s an entire character, whose deal is that he's an Italian guy who carries olive oil around everywhere.
Duck: Yes, it's interesting to see which ones are picked as the emblems of those foreign cultures. Because I don't think we would pick olive oil as the teller of Italian cuisine.
Dia: I mean--
Duck: We would pick the tomato.
Dia: I think I would, and this might be a foodie background.
Duck: You’re a foodie person, though. I’m just a regular person.
Dia: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. But like, we see that that is something that is prized, and olive oil. It's positive qualities are fairly specific and unique. And we can therefore say that these qualities-- delicacy of flavour, sort of richness in cooking, frying and delivering a certain like, quality of fry. Are all qualities which Japanese culture values in food? Therefore.
Duck: Yes, and certainly the very least attended to.
Dia: Yeah.
Duck: Like this is this is a food culture in which you would notice the difference between olive oil and other forms of oil as the base of something.
Dia: Precisely. So all of these are things we can tell from food culture. And there are a few like really fun little things you can tell from food culture, like the way it talks about, for example, Vietnamese food in one episode versus the way it talks about French food, which I've covered.
Again, I'm not gonna go into a huge amount of detail. I'm not gonna go into a huge amount of detail in this segment. I just want to point out from an archaeological standpoint, this is a deeply rich text, because food culture tells you so much about a culture and a world.
Duck: Yes, food culture, food tells you, you've you've met, you've touched on most of these things, but it tells you a lot of stuff about the climate, the seasonality of the climate, the transport options,
the quality of the soil, what kind of animals are being raised, whether the animals are being slaughtered if you've got a food culture where you have a lot of sheep's cheese but not a lot of mutton. What that tells you is they're not slaughtering the sheep.
Dia: Yeah.
Duck: Yeah, all sorts of things. So, there is a lot if for some reason you are listening to this from the far distant future, and you're only evidence of Japan is anime. I recommend this one as a source text for actual Japan. For food, it’s pretty good.
Dia: Please write that dystopian novel.
Duck: The painstaking reconstruction of Japanese culture via the food on display in this cooking anime, I would read it I don't think I've got the skills to write.
Dia: It would be incredible. I love an archival novel. I'm just saying. Now that's epistolary baby. Anyway, aside from if I have a minute, I am going to just kind of come to the disrespect of the French because I do think it's deeply funny. And I also think it's quite telling in ways that are interesting to me. Because, okay, I'm speaking as a Brit, but I am also speaking as someone who has grown up in the food industry for my entire life. I know chefs from all over the world. I know people who specialise in cuisines from all over the world. A thing the show doesn't really touch in is a lot of people actually do specialise in cuisines outside of their own. I know a Cornish chef who for a long period of time specialised in Danish food, like it does happen.
Duck: Yes, in this way, if there's a specialist in the food, they are from that culture.
Dia: Yeah, like I the only Thai specialist I know is English, despite the fact that I know multiple Thai chefs who just don't consider themselves specialists in Thai food.
Duck: Yeah, I think the only exception in this anime is that there are a couple of Japanese characters who specialise in Chinese.
Dia: Yeah.
Duck: But Chinese has a special place in this series as the big neighbour.
Dia: Yeah. Also Chinese people are shockingly absent from all mention when it comes to Chinese food. They're not completely absent. But they are not here to give opinions about their own cuisine.
Duck: All the other cuisine experts are from their country of origin, the Chinese cuisine experts of Japanese.
Dia: I think the impression given here, and this is very similar to the French point I'm gonna touch on is like, you know what Chinese food is? Come on, you don't need us to walk you through it.
It's not interesting and exotic. It's great, because it does slightly have the energy of like, it feels like there is an alternate version of this, which is like those American movies where they go to China and learn to meditate and kick people. Except it's just like two Italian boys who go to Japan and learn to lose culinary battles over their kitchen equipment.
Duck: Yes.
Dia: I have so many questions about what's going on with those guys. None of which were answered. I did go and check if it was answered in the episodes I didn't see. I was like, no, none of my questions were answered.
Duck: Just have a complex relationship with everything. I mean each other. The school. Food in general life really? Like they are they're troubled kids.
Dia: My point is anyway, again, coming at this from a foodie background. French cuisine is given a throne atop world cuisines that I would not necessarily agree is fully earnt.
Duck: I am absolutely willing to hear you dunk a little bit on the French.
Dia: I'm not saying French food is bad. I mean, I am saying I am very loose on the vegetarianism in France because once I was given a French vegetarian option that was two carrots, but--
Duck: I have heard to be fair parts of America are also like this. So it's not just the French.
Dia: Yeah, I have like I've also had horrible vegetarian options in Scotland and Italy and China and India, like most places I have been, I've had at least one terrible veggie option offered to me.
And the only reason that doesn't happen to me in the UK is because in the UK, well outside of this one trip to Scotland, usually I know where to go to avoid that eventuality, not because it isn't here.
Duck: Right and also to be fair to us. And I mean that in the most objective sense possible. That is partly because due to your personal cultural background and mind. Literally a big plate of deep fried potato constitutes dinner.
Dia: Yes.
Duck: And it could be said that going to the chippy and just getting chips is not a great vegetarian option. If you had not encountered this before. You might feel underserved by this offering.
Dia: Though I will argue that no matter what culture you are from if you are given two carrots for dinner, you're not happy.
Duck: Two carrots always bad. I'm just saying--
Dia: Unless you are a rabbit, that is not a dinner option.
Duck: Two carrots and other forms of the salad is vegetarian and therefore it's lettuce for dinner always is a bad option. I am just saying that perhaps we have a cultural specific thing where we're like deep fried potato and nothing else is an acceptable vegetarian dinner.
Dia: Is fair, though, and I will also say lest I sound like I'm praising the UK for its vegetarian options, the most recent terrible vegetarian option I had was in Scotland. And it was, I was at a dinner, and I asked for the vegetarian option, and the waiter came back with a plate that appeared to have some kind of pie on it. And I asked him what it was and he said vegetables and then walked away, giving me no further information. Only for me to open the pie and find out that it was cheese. There were no vegetables in it, he was just wrong. Clearly, I was the only person who had asked that question. Otherwise, he would have known the answer.
Duck: Mystery pie for the vegetarians, but crucially, not the vegans, the vegans get the two carrots.
Dia: If I had known it contained only. I would-- actually that's not true. It did contain two peas I counted. If I had known that was a vegetarian option, I would have asked for the vegan option and been happy with the carrots.
Duck: Didn't like the cheese pie.
Dia: I did not like the cheese pie. I'm not the biggest cheese fan. I'm with the people of Japan on this one. Anyway, my complaints about French food aside, my personal complaints about French food aside, I think French food having this kind of top of the world pinnacle of creation aura is on unearned not because French food is bad, but because that is not a thing that can objectively be measured.
Duck: Yes, I have a theory about that one if you'd like to hear it, I'd love to hear it. It's the Michelin food star thing.
Dia: It’s possible, I have--
Duck: It is literally the the pinnacle of culinary excellence is to get a Michelin star and the Michelin Corporation food people think French is the best and are more likely to give stars to French style restaurants even outside of France because they what they because what the Michelin starred people really like is having a strong cultural cuisine and then doing that cuisine and not doing anything fancy or fusion like or modern with it. Which is why now I think the second most starred sitting in the world is Tokyo after Paris. And a lot of it is for the Japanese restaurants because there are a lot of very purely Japanese restaurants doing things they've been doing for 200-300 years unchanged, which is the sort of thing the Michelin chefs like. But because that is a French oriented culinary guide that has become the pinnacle of cooking is the French style.
Dia: Eminently plausible to me. I do also think there is a looming Spectre that we are not acknowledging, which is colonialism and the legacy thereof.
Duck: We should probably talk about colonialism. Yes.
Dia: Yes. I'm not gonna go into a huge amount of depth and colonialism. And actually to simplify things. I am going to talk about colonialism in like a really specific context, which is there is a reason we call cow meat beef.
Duck: There is a reason we call cow meat beef. Would you like to explain to the listener who may to be fair to the listener, not be steeped in stories of the Norman Conquest the way we were, or may not actually know why cow meat is called beef.
Dia: So this is the thing. Linguistically speaking, we used to be a purely Germanic language or not purely, there's no such thing as purely, but, you know what I mean? A very not-French Germanic language that had lots of old Germany words. And then the French arrived and invaded and took over and suddenly all of the posh people spoke French. And while to cut a very, very long story short, eventually, these things all merge together as languages tend to do, and we got something close to modern English.
Duck: We've got the sort of language soup going on.
Dia:Yeah, what did happen in that period is French words for things became associated with the higher classes of things or the things that the upper classes interacted with wihle the German words became associated with lower class things and the things that the lower classes did, amongst other things, most animals being raised by peasants retained their Germanic names. And most food being eaten by rich people gained French names. And that's why English has a lot of different words for meat, as opposed to the animal it comes from.
Duck: To the point where English kids are a little bit weirded out when you discover that in many other languages, the word for the meat is the same as the word for the animal.
Dia: Yeah, and also.
Duck: It seems a little bit unseemly to us to not have that distancing that the animal is a pig and the meat is pork.
Dia: And also, I think, even adults, a lot of English speakers are distressed by the word schweinflesch for pork.
Duck: Right, just pigflesh. It just doesn't I don't like it seems unseemly. You just you're supposed to have a little veil over what
Dia: I feel like I'm looking at it naked.
Duck: Right.
Dia: It’s is not nice.
Duck: It’s impolite.
Dia: But yeah, this isn't unique to English. This is like a thing that happens sometimes in many languages. What's fairly interesting in English is how ubiquitous it is. Like there are lots of languages where like, there are different words for meat and animals. It's English is fairly interesting in that they're from different linguistic families and also pretty universal. There's very few animals in English, which are also their meats. And they tend to be exotic animals that weren't around at the time of the Norman Conquest.
Duck: Right. It's either world to us a couple of birds either guinea fowl, because we didn't have those or it's chicken because you could actually afford to eat those.
Dia: Yeah. You know, we don't have a fancy Norman French word for emu meat because the Normans were not eating many emus.
Duck: Although they would if they could.
Dia: Oh, they would love to eat if you become a time traveller, listener, and you often think you're trying to find yourself a lucrative grift using the knowledge that you have, import emus.
Dia: IT will be way easier than trying to get an electricity grid setup.
Duck: Right. Don't Don't worry about the whole solar generator plan. Electricity is useless without the devices to use it anyway. Simply import some exotic animals start yourself an emu farm and become provider of emu flesh to the Great.
Dia: Yes, the point of all of this discussion of emus is, is that for a really long time, in England, and in much of Europe, French was associated with an nobility. It was the language of the nobility, even in countries that had not been conquered by the French or the Normans who were French.
Duck: It’s true, through a combination of diplomacy, and intermarriage.
Dia: Yeah, the French were really good at marriage alliances in a way that I do not fully understand as someone whose historical studies ended circa the 14th century, but they were just playing that game and they were getting into every crown jewel in Europe.
Duck: And through a combination of these, these matters, sort of French became the language of aristocratic diplomacy, the way that English is now the language of trade.
Dia: Yeah. And French cuisine became the higher class cuisine where national cuisines outside of France, were reduced to the peasantry. And that doesn't mean there wasn't also peasant food culture in France, distinct from the sort of court haute cuisine.
Duck: Oh absolutely.
Dia: But there’s a reason haute cuisine is called haute cruising, high cooking.
Duck: Right, and high cooking, high cooking in the French style became the courtly manner across much of Europe.
Dia: And it remains the fact that a lot of upper class foods across Europe and across the world that was conquered by parts of Europe, and occupied and generally affected, even if not, uniquely, and specifically, the victims of colonialism by Europe, you probably had a neighbour who was, the idea of upper class behaviours of Europeans was seeded fairly widely across the globe.
Duck: Yeah, I mean, the most obvious modern equivalent is, if the Japanese and Chinese businessmen go to meet, they're probably both wearing Western suits.
Dia: Yes.
Duck: Because that's what you were to be business.
Dia: Exactly. And so in this context, French food is spread around the world as the food of the rich and discerning.
Duck: Yes.
Dia: And I don't believe that that legacy has ever been shaken. And I don't think that means that French food isn't good. French food is great. Even when it is two carrots, the person sat next to you is having lovely venison. I'm not down on French food. I just don't think any cuisine has earned that like, little crown that French food currently has.
Duck: Yeah, I think that's fair. Is that there is that at first continental and then almost global, like this is the queen of cuisines. This is the correct the correct way to treat an ingredient is the way that the French would treat the ingredient.
Dia: Yeah.
Duck: This is the nature of how courses should work in a meal. This is the nature of, you know, you confit garlic, because that's the best thing you can possibly do with garlic, even if you're not doing French food with it. Kind of attitude.
Dia: Like I was taught to cook like fairly like, I don't know if the word is classically but like I was taught proper, old fashioned fancy cooking, I know how to like prepare my own fish from whole etcetera. And I was always taught French style, because that's how you teach people to cook. Even though I am English and I live in England.
Duck: Yes, it's just this this is proper cooking in a in a sort of emotional sense.
Dia: Yeah, I was taught how to cook with a mirepoix, not a trinity.
Duck: Yeah, I was taught how to cook with an onion. This is the difference between us.
Dia: Yeah, this is the difference between cooking by people whose job it is to cook and cooking by people who want to eat dinner. One of them takes five times as long.
Duck: Well, crucially, I was taught to undercook the onion so yes, it was very much the problem.
Dia: I will say that is my biggest sin as a cook is like undercooked stuff because I I'm hungry.
Duck: Any the source that takes longer to cook than the pasta does, will be served raw.
Dia: Yeah, none of us is without sin is what we're establishing here.
Duck: We are in fact culinary sinners.
Dia: My point anyway being how these other cuisines are treated is really informative. For example, you can tell from the way that French cooking is treated as uncontestedly high value and quality, despite the obvious disinterest of everyone involved, tells you that that form of European colonialism happened. Because how else would this situation occur?
Duck: Yes, I think there's also, we don't meet a lot of French people. I feel like, that everyone we meet who specialises in French cooking is a complete snob who no one really likes.
Dia: I mean, this is how the French are portrayed in many cultures.
Duck: Right. But I think it's interesting that it’s like, on the one hand, they have the best food, like objectively their food is the best. But the other hand, you would not want to spend time with them.
Dia: Yes, nobody likes them in the world. Food Wars. Nobody likes any French people. It's also I think, where fancy people go when they like, abandon their families. France seems to be popular for that.
Duck: Right. I mean, in much the same way as there are a lot of flats in London that are not owned by Londoners. I suspect there are a lot of what because they are rich, we must describe as expats in Paris.
Dia: Yes. The only difference is Paris has better rent control.
Duck: They have probably literally got gilded chandeliers.
Dia: Oh, yeah. So yeah, as you can tell from the attitude towards France and the French, I think you can establish that this kind of European colonial hierarchy existed. And I think that's also very interesting and how Italian food is presented because Italian food is presented as high class and exotic and interesting, but also as approachable in a way that French food is not.
Duck: I think Italian is specifically presented as a peer.
Dia: Yeah. Italy is like us.
Duck: It's presented as, right. It's like us. This is a country that has its own deep and layered
culinary history, which has produced things on par with the things we produce, but different. Hard to relate to directly, but quite tasty. And fundamentally, they're the same kind of, you know, it makes-- the Italian chefs at the school that the two brothers are treated as just as as equals in a way that French is not treated as an equal. The French people are treated as snobs. The French food is treated as unapproachable, but Italian is like a cousin.
Dia: Yeah. And you can contrast that with the Chinese chefs, with the mentions of Vietnamese food that come a few times or Korean food. The way Americans are presented in this is frankly, hilarious. They are very appreciative of good food, but have no knowledge of it.
Duck: And also this one, this one American girl, she's just naked all the time.
Dia: She is there's a--
Duck: She wears the tiniest bikini is to cook, like very tiny, short shorts and very under fitted bras.
Dia: Yeah, and apart from her, all of the American people we meet are there to praise other people's food, that seems to be the only pastime Americans have in this universe.
Duck: They are unsophisticated, easily impressed.
Dia: I don’t know if they’re necessarily unsophisticated, given that we only ever see them having good food. They are just very easily impressed. They're incapable of producing quality, but they admire it greatly and others you know they take direction well.
Duck: Yes!
Dia: And like this is not off dunking on Americans because the British don't even make the cut.
Duck: We-- no. There are no British people, no British foods in this entire five season show.
Dia: At no point in the production of Food Wars did anyone think oh maybe we should showcase British food because what why would they.
Duck: Not so much the appearance of a cheddar.
Dia: They don’t even have like a fucking Aberdeen Angus beef.
Duck: They don’t, right, they don't even have the cheese! If we have produced anything that the culinary world at large could appreciate, it’s the cheese.
Dia: And look I just want to stress I am diehard defender of British food. It is like the only political topic I get into fights about on the internet. Duck can confirm this, I do that on a regular basis.
Duck: Yeah, there is no pork pie week on Shokugeki no Soma.
Dia: Oh my god, I would die. It would be amazing. I want to see the British food episode so much.
Duck: I want them to try making fish and chips.
Dia: Have you ever seen restaurant quality fish and chips it’s the saddest thing.
Duck: I know.
Dia: I want them to I want to see them make Stargazer pie.
Duck: With the heads still on!
Dia: Jellied eels and mash.
Duck: Things that people no longer eat because they're quite labour intensive and not as good as not doing that.
Dia: The problem with British food is all of our like aristocratic food is really really old because we stopped doing that when we got invaded by the French and or our aristocratic food. Our aristocratic food became Norman French food.
Duck: Right, and there were some things that we were sort of like Elizabethan Tudor, we used to be famous for roast beef in the sense of spit roasted which we don't really do it now.
Dia: But acknowledging that I can acknowledge all of the historical facts of British food and the fact that I actually love British food. I think we have really good food here. And also like, I accept that it is maybe not the most exciting cuisine to the average Japanese anime watcher. I do think it would be funny if that was a British food week.
Duck: It would. I am perfectly willing to believe that the reason that British food does not make the cut is that British food simply has not made the cut as import in Japan. That seems plausible.
Dia: Yeah. I'm completely fine with that. I just think it would be funny if it was a British food.
Duck: It would be very funny.
Dia: Could you produce for me the perfect Walker's crisp? Ah, I want to see them try and make a tunnocks Tea Cake.
Duck: I don't think you can make those without a factory. I mean you can make a sad imitation, but I don’t think you can make the real thing.
Dia: No. It's like when Great British Bake Off did s’mores.
Duck: Right, and and they produced something that was in no way a s’more. The Tunnock’s tea cake is fundamentally a product of industrial production. And it's wonderful and I love them and they're very bad for me.
Dia: I miss them more than anything else. I had to stop eating when I went veggie. My number one sacrifice was the Tunnocks teacake. So I was taking a moment to fantasise about tea cakes.
Duck: I was taking a moment of silence just to you know sympathise with your loss. Because that is very sad.
Dia: I mean, listeners.
Duck: Listener.
Dia: I want, to just next time you eat a tonne of Tea Cake, think of your vegetarian and vegan friends and think of the sacrifices they have made.
Duck: And then enjoy that slight salty aftertaste.
Dia: God, I want a Tunnocks tea cake now.
Duck: Let's talk about food instead.
Dia: Yes, sorry. Sorry, I'm just still imagining a British food episode. I’m picturing the close up shot on the stargazy pie.
Duck: With the little eyes.
Dia: And like a side of mushy peas in a ramekin like they do in like posh fish restaurants, where they're trying to make mushy peas not look disgusting. By putting it in like a fancy pot.
Duck: The thing about mushy peas as they fundamentally don't look good.
Dia: No, and they taste fine. It looks good. But they're not haute cuisine for a reason. They look like Alien guts.
Duck: Then they dye it, they dye it the most unnatural green, so you don't realise that it's actually a sort of yucky yellow colour. And it is not better.
Dia: It's horrendous.
Duck: If you look at the ingredients on like, like canned mushy peas, there is so much blue dye in most things.
Dia: Yeah, actually, the best movies I've ever had was made with yellow peas, and it came out like a really nice buttery colour. And I cannot describe to you how disconcerting it is to eat something that literally looks like herb butter and tastes like mushy peas, but it was delicious. It was really good mushy peas.
Duck: That sounds great.
Dia: Yeah, I feel like I'm not like defending my British food is good stance or that well by saying like, yellow peas mashed are good, but they are.
Duck: Well, first you boil them until very soft and then you match them. I'm helping.
Dia: This is not like an entire meal. Unless I'm at an even more disappointing than usual veggie option.
Duck: If you go to you go to one of those chip shops that still uses beef dripping you're like here the vegetarian option is the peas.
Dia: At least I would get like a gherkin right with my peas.
Duck: Maybe a pickled egg.
Dia: One pickled onion. Just a pickled onion and some mushy peas.
Duck: That's not a good dinner.
Dia: Still not the worst veggie option I've had.
Duck: At least at least you would get what you asked for and not be told that it was a vegetable pie. And Then it was cheese.
Dia: Cheese with two peas in it. The peas were the vegetable.
Duck: It's a vegetable.
Dia: Is it? I think is technically a legume. Are legumes a subcategory of vegetables.
Duck: Yes, I think so.
Dia: I don't know enough about words to quantify that.
Duck: I think it depends on whether you can win the argument that way.
Dia: That's fair. Anyway, so yeah, I did just like this is kind of the end. The reason we're vamping is that this is the end of the food section and talking about food is fun. But like I think is worth noting and like also just in terms of like what prescribed rules of food we're told they are like we get this especially from Erina the god tongue girl.
Duck: She's got very, very carefully enculturated and strict rules of how a dish should work and how a meal should work.
Dia: And these are mostly based on from my understanding, like fairly high class classical Japanese food, some are added in from other food cultures, but they're all of like upper class foods. And a lot of the time when we see people break those rules and produce good food, even to her God tongue. It is because they are making lower classes of food. So you can make quite a lot of suppositions about like the stupid rules by which the upper classes bind themselves and this is a great transition into part two: The social structure.
Duck: Yes.
Dia: Do you have any other like, stray thoughts about food you want to throw in like now's your moment.
Duck: I mean so many, but I also I'm always here to talk about class struggle.
Dia: So yes, I mean, honestly like I have I mentioned to Duck like my taste in cooking and aliens much more towards the like domestic and/or postapocalyptic than the school sports anime.
Duck: Share with me the postapocalyptic food animes.
Dia: Just like this competition anime is not my thing. I tend to skip the tournament arcs in most anime I watch.
Duck: Sure, I merely wish to know of these postapocalyptic food animes.
Dia: Oh no, they exist. And they're really good. I'll send you a list. Right. My point being this anime is about food and class, which are two of my favourite topics to talk about for hours. I actually had a really hard time restraining my notes for this one. So without much further ado, let's talk about class.
Duck: Let's talk about class.
Dia: So the main character of this, this is something I actually flagged up when I was writing up my notes and mentioned to you the main character of this, one of the things I found most interesting is that he at no point expresses any interest in learning the art of presentation.
Duck: He is opposed.
Dia: And this isn't like a major part of my analysis. It's just something I thought was a neat character beat because it does encapsulate in a lot of ways that he is kind of, he considers himself the product of his upbringing in a way that he is very proud of. And his upbringing is that he learned to cook from his parents, his mother who loved to experiment in the kitchen, his dad who was the main cook for their diner. And that forms a lot of his ideology about food, and also his personality, which is very brash anime protagonist dot jpg.
Duck: Yes, but it also gives him-- it does give him some some fundamental, as rigid as Erina in many ways, beliefs about what food is and how it should work. Yeah, and his fundamental belief about how food work is you should be given a plate that should contain a meal. The meal should basically be one plate maybe with some garnishes, and then you should eat it and then you should be filled.
Dia: Yeah. This is not a stance shared by the majority of students at the school. Because majority of the students at the school whilst they come from restaurant owning stock, they come from higher tier restaurant owning stock.
Duck: Gourmet, yes.
Dia: There's one whose family owns an inn I believe there is curry boy who was taken in by a kindly curry chef.
Duck: Yes. From there was raised in the world of fine dining schools.
Dia: Yeah. Other than a few notable exceptions, most of the characters we encounter, even in what we are told is the relatively affordable dorm are from like, not necessarily top but definitely top half of the tier structure tier.
Duck: Yes, they are nice restaurants. Yeah, they are not running greasy spoons.
Dia: No.
Duck: I should define greasy spoon on the assumption that we might have some non English listeners. It's a small local cafe, or it's a small cafe on a transport route that serves fairly basic.
Dia: Mostly sandwiches and soup, but also other stuff.
Duck: Mostly sandwiches and soup and also crucially, all day breakfast.
Dia: Yes.
Duck: And it's called a greasy spoon because the hygiene standards may not be what you would hope.
Dia: As opposed to a sandwich bar, which is exactly the same but doesn't serve soup.
Duck: Doesn't serve soup, or necessarily cooked breakfast, although quite often, they will still do a cooked breakfast but it's in a bun.
Dia: There is a sandwich bar not far from where I live that has been open since my Grandparents’ day despite the fact that is directly on top of an open sewage leak which has been there for just as long. Which probably tells you how good the food is.
Duck: But also quite a lot about British culture.
Dia: It's just-- look…
Duck: This is something that can exist.
Dia: I've never had a bacon sandwich that good anywhere else in my life. I would happily sit on top of a sewage leak for an hour to have that bacon sandwich.
Duck: That's a good sandwich. It's got to be.
Dia: I mean that really tells you the quality of the sandwich bar in question.
Duck: I'm convinced anyway.
Dia: Not really selling British food.
Duck: Yes, but they these characters are not running that sort of place. Their families are running quite nice restaurants.
Dia: Yeah, nice restaurants, hotel quality restaurants at a minimum kind of situation. And this means that there are a lot of preconceived class notions which we are not really told of. We are simply introduced to and not being told simply expected to understand is one of the best signs in an archaeological reading, that you are not being introduced to something that is novel in the world of the text.
Duck: Yes, you're expected to understand it because it is something that is familiar and normal to the people who are expected to be reading the text.
Dia: Yeah. So for example, at no point in this anime that I'm aware of, does it actually tell you the socio economics section to which any character belongs?
Duck: No, only by context. You get that that family owns this kind of restaurant or, or that but you don't, therefore, they are rich, or.
Dia: We don't really see money as a concept, except in the abstract sense of places going out of business or being bought by other people. Like, personal interactions with money aren't something that this is interested in.
Duck: No, there's like, a couple of mentions early in series one about Soma spending too much of his allowance on like, contest ingredients.
Dia: Yeah.
Duck: But even that is because his dad is absent minded and won't, will have forgotten to send him more money, not because the money isn't there.
Dia: Exactly. And high quality ingredients are referenced frequently. And it is implied that some people can afford them. And some people can't. But that's never really spelt out. We're just told that this is high quality ingredients that should be celebrated. Because high quality.
Duck: Yes.
Dia: Which is interesting, because I cannot express how expensive some of the stuff we're looking at is.
Duck: Right. They are using the most expensive beef in the world. Sometimes.
Dia: Oh my God.
Duck: And that stuff is really quite expensive. I can't afford regular cheap beef and they’re throwing around slabs of Japanese wagyu.
Dia: And like, there are a lot of shokugeki the food battles are fought over kitchen equipment. And one of the things as you know, whenever I researched something for this podcast, I like to go and read a bunch of reviews of varying levels of professionalism. And one of the things I saw several people say was like, Oh, well, does it really mean anything? If they're betting like kitchen knives? And I'm like, Do you know how much a kitchen knife costs?
Duck: A chef’s knife.
Dia: Like a chef's kitchen knife, like just one from a set? I mean, aside from anything else, then you don't have a complete set, which would drive any chef insane. And you'd have to replace the whole thing. But also just like one good kitchen knife.
Duck: I mean, what I can tell you is that I do not own any chef quality knives because I am a poor person.
Dia: I…
Duck: In the same way as I do not eat beef. I do. Well, I assume that you're in your life. Chef's knives are treated as a more fundamental need than in mind.
Dia: Yeah, I would sayI have quite a lot of kitchen equipment. Some of it, it's very good quality, because we have it from when my family has owned various bars and restaurants. And I can say that when my family acquired those bars and restaurants, kitchen equipment is more of a sort of financial commitment than the physical building. Most of the time.
Duck: Yeah.
Dia: Stocking a kitchen costs a lot more than buying a building. And I live in London. I am named after the pub, my family used to run. And that building definitely cost less than the contents of the kitchen.
Duck: I can believe that.
Dia: Yeah, like this is not a low value prospect. I am aware of chefs who have been bought a single knife as a wedding present. And it was the single most expensive wedding present they got, especially Japanese kitchen knives, which are a law unto themselves. They're a whole order of magnitude more expensive than other cooking knives available in the UK.
Duck: Yes, yeah, I used to read a like a restaurant review blog. For the kind of person who goes on trips planned around going to different Michelin starred restaurants every night and does not appear to be aware that there might be a financial limitation. And even she was like, and then I only bought this one knife from the Tokyo like food equipment shopping street because they're really expensive. Yeah, so if she was noticing the price, they must have been really expensive.
Dia: There is a like Japanese grocery store near me, which sells Japanese knives and the smallest knife they own which is a paring knife is sixty quid.
Duck: That's quite a lot for a paring knife. In my opinion.
Dia: I don't think it's technically a paring knife. I think it is a knife the same size as a paring knife as a technical name, but it's a paring knife to my eyes. 60 pounds for a paring knife. Yeah, my point being Oh my God, everything they are touching in this show is worth more than like most of my internal organs combined. It would be cheaper to just eat my liver than most of the dishes they are preparing.
Duck: Yeah, and the kitchen. The knives they are gambling over are also just like house deposit equipment.
Dia: Yeah, like every so when I was encountering reviews that were like, oh, and like it's relatively low stakes, like they're betting over things that are of sentimental value. And I'm like, sentimental?
Duck: Right. Do you expect me to believe this knife is not itself the most expensive thing you own and also necessary to your profession.
Dia: How are you replacing that do you have the money to throw away on buying a new mezzaluna?
Duck: Right and the mezzaluna especially which is this like enormous curve, double handed chopping? Not like, apparently of Italian style like mincing knife.
Dia: I've no, no, I have one. I have used it many times. I call it a demilune because we were a French language household. But like, I think ours cost about 25 quid like, and that's like a household one. It's a high quality household one that like, was owned by a family member who ran a b&b and had to have good quality kitchenware. But that's still like an expensive item in your house. For a knife.
Duck: A single knife. They’re schoolkids.
Dia: How are you replacing this stuff, if you lose it in a Food Battle, like how, like, there are a few battles where they bet like all of the equipment in their clubs, kitchen practice room, whatever they're called. And I'm like, okay, so you'll just never cook again.
Duck: To be fair on those ones that is the implication is they usually bet they're usually gambling on the survival of the club.
Dia: This is true, but like the impression to me was more like it's it's an order of magnitude bigger than the survival of the club is the survival of your ability to continue to function as a sort of existent entity. It's not like and you know, this symbolic victory we will all back down it's like no, no, we will prove we're not gonna do any more by giving you all of the equipment that we cannot replace.
Duck: Yeah, we are not going to go and make curry club 2 this time we haven't lost yet. You are not gonna be able to do this because you no longer own such a thing as a frying pan.
Dia: But if anybody listening watches a lot of Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares. There's like quite often on a like scene where they lovingly pan over the new equipment, Gordon Ramsay has just bought this failing restaurant. And they are--
Duck: They’re not going to fail there because you've just invested 50,000 credit for this.
Dia: Like they do these like very slow loving pans over the hubs, and they're like dials and the grill firing on and stuff like that. And it's like it is very sexy. But also if you're watching this with any knowledge of how expensive that is, it is so painful because you're just bracing yourself for the restaurant to fold just like oh my god. I didn't think I cared about Gordon Ramsay's financial situation. But is he okay? He's got kids, are they eating?
Duck: I'm worried about these walks going straight to the clearance.
Dia: This hurts me deep inside. I think most of it’s donated for product placement reasons, but it's still like a lot of donation.
Duck: Right. That's a lot of beautiful equipment going in the skip.
Dia: Yeah. Even if you've ever had to replace like a household oven. You know how expensive that is.
Duck: It’s not cheap.
Dia: And that's like, not restaurant quality. Yeah, no, my point is the fact that everything that they are touching, and also the education that they are receiving, like oh my god, good quality chef's cost as much as the kitchen equipment. Like that's the most expensive piece of equipment in your kitchen is the chef. Like none of the financial pressures. Yeah, like a good quality chef will bank a lot of money because it's a really high class, really high stress, and really like knowledge intensive job, because you are not only being expected to produce art, you also have to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of safety.
Duck: To be honest, although working in fairly different fields, I think there is a parallel between chef and surgeon.
Dia: Oh, absolutely.
Duck: Including the tendency to be a bit of a diva.
Dia: Oh, yeah. Like it's, it's a thing like the over the top personalities of chefs are a joke, but they're a joke for a reason, you know.
Duck: Of course, diva. Also a profession in which you have to train for a long time have virtuoso skills and do it on command.
Dia: And also not kill people, which unlike most jobs, you have to actively try not to do.
Duck: And this is different from the diva who really shouldn't have to try that hard not to kill people. But yes, both the chef and the surgeon can absolutely kill you by mistake. It's best not to think about this too hard.
Dia: Yeah. Like if you think about how easy it is to get just like regular food poisoning, you just never go outside again.
Duck: There are so many things you shouldn't think about for the sake of your health.
Dia: Yeah, but like my point being like these people are, these kids are training themselves in an incredibly high stakes, high stress and expensive career. And it's just not really commented upon because we are expected to understand the value of these things. And we are also expected to understand that to most of these people, the material value does not matter because they are from money.
Duck: Yes. Most of them if they lose their knives, what they will do about this is call their parents and tell them the sob story about how they lost a cooking battle today. And also, can you send me some money for a new knife?
Dia: Yeah.
Duck: And then they will. Okay.
Dia: And I think it is notable that we see the characters who we are, at least intimated are of a more low class background than others, we see putting the least sort of gleeful energy into, yeah, sure. I'll bet my cooking equipment.
Duck: Yes. They're, they're more, they're more concerned that they might lose it if they do that.
Dia: Yeah. But it's still never explicitly mentioned. And that does imply, getting back to our archaeological standpoint, there is value to these things that these people are of different classes. And also that there is the infrastructure for that kind of value to matter. Like if this was in like your mediaeval times, we wouldn't expect the high quality of education or ingredients to be presented like this, it would be a very different matter, because the way that tools of your trade are treated represents the kind of like mercantilism or capitalism or whatever other economic structure you're in expresses itself in daily life.
Duck: Yeah. Yeah. Although I think there would be still, I think it'd be more explicit in the mediaeval.
In the mediaeval AU, of cooking wars, which again, somebody please make this.
Dia: Show that fanfiction.
Duck: I think, I think it would be an act, you know, an explicit thing of your equipment is your profession. Yeah, exactly. You cannot start over. If you have all your equipment, you know, the blacksmith who loses their Forge and their hammers is no longer a blacksmith.
Dia: Exactly, yeah. And that's something that like, you can tell from the text in a lot of interesting ways. And also the way that food forms identity as part of this as well, like, the Italian kids aren't just the Italian kids. So they're the Italian kids doing the Italian cooking. It's kind of the easiest way to express that.
Duck: Yes.
Dia: Everyone else does some Italian cooking, but no, like the Italian kids do it because they're the Italian kids. It's recursive you know.
Duck: The Italian ids find a way to do the Italian cooking even when they're supposed to be doing the curry.
Dia: Yeah.
Duck: Everyone else might as a one off do an Italian dish.
Dia: Exactly. And it's interesting because this is for a Japanese perspective. And we do see that the ideas of like what counts as comfort food are grounded in Japanese culture. That's like one of the things that really caught me is in the episode where they are trying to save the mercantile quarter or whatever it's called. From being like destroyed by a new expensive chicken shop down the road.
Duck: The shopping street’s gonna go out of business. So they've got--
Dia: Yeah, yeah, one of the things that came up to me was that like they were talking about needing food that could be eaten one handed. And the immediate ideas they had for food that can be eaten one handed. To me don't even register as one handed foods. Like one of them was like a box with stuff on skewers where I'm like, that is a whole production, you've got to have hands.
Duck: You’ve got to have hands you’ve got to have napkins.
Dia: Like they eventually fall on like an open wrap thing.
Duck: And that seems messy to me.
Dia: Yeah, that just doesn't seem convenient to eat on the go, man, you got to close that wrap up. Because I come from a falafel eating background.
Duck: You know, honestly, I come from a sandwich background. And my idea of how you eat things one handed is we do that thing where you like you have your thumb and your little finger under the sandwich to like, prop it up, and then the other ones on top so that just the vertical things never quite register as one handed items, because the balance is wrong, but I can eat a triangular sandwich one handed which is that cultural thing of if you had someone who never eats triangular sandwiches a triangular sandwich like that's a one handed item, they're gonna be like, how? this is floppy bread. This is now structurally sound to just-- if I pick it up by the corner it droops. How am I supposed to eat this? Obviously you use your little finger as a tripod are they gonna look at me like I'm insane?
Dia: Yeah. Oh my God.
Duck: I feel like the open wrap is somewhere in that zone of if you if you're used to eating these…
Dia: Yeah, whereas to me like wraps are supposed to be closed because when I was growing up the place that I, the places that I got wrapped food on any kind of regular basis were a falafel stand and like maybe a crepe place on the way back from school as a treat. All of which are like closed things, with a wrapper, that you bite the top of.
Duck: Yeah. And we have to say here, falafel street food wraps, just the best thing. Pickles and like the garlic sauce.
Dia: I want to say it's my one beef with Edinburgh I lived there for like two years I did not find a single decent falafel place.
Duck: Tragic. Lots of good Italian takeaways though.
Dia: Yeah, really good Indians as well. I didn't have a single bad Indian the entire time I was in Edinburgh. But ya know, falafel options. Disappointing.
Duck: We’ve got a pretty good falafel stand in the city centre here next time you visit.
Dia: Nice. My favourite falafel place closed a couple of years ago and I like almost genuinely wept.
Duck: That is a very sad thing to happen.
Dia: I know there are other good falafel places but none of them are Falafel King sadness, anyway. Well, that was actually not my point at all. The point, it really reminds me of, you know, the saga of the handwich?
Duck: I have definitely watched the YouTube video about the sandwich and its failure to take off.
Dia: I am embarrassingly familiar with the handwich because I have spent hours reading about theme park food on Wikipedia pages. Because what I do for fun. And this that was all I was thinking the entire time we're going what's edible with one hand, I was like, Oh, my God, food was does handwich please, please, please?
Duck: We have invented the bread cone.
Dia: They're finally going to do American cuisine and it'll be the handwich! Okay, not the point. But like, there's no idea of street food is different to my idea of street food. This is something that tells us about the culture it tells us among other things that like they are comfortable with eating boxed food on go or like open food on the go, which is something that like most French people would never consider in their lives.
Duck: Eating while walking is certainly a cultural thing that we see them to be comfortable with.
Dia: Yeah, whereas like I once like, I once had like a sip of my coffee whilst waiting for road like, for a road crossing in Paris, and a woman next to me genuinely went “ugh” like out loud. Like I know that's what Parisian women are thinking when they look at me but they don't need to say it.
Duck: Really selling Paris here.
Dia: Paris is a lovely city filled with very, very judgmental women. And they're so well dressed that you can't hate them for being judgmental because like I would too, if I looked that much better than everyone. If I was that well dressed at like six o'clock in the morning getting off a night bus from London, I would also judge people.
Duck: It would mean you had your life more together than anyone else.
Dia: I know. Right? Like if you look back at like if your eyeline is still sharp after getting a night bus from anywhere, you're allowed to be a dick. That's just the rules.
Duck: I shall bear this in mind should I ever attain this level of togetherness or more likely be tutted at by someone else getting off a night bus?
Dia: I know. I can't keep my eyeliner between leaving my house and getting to work. Let alone driving from London to Paris. There's an ocean. But yeah, like we see. And like the idea of like, what is diner food? Like the diner food to my eye as a Westerner does not look that significantly different, except in presentation from the stuff that we are told is restaurant food.
Duck: Right. It all seems the same.
Dia: Because to me Japanese food is the food you get in a Japanese restaurant.
Duck: Yeah, yeah, we don't have the distinction between this is low class food. And this is high class. This is, this is a fried rice dish with ith the sauce on this seems like it's the same thing as other fried rice dishes with sauce on.
Dia: Yeah, like I could kind of tell you like, Okay, this is the sort of food you would get in a petrol station, that happened to do sushi. And this is the sort of food you will get in a Wagamama. And this is the sort of food you would get in like a fancy Japanese restaurant you treated yourself to. But like I don't know, it's just a vibe, you know?
Duck: It's mostly to do with coldness, and how much plastic is wrapped in.
Dia: Exactly like it doesn't, it doesn't actually mean anything to me on like a one to one level. So looking at it in this, this is back to food culture, but it is also class culture, we can tell that there is a class divide between these characters. And we can tell that because of how they address one another, which means that this is a society that has these class tructures.
Duck: Yes.
Dia: And now having said we were going to talk about it like 10 minutes ago, and getting distracted by handwiches, then talk about how we can tell that and what we can glean from it.
Duck: Go for it.
Dia: So a couple of bits here. One. The chefs of the night exist.
Duck: The chefs of the night. We only hear about in season five, but they do really make the show for me.
Dia: Yeah, I also love that I don't know if this is just the version I watched but the subtitles refer to them in French throughout les cuisiniers de noir, which I just think is fun. The dark chefs, they're in French. None of them are French, but they're in French because they're fancy.
Duck: That wasn't true of the version I watched that that would improve it.
Dia: The version I watched, they were referred to throughout as the cuisiniers de noir, which is just very fun because it implies a certain level of fanciness to being a mafia chef.
Duck: Actually, no they weren't they were referred to as the noirs.
Dia: Yeah, apparently it comes from cuisiniers de noir which is what they were called when they were introduced in my version, the chef's of the night, which I did find very fun and dramatic.
But this we are told that they are the chefs for the mafia and they are familiar with like various poisons and things like that but also just do the cooking for like your mafia bosses or.
Duck: Yeah, it's sort of implied they do they do poisoning kind of on the side because their primary business is sometimes yield. The mafia boss wants to have a really nice meal with his old mafia deputies. And reputable chefs would not cater this event at his home. So he hires the chefs of the night.
Dia: Yes. Like it is a very equal opportunity mafia in that it is mafia Yakuza mob. It's like it's
seems to be a fairly global phenomenon. There is some kind of world union of night chefs.
Duck: Right
Dia: With a governing body.
Duck: The fact that there is not just underworld chefs, but that there is a hierarchical body of underworld chefs.
Dia: Yeah, sure.
Duck: That really pleases me. They are having internal cooking contest to decide who gets to be boss of the chefs of the night?
Dia: It's deranged. I will say this makes the chef but the thing that is interesting about this is it gives us a little look at organised crime in this universe, which is in and of itself fascinating. Because the organised crime is not demonstratively different from the rich people we've seen apart from more casual references to poison.
Duck: Right, maybe different outfits not necessarily worse, but different.
Dia: Their behaviour is not meaningfully different from the behaviour of Evil evil slash somewhat redeemed dad in series three, whose only crime appears to be being rich and mean. Well, he's rich mean and a fascist.
Dia: Yeah, like
Duck: A more gourmet style fascist. So he's not interested in conquering the world. He just wants to be the authoritarian dictator of chefs.
Dia: Yeah, he has like, about the same level of evil as the villain of ratatouille. You know, like only if you care deeply about world cuisine, which I personally do, but I understand not everyone does.
Duck: And he only wants to be the authoritarian dictator of chefs because he genuinely, he did. Like he genuinely has an angsty backstory. And he believes that by becoming their authoritarian dictator, he can save any of them from getting lost in the wastes of gourmet the way his, you know, hero and friends did once upon a time.
Dia: Yeah, and also like the god tongue damage, which I'm not going to get into. But there's so many layers of angsty backstory, all of which are cuisine based. It's very strange.
Duck: There's so much happening, like, Erina’s dad, although a messed up dude has reason to be messed up, you know?
Dia: Yeah. But my point being, there's not actually that much material difference between the behaviour of Erina’s family and the behaviour of the mafia, Yakuza, mob people, the employers of the night chefs, which is interesting, because it implies to me as the archaeological examiner of this text things about the society for example, it is richly hierarchical. Those hierarchies are based not only on financial, like acting power and buying power, but also on ritualised senses of class. And the idea of a criminal underworld is well established and while feared, understood as a world which fits within those same mechanisms of hierarchical performance of class. That is a thing about the world that you can glean from the existence of the night chefs, despite the fact that the existence of the night chef is utterly cartoonish. And I think that is interesting.
Duck: The night chefs themselves also very cartoon.
Dia: They are deeply cartoonish, but they can still tell us things about the real world. This is like the idea of chefs who are side hustlers in poison is really interesting, because this is actually a universal constant. As far as I'm aware. If you look at like folktales, and urban legends, and things like that, almost every culture has some amount of stories about food being messed with, because it's an underlying fear that humanity has across the world.
Duck: Yes, the thing about food is we all, it is, we all, it's not optional. The thing about food is we all have to eat it multiple times a day, which means it forms a large part of what we think about and worry about. And it means that sort of one of the primal fears is that either there won't be food, or just as scary, but differently scary because it would sneak up on you the food is bad.
Dia: Yeah.
Duck: The food is poisonous, or the food has rotted and you don't know it until you try to eat it or you or it makes you sick.
Dia: Like every day--
Duck: We’re really scared of food poisoning us because.
Dia: We’re really scared of food poisonings, and like, I think every culture has at least some kind of like the one that's famous because most folklorists are American these days is like the Kentucky Fried rat urban myth. But there are lots of like little urban myths about little food incidents that aren't a big deal. But like go round, constantly.
Duck: Popular British one of finding a pet microchip in the takeaway.
Dia: Yeah. They're also usually meat based, which is very nice for me.
Duck: Because you're like this will never happen to me. No one has ever microchipped a carrot.
Dia: Yes, it's like my fear is accidentally finding like chicken in my dish not accidentally finding cat. Duck: Yes, it’s a different level because at least the chicken would probably be food safe.
Dia: Yeah.
Duck: You might feel guilty but you wouldn't be poisoned.
Dia: Yeah. Unless I was like the guy from Supersize Me and just immediately threw up after eating one burger.
Duck: Sometimes these things happen.
Dia: It's a big old world. Some people can't handle a single hamburger. Some people are probably lying for clout and money to make world changing the documentaries that were forced on us all in foods in health classes. Can you tell I was made to watch that film at school?
Duck: It was showing, yeah.
Dia: What a waste of life. They also made us watch 16 and pregnant so you know…
Duck: They were warning you off two equally, equally damaging lifestyles.
Dia: Yeah, don't have sex or hamburgers, kids. That's it. That's your health class.
Duck: Nothing left to live for.
Dia: Hamburgers, also absent from Food Wars. But yeah, like this is interesting though, because you're seeing this like criminal underworld. And that implies a degree of establishment a degree of fear, a degree of societal franchisement for allows for disenfranchisement, all of these things we know because the chef's of the night exist, even though the chefs of the night are in and of themselves extremely fantastical creations, but then they look like clowns.
Duck: No, you’re right, on the level of explanation they get is these are the chefs of the underworld, you know, the criminal underworld. And it is assumed that you do in fact know the criminal underworld by reputation and what it is and and the various things that go along with it. Like there will be a lot of violence there, things like this, which does imply that the people what, who this show is made for live in a world that has or probably has a criminal underworld.
Dia: Or at Least has a pronounced fear of a criminal underworld, which isn't actually the same thing.
Duck: No, it isn't.
Dia: Yeah, it's like how Americans are scared of gang initiations, even though there's like been no evidence of them ever existing.
Duck: Yes. It's a gang sign! They say of some kids doing a silly wave to each other on the bus.
Dia: Yeah, it's like, look, we have fears of gangs in the UK, it's just the fears we have of gangs are like that 14 year old might have a knife not that zip tie on my car means that there is a person of colour hiding under it to snap my Achilles tendons. It's just a different order of magnitude of alienness. To me.
Duck: Yeah. Yeah. And as you say, that doesn't mean necessarily mean that there are actually kidnapping gangs hanging out under your car armed with zip ties. But it does mean that that's a story your culture has.
Dia: Exactly. And this, to be honest meshes with my understanding of like how stories around things like Yakuza or mafia come to exist, which is those things exist. And those things have hierarchies and structures because they're reflections of reality, recreated by people who are set out from reality in some material way, whether deliberately or non deliberately. I don't know about enough about the Yakuza to go into detail. And also, we're pretending I know nothing about the Yakuza, because I don't know about Japan.
Duck: Japan, the fictional country or Japan, the ancient country, or which the only remaining remnant is this anime.
Dia: Yes, based on my knowledge of other criminal subcultures and organisations, it isn't necessarily that they are set apart from society through broad scale societal disenfranchisement, but that they are usually set apart from society by creating their own hierarchies and structures, which in some way replace or replicate those of the existing society, which is why we turn back to Erina’s food fascist Dad.
Duck: It's a specialist form of dictatorship, but someone's got to do it.
Dia: And it might as well be him. And that is why we have what's interesting here is we see in Erina, we see her family. And they are not treated as unusual for either a, having this level of wealth and formality or be having this sort of supernatural God tongue.
Duck: Right. It's it's new to our protagonist, because it's new to the audience. But every other character is fully ready to explain to him that oh, that's Erina she's got the god tongue, her whole family is special.
Dia: Interesting, because this seems to me we have this kind of very typical underdog story. But it's an underdog story in a world where supernatural abilities exist, and supernatural abilities become more prominent throughout the show. But from day one, we are told oh yeah, yeah, some people are just born better at tasting.
Duck: Yes.
Dia: And my feeling is this actually reflects a lot of class anxiety within the culture that produces this text, because there is a value for hard work and determination on show throughout this right. There's a value for education, there's value, it is good to go and study your craft and hone your craft and give it your all.
Duck: Yes, as a cultural value that comes through very clearly.
Dia: But you can also simply be born better.
Dia: You can just be a blueblood of gourmet. Yeah.
Duck: And these ideas coexist in the text without analysis of how they clash with one another, or with a real sense that they clash with one another, which implies to me as the archaeological reader of this text, that those ideas coexist in the society that produced it. And this is the bit where this is functioning more as an explanation of how we do archaeological readings than really an analysis of this text because in terms of analysis of the text, what's interesting is how that's reflected and how that's portrayed and what those sorts of complexities mean for the story. What I'm interested in here is what those complexity means for what we can say about Japan based on Food Wars.
Duck: Yeah.
Dia: Which is we can say with some degree of confidence that this is a culture, which has some degree of class and wealth hierarchy.
Duck: Yep.
Dia: And in which that class and wealth hierarchy is not widely challenged. However, it is a society where hard work and determination and studying hard are valued and prized?
Duck: Yeah. Yes, it can be considered worthy in and of themselves. Actually, even if you don't succeed as a result, it was still worth doing.
Dia: Exactly, yes. And the interesting thing is that it is not expected that sama will sort of discard his attitude of being the diner kid, not expected to assimilate.
Duck: No, it’s just that he’s got to good at everything else in order to do your diner stuff.
Dia: Yeah, he's got to assimilate it. He's not got to assimilate into the working classes he has to prove. Nope, just going to start that sentence. Again. He doesn't have to assimilate into the upper classes, he has to prove himself their equal.
Duck: Yes. And part of the way he has to do that is he has to learn the skills that they have learned.
Dia: Yeah. And that's really interesting in terms of what does it tell us about the culture that this comes from? What anxieties is this expressing about class and education and values? Because the thing is so much, and to an extent Megumi and the other students in there sort of what we're told is one of the more affordable housing blocks, what does their successes, What does their attitude their culture tell us about what is expected of sort of rising stars from the lower and working class? Because because we're told they were headhunted at the end?
Duck: Yes. Yeah. They will be will get pulled into high class jobs or apprenticeships?
Dia: Yeah. And also, they were brought into this on purpose by someone who was seeking out the best chefs of a generation.
Duck: Yes, there was a preliminary contest to pick the school kids who were going into the end contest that everyone else was brought in as a candidate for the the best chef in the world who will free me from my previous ennui.
Dia: Which is interesting, because that is, it is still leaning towards that idea of inborn talent, but it is also valuing hard work. And also deeply aware, I think, of this sense of class as pervasive, but value is preeminent. I think it's the only way I can think of to phrase that. So what does that tell us about the culture in which this was produced?
Duck: They’ve probably got some of that going on?
Dia: Yeah.
Duck: Not to state the obvious.
Dia: Because this story is not really as far as I am aware about any of these issues, which means they were not added to the story in order to be about them.
Duck: Right. They're not even setting detail. They're things you can take for granted.
Dia: Yeah, they’re background radiation of the world in which this story exists. And now a really quick little detour to talk about gender.
Duck: We’re doing class, we're doing gender we're doing dinner. This is really my ideal date.
Dia: I think I've been on that date. It always seems to end up in a fancy pizza place.
Duck: Well, in this case, I think we suspect we're going to end up with some kind of rice bowl.
Dia: What is it with cute lefty girls and fancy pizza places?
Duck: I'll let you know if I figure it out.
Dia: I’ve been taken to several like upmarket pizza places by cute left wing girls.
Duck: It's a curse really this?
Dia: My point is, there's something interesting about gender here, which is in like episode two. We're shown so we're like hangs up on his dad and before like an after he's hung up. His dad goes, Oh, well, the true secret to cooking is finding a woman you love enough to want to impress her with food.
Duck: Yes, this is a thread that goes through the entire series sort of bumbling along in the background, the way you really inspire your cooking is girls.
Dia: Yeah.
Duck: And this goes on and it's definitely a monogamous approach. Actually, the way the way you really inspire your cooking is you find the girl and then you cook for her.
Dia: Unless you are a girl in which case you can cook for love of like other things like--
Duck: You can cook for your family, or you can cook for your wife.
Dia: Yeah, family or wife. Those are the two things that can inspire cooking. And it's interesting because I that's like this sort of bubbling thread that's not brought up like that often but it's peripherally present throughout. Yeah. And as we mentioned, people get like there is the the experience of food is sexualized. Let's go with.
Duck: Yes. In a way that is very insulated from any of the reality of the anime?
Dia: Oh, yeah.
Duck: Yeah, you haven't heard that it's because the sexy scenes have been mandated by the network.
Dia: I mean to be fair, I don't think that's actually true. That's just how it felt watching it.
Duck: It's honestly plausible because it is so separate from material content of the other way, you could literally cut them out and lose nothing.
Dia: Like I feel like it's unlikely that they will literally like Monday who like you have to just add some sexy stuff. And he went, I guess when they taste food? I do think that's kind of how it feels watching it. Sometimes.
Duck: It does feel that we were watching it, I think not, I think in reality is more of a joke. Yeah, it's like, I always have some fanservice sexy scenes. And in this case, they're going to be sort of entertaining the stupid sexy scenes involving analogous food tasting.
Dia: And I think also on some level, it is an attempt at being emotionally real, because the experience of good food is hard to convey?
Duck: Right, it is inherently sensual, because it's a highly sensory experience with a lot of emotional
levels it can toggle on.
Dia: And I think on some level, like if you are trying to convey a physical feeling through a visual medium soft phone is one of the best ways to do that.
Duck: I personally this this is this is my only disagreement with this theory. I personally cannot imagine the experience of eating for instance, egg rice made fancy by the addition of chicken stock as feeling basically anything like floating naked through the clouds being chased by chickens.
Dia: This is fair. And I have to say like, this is a very weird show to watch as an ace person, because there is a peripheral bit of your brain going--
Duck: Like the food, I understand but then there's these other bits!
Dia: It's not even that it's more than a peripheral part of my brain that feels like every time someone has attempted to explain sexual attraction to me, or every time an ace person I know has tried to explain the lack of sexual attraction, they have gone to food metaphors, and I've always found them quite facile. This feels like I'm just trapped in that conversation agency. For a really, really long time. Just going okay…
Duck: You’re age 16 Someone is trying to explain to you what liking boys or possibly girls is like, and you were like, this entire conversation feels like I am being dunked in the peanut butter with the tentacles.
Dia: Yeah, like it just feels like like there's a lot of explanations of being ace that are sort of touted out as like here. So you don't have to try and explain it yourself. Just remember this explanation that like, well, if you're not hungry, it doesn't matter how good the cake is. You just don't want cake.
Duck: That is not true in my experience.
Dia: I’ve always found that deeply unhelpful? Partly because I'm not actually the biggest fan of cake, but mostly because I am. I don't think that is how sex works. It's not a biological need. So it isn't like not being hungry.
Duck: Right, Yeah. On a fairly basic level, it's a different thing.
Dia: Yeah. Like, I've always found sports metaphors and things like that much more helpful for expressing sexual feelings. Because on a really fundamental level, food is necessary to continue existence of you sex is necessary to continue to expand the continued existence of humans.
Duck: Do you know what do you want? What do you want? Oh, you don't want another analogy, but I'm gonna give you one anyway. It's a very quick one. You know, when you've got a new book, and you really, really want to read it, and you have to, like do your normal life stuff instead? It's like that.
Dia: Yeah.
Duck: Wanting to do a thing is like wanting to do a thing.
Dia: We’re not doing a Freudian analysis of Food Wars. I just had to throw in.
Duck: Probably for the best.
Dia: But eah, I just had to, like, throw in.
Duck: There’s a lot going on.
Dia: So much going on. And that's not the gender stuff I wanted to talk about. It's just it feels weird to mention gender without mentioning all the naked people and how it really very equal opportunity, which I appreciate.
Duck: The guys get naked to an equal degree, like everyone gets the genitals covered and the girls get their nipples covered. Yeah, and the boys as well sometimes which is a bit weird. Yeah.
Dia: But you know, like, there's a lot going on with romance, even though it's not really a very romantic show is a show that has a lot of romantic and sexual. A lot of people have awkward crushes on other people, which they often express through the medium of cooking.
Duck: Right. I believe they also in a very true to being teenage way they’re either in denial about them, deeply furious about them, even though they acknowledge they exist, deeply resentful of their crush for not noticing without them making any efforts, hopelessly pursuing them, got a weird homoerotic thing going on. I mean, my only explanation for Aldini’s whole one sided rivalry attempt is that little gay crush theory, I think is as good as any other theory, given how much of everyone else's rivalries is about little straight crushes. But yes, it's, it's interesting on the gender level that Megumi is in addition to being the nice one, and the girl, that she’s the nice homey girl versus Erina, who is the mean rich, pretty girl who will step on you?
Dia: Yeah.
Duck: It is interesting that to me that Megan amis, like food orientation, as she eventually figures out the kind of cooking that she personally is good at, is highly nurturing. And vegetarian.
Dia: Yeah, I also think what's really interesting with Megumi, is that quite often, so we see in a lot of the Shokugeki, the food battles, there's these like, imagine spots that are non naked fantasies involving food.
Duck: Of how people thinking about their processes.
Dia: Yeah, and like they vary from like, sort of just dramatic close ups of people posing to like kaiju battles, and Megumi gets multiple transformers battles. Which I think they do come up a few other times, I didn't watch every episode, I did do some like googling. But I feel like it's an interesting choice for her to have the multiple times.
Duck: Transformers as in giant robots, or as in trans--
Dia: Giant robots, yeah.
Duck: Interesting. Like, what do you think that was?
Dia: I don't know. But I'm fascinated. It seems to me like-- cooking is a serious business in this universe. But the degree of combativeness does vary person to person. And the most combativeness does seem to be when there are cooking battles between the sexes, and Megumi doesn't get to fight other girls very often.
Duck: Yeah.
Dia: So it could just be an offshoot of that, which is that I did notice that the cooking battles between different sexes did seem to be more combative in the imagined spots.
Duck: Yeah. Yeah.
Dia: However, I don't think that actually explains why this girl and specific is associated with like Gundam robots.
Duck: Yeah, I think there's possibly a thing about it, because in addition to being the nice one. She is the scaredy cat.
Dia: Yeah.
Duck: She's the one who's really nervous about cooking battles, and about in particular, she is so-- so Soma is the diner kids who doesn't really have time for, he doesn't have time for how highly all these gourmet people think of themselves. Although he acknowledges he has got a lot to learn from it. But crucially, he is like, if at any point, I get expelled, that will suck because it will mean I have lost this challenge I have set myself but also I'll just go back and run the diner. Nothing really bad is going to happen to me. Megumi is similarly, from like, a little rural country restaurant. Sending her to this fancy school is implied to be like a very, like the major financial investment her parents are ever going to be able to make is sending her to this fancy school. She's terrified of letting them down.
Dia: Yeah.
Duck: Her plan, if she gets kicked out is still to go back and work at the restaurant or home. But I think it's interesting that she doesn't believe that she'd be able to do it. Yeah. She doesn't think that that's a situation in which everything would be fine. If she managed to graduate from the fancy cooking school, then she could go home and reinvigorate the restaurant. But if she gets kicked out, she won't be able to do it. That's kind of her vibe.
Dia: I relate deeply to Megumi.
Duck: She is honestly, the person who has the most rational response to things like I have been summoned to give a cooking battle against a Michelin starred chef as a first year. And if I don't beat him, I'm expelled.
Dia: Yeah.
Duck: And she's like, well, that's terrifying. And I don't want to do it. And that is a correct response.
Dia: I love her. I respect her I relate to her. I also think she is the only one of these people I would want to hang out with in real life.
Duck: Some of the side characters seem fine.
Dia: They seem fine, but only due to lack of exposure, I have to assume they're the same as like, everyone who cooks in this show is the worst.
Duck: That’s fair.
Dia: Anyway. But yeah, Megumi has some gender in her is what I'm saying. And they're like/ Okay, they're not there are a few girls on the show who I think there's actually a lot of variety in the female characters and they aren't all stock archetypes which I appreciate in a modern anime.
But there are a lot of sorts of elements I think you can glean something about gender in this society that produce this text from which is the traits which are considered which are sort of shown as positive even with, as they are negatives. So there are like negatives which are forgivable, negatives which are funny. And then there are just out and out negatives, like the thing is Erina is snobbish. She is, frankly unpleasant towards the beginning. And we are given like very sympathetic explanations for why she is like this, but she is still fundamentally snobbish, standoffish and aloof.
Duck: Right. They decide they like her anyway, and that these are entertaining foibles, but she doesn't stop being a snob.
Dia: Exactly in a way that like we don't really see male characters being aloof in the same manner?
Duck: No.
Dia: At least not forgivably. So I think from that we can say that this is perhaps a forgivable element of femininity, high class aloof woman, women, women are a thing that is permitted to exist within the context that this work was created. It's a character archetype or at the very least, a stereotype which--
Duck: Yeah.
Dia: Is sort of, recognisable.
Duck: I think specifically, there's a, a high quality woman is one who will make you work for her.
Dia: Yeah.
Duck: Kind of vibe.
Dia: Yeah,
Duck: This woman is worth catching. She will make you impress her first.
Dia: And I think it is notable that every other girl in this is more helpful. Some of them have to be defeated into Friendship first, but that's just anime for you. But everyone else is like more helpful to other human beings than Erina.
Duck: Erina is not helpful to other human beings. It is not--
Dia: Like , everyone else is here learning about the power of friendship and working together. And she's just like, I have seen your power of friendship, I appreciate it. It's not for me.
Duck: Erina’s whole thing is that she is the I don't need anything from anyone. You're all beneath me.
I have the best taste--I have the best tongue. Therefore, I do not need your pitiful human companionship. And I realise that this, she has a product of her upbringing, but also that’s a very funny person to be.
Dia: It is. And I think also like, it is interesting, because we do see her upbringing. And this upbringing is treated as extreme. Yes?
Duck: Yeah.
Dia: But it is not treated as bananas within the context of the work, which I think does tell us something about how the higher classes are viewed.
Duck: Right? It's it's treated in a way that this is actually the proof that she is as aristocratic as she believes.
Dia: Yes, everyone knows the true value of aristocracy is mistreating your children.
Duck: Yes.
Dia: That's how you know they fancy.
Duck: There's something very deep there about how aristocracy is a self perpetuating abuse scheme, as well as a wealth thing.
Dia: Aristocracy as a human rights abuse. Like we would not let someone just like drop another human baby into that world if we didn't have an existing paradigm for it called aristocracy.
Duck: You could never create Etonif people knew what Eton was.
Dia: Yeah, like if you just went into like, if you tried, if like if you tried to recreate the royal family from scratch, people would be like, No, that's terrible governing and also cruel to children.
Duck: Right. Like, however, humans have a right to a private life and therefore you are not having a monarchy. We don't actually allow you to assign people lifelong jobs at birth.
Dia: Yeah, like we don't let that happen to anyone else. But because they're the aristocracy we go well, yeah, this is good and fine, actually.
Duck: Right, it's not a job. It's, it's a privilege and an inheritance. We tell ourselves as we fail to evolve. Anyway,
Dia: Daily aristocracy rant checked off.
Duck: We've talked about the Normans and we didn’t rant at all, we deserved a little bit of an aristocracy, rant.
Dia: Exactly. But like, it's interesting, because it tells you that that is the way the aristocracy is viewed. The aristocracy does bananas things to their children to make them more good and classy.
Duck: Right. It's how you can tell that they're aristocrats is because they're insane. In specifically child abusive ways.
Dia: And like it's really extreme. In the third season, when her fascist dad takes over the school, she runs away because she doesn't want to live with her fascist dad, which is fair enough.
Duck: She goes and slums it with the other kids.
Dia: She goes and slums it in the boarding school dormitory, which is slightly less expensive.
Duck: She learns laundry and it's embarrassing for her.
Dia: Yeah. And she finds out that like, there's a real like Titanic moment where they like, are being creative with food, and she goes, they didn't follow the rules.But their food is still good.
Duck: Food can be fun, is a genuine revelation. It takes us several episodes to work out. It’s fascinating.
Dia: Yeah, it's amazing.
Duck: It's not about-- it would be a deeply touching moment of this both sheltered and abused, aristocratic child, learning about the wider world of human interaction, except it's framed through learning the true joy of cooking, which makes it funny.
Dia: It's also quite funny that like, while she has this revelation internally, she does not change her behaviour significantly externally.
Duck: Behaves exactly the same and tells no one, yes.
Dia: Yeah, like it is implied that her friends understand that she values them and that like she feels differently now but her but her behaviour does not change even a little bit.
Duck: She's she's now putting them down affectionately, but it's just vibes.
Dia: She's saying the same words in the same tone of voice.
Duck: But this time, she's blushing slightly. And the camera angle has changed.
Dia: Exactly. So you know that she means it with love now. And again, I think this tells you a lot about the world in which this was created, which is a world where it makes more sense for you to go and slum it and discover the true meaning of cooking than to like, go to the fucking police.
Duck: yes.
Dia: Tell them your weird fascist dad is being a weird fascist.
Duck: Noone ever considers that there might be an external society that could have an impact on their decisions, but particularly around the autocratic rule of both fascist dad, and unelected school board.
Dia: Yeah. And like, look, I'm actually quite willing to accept for like, Shokugeki framework, where like, yeah, all of this stuff is decided through food battles, yeah yeah yeah you have food fascists taking over the school, whatever. Like, I'm just going to accept that this school is very autonomous.
Duck: Yeah, I mean, it's a it's a standard conceit, as far as I can tell of like Japanese school anime is that the kids have the necessary power to change things and therefore give some stakes, you have a student council that essentially runs the place, because that means the kids have something to both compete for and meaningfully affect.
Dia: Exactly right.
Duck: Whereas if it's just no, you're 11 and there are adults running the show, the stakes are necessarily lower, because you can't actually change how the school runs. So this is I feel this is a conceit of the genre.
Dia: There are like two main personal drama arcs that you sent to me as like examples of how this world is working. One of which is the the commercial district is losing money, because everybody is going to the chain restaurant, and one of which is Erina, runs away from her abusive dad. And the thing that's really interesting to me is that the problems for the upper classes are solved quietly, and without fuss, and just by other people just accommodate them.
Duck: Oh, yes--
Dia: Whereas the problems of the working classes are solid five, we will work really hard, we will come together as a community. And we will make this happen with lots of noise and news coverage. And, you know, general business behaviour.
Duck: However we solve this, it is absolutely going to involve not making a scene to the point that you can make sure you get your way by making sure that denying you your way, in this particular instance, would involve making a scene.
Dia: Yeah, however, I will say that like throwing a huge number of children out of their home by force doesn't count as making a scene in this paradigm.
Duck: No, you can come up against the entire dormitory and also knock it down.
Dia: With people still inside it.
Duck: Like with children inside it, you could bring in that you could bring the wrecking ball with children inside the building. And this is not going to make any news, which again, is a very aristocratic approach to solving problems.
Dia: And I just think this continues to tell a lot about the class dichotomies of the world in which this work was created, which is, and I know we are coming at this from the spectre of British people who have existed our entire lives in the British class system. I mean, listen to my accent.
Duck: It is the water in which we have come up.
Dia: I know about the world of not making a fuss.
Duck: We are familiar with getting your way by having the argument in the restaurant.
Dia: We call it a stiff upper lip. But it is the same basic concept.
Duck: We understand not making a scene darling.
Dia: Yes. But the thing that's interesting is that this world clearly expects, it's not brought up, they don't explain why Elena cannot simply go to the police and say, hey, my dad is like, hurting me whenever I don't want to throw away slightly less than perfect food.
Duck: Right. There is there is some nonsense happening here.
Dia: It doesn't need to be explained why she would not go to the police in the universe. Therefore, we must assume that it would not need to be explained out of universe.
Duck: Yes, it's just an obvious thing.
Dia: Which is this is a society which considers it plausible that the rich can just get away with stuff. This is a society that considers it reasonable that the only way that the sort of working class people of the commercial district can combat a big fancy chain with a lot of seed money coming to their area and gentrifying it or well, gentrify is not the right word. I don't know the word for…
Duck: It’s just pulling off the custom
Dia: Yeah, it's pulling off the custom but it's pulling off the custom in like a way that I don't fully follow. Just because the establishment of a train station chicken shop doesn't quite work in my mental understanding of how custom is pulled away from commercial districts.
Duck: For us the the train station chicken shop is itself a thing that will go bust next week.
Dia: Yeah, like I, I cannot express to you how much a fried chicken shop and a train station is a thing of terror and 1am.
Duck: One, you will get poisoned and two because everyone who ever eats there will get poisoned. They will go bust next week, but it won't matter. Because the week after next there'll be a new ticket shop.
Dia: Yeah, chicken shops just come and go in. In the UK.
Duck: They are always a little bit dodgy.
Dia: Yeah, like that was like big scandal several years ago when a local council started putting anti knife crime slogans on the boxes of chicken shops.
Duck: Oh, targeted advertising!
Dia: Because they are so heavily associated with like working class people of colour, that it was very much going home. Hey, black kids, poor black kids, stop stabbing people.
Duck: We're targeting gangs through their favourite chicken shops.
Dia: Yeah, it was a look, which makes the entire like fancy chain fried chicken thing really hard to get my head around.
Duck: Imagining a gentrified chicken shop as a little brain breaking.
Dia: It's really hard to like, okay, look I've been to. I've been to some chicken shops that were like trying to be fancy, and they were terrifying.
Duck: You can't do. You can't both be a chicken shop. But we have to accept as a premise of this particular story that this is a gentrifying chicken shop.
Dia: I know and I find it so hard to get my head around. Especially because it's in a train station, which is just not a place like, even like the really fancy restaurants in like St. Pancras station are less fancy by dint of being in a train station.
Duck: It does add a certain misery to the surroundings.
Dia: A certain je ne said quoi of depression.
Duck: Just a certain grime on the floor. certain air of economic desperation.
Dia: Doesn't matter how fancy your restaurant is, you're still next to a Gregg's.
Duck: Right!
Dia: Nowhere is that fancy if you're within break following distance of a Gregg's because the brick could be thrown.
Duck: But also speaking as a person who cannot afford the fancy restaurant, but does like a Gregg's. I do appreciate where train station has a Gregg's.
Dia: I do appreciate Greg's on a train station you're not wrong. But yeah, my point. However brain breaking, I find it that there is a fancy chicken shop poaching the customers away from the like authentic local, commercial district situation. The solution to that is community organising and promoting, like the value of shopping small on TV, and having good products.
Duck: It is crucially not turning up to the chicken shop with a wrecking ball. Threatening them with your underground contacts, just walking in and being rich at them. So they know they're outclassed, you know, ways that fascist that would solve it.
Dia: Exactly. God, I would love to see fascist dad versus dead chicken shop lady. That would be incredible. And the solution to working class problems, I will point out in this both are solved by community, but the working class people have to show talent in the community, whereas the rich people need to receive kindness in the community.
Duck: Right, she has to lower herself to receiving the charity of her….
Dia: Whereas to take out the chicken shop, they actually have to be better at chicken shop.
Duck: Right, wereas obviously, they will turn out to help her win in her hour of needs, because she is important.
Dia: Yeah. And I just think that tells you a lot about the class dynamics of the culture from which this work originates.
Duck: I buy it.
Dia: Yeah, that is very much like all I want to say. But I did want to do a little recap at the end where we just talk about the real place Japan.
Duck: Right, we've been going for ages. So we've been going for ages and to be fair the analysing and we will now return to real facts about the real Japan that we are aware of.
Dia: We're not going to go into a huge amount of this because frankly, I did enough research into the stuff into watching the show and contextualising the things I didn't understand it.
Duck: Listener, if you if you really need to understand where we have gone wrong in our recreation of lost to history, ancient culture Japan, now known only for this anime, if you feel that we may have got that historical culture wrong, you have so many research options that are better than this podcast that I really encourage you to make use of them because we are not going to explain the whole of Japan to you in the next five minutes.
Dia: This is just a really interesting thing that I thought would be really hard to analyse through the lens of the archaeological lens. But I do think is interesting from an archaeological lens standpoint, if that makes sense. Is-- this is interesting in the broader context of like school anime and school anime competitions in, and the stylization of the work. And I think if I was doing an archaeological reading of this, I would want to talk about it. But it's going to be very difficult to explain. So I wanted to do it more as a like little final little spark little end note little fun bit at the end. This is borrowing from so many different schools sports anime, school anime, like I mentioned that there's like the Gundam fights and martial art fights in the Imagine spots.
Duck: Yeah, there's some pretty cool Dress up in armour and have samurai battle sections as well.
Dia: Yeah, I just think this is a really fascinating little encapsulation. And if I was approaching this, as an archaeological text, it would be such a rich text because there are so many things that appear to come completely out of nowhere. And what it makes me think of is, I know there's a Tumblr post about this. So I'm assuming at least some of our readers have encountered the concept. There's an area of material research, which has been looking at basically what was in shipping lists and things like that what was being imported and sold to theatres and Shakespearean times to try--
Duck: Oh, where it explains the--
Dia: The bear.
Duck: The bear. Yes, yes, because it's in all of these theories about what does it why is there this
stage direction of exit stage left pursued by a bear. And eventually they have established that there was in fact a bear cub.
Dia: Yeah, that was a bear cub that was just doing the rounds in London, like it was, you know, would be comedian in Edinburgh.
Duck: So the explanation for why there's a stage direction about the bear is probably they, they had rented the bear.
Dia: And you've got to work the bear in somehow, cuz you got to make use of the bear while you have a bear.
Duck: Right. And the easiest thing to do with a semi trained animal on stage is have it held on a leash on one side, and have it's handler with the food on the other side, and allow it to amble across for its traits.
Dia: Pursuing somebody!
Duck: Pursuing somebody in what was probably a deeply adorable way.
Dia: Yes. And like you see this with a lot of like, extraneous elements in plays, from like, especially that period, because we have a lot of plays preserved in that period. But we also see this in Miracle plays, which I know you know, I've been thinking about recently. You see a lot of these, there's the we've learned to do a trick, we want to show you a trick. Yeah, there's a lot of these like extraneous elements, which quite often when you're reading historic text, there will be something that seems to you as the reader to come completely out of nowhere, right?
Duck: Yeah.
Dia: And like exit stage left pursued by bear is, I think maybe the most famous version of this in all of literature. But this is true of almost anything. Like if you spend a lot of time on TV Tropes, looking at the trivia pages, you'll find a lot of these.
Duck: Right! And it's not just stage plays, either. There's a lot of films, where why is this scene here? Because we really want to show off this thing we could do with technicolour.
Dia: Exactly, like, I'm a huge fan of, like Oculus, hammer era horror movies, and quite a lot of them will have very slow scenes where somebody bleeds a very unnatural shade of red because they wanted to show off their red.
Duck: Right, and the colour of the red matching isn't the point. That isn't they're not going for photo realism. What they're going for is for you to be impressed in the cinema by the redness of the red on screen.
Dia: Yeah, like if you watch like movies from a culture that you don't usually watch movies from, like if you watch a Bollywood movie, and that's not a thing you do often, quite often there will be a moment where like an actor comes on and everything stops. Because that actor is a huge deal.
Duck: Yes, they’re giving the audience a moment to finish jumping in for joy, because they recognise the actor, and to get back into the swing of okay, now he's going to act for us. We have to have that moment of its him! Before we can otherwise we will miss the first three things he says because we were too busy going it's him! Like of this is functional as well as sort of demonstrative.
Dia: It’s like me the first time I watched this, the remake of One Day at a Time having absolutely no idea who Rita Moreno was wondering why every time Well, I believe that comes out of the the curtain, everything stops. Because I had no idea who this lady was or that she was a huge deal. So every time she draws the curtains, it's just like the curtains draw. And she stands there for like a minute. And I'm like, like,
B Why is this happening?
Dia: Random lady. I was thinking about this. If you had never heard of anime you have not heard of maybe you had heard of the historical civilization of Japan, but you didn't know much about it. Yeah, every single episode of This introduces you to a new bear to pursue you. There are so any bears, Duck. It's just bears left right and centre.
Duck: Name some bears for me.
Dia: There are the Gundam there are the martial arts battles. There are the naked people with tentacles whenever he shows them his gross squid food that they don't like.
Duck: Yep.
Dia: There are like the, at one point like a sort of the clothes coming off. It is animated with these like really bright lights and colours that are highly stylized and like they look familiar, but I'm not sure that they're, I don't think they're just random bursts of colours. I think they look like something but I have no idea what.
Duck: Right, there's a lot of references sneaking in in the background.
Dia: Yeah, there's just like, and like you mentioned, there's a subplot of people trading light novels. There's a lot of little cultural details but there are also just a lot of imagined spots where it's really unclear if this thing that is happening is something you're supposed to have any knowledge of. And like my archetypal like example of this is the Gundam suits because it's my favourite one because I think it's a very fun like it's the most fun battle they do. But there are non battle versions of this.
Duck: Yeah.
Dia: Like the I mean the sexy spots are one of them quite a lot of the like sexy imagined spots are actually like, quite niche is the phrase I'm gonna go with.
Duck: Yes, like they're drawn in a this is the sexy spot way but unless you have quite particular interests, they might not be appealing in and of themselves. You might not look at the sexy spots and go, this is a situation I would like to be in.
Dia: Yeah.
Duck: I am bathing in the witch's soup.
Dia: Yeah. Like you mentioned, the one sided rival guy like, only really makes sense if you're aware of rival anime characters as a thing.
Duck: Yes. Yes. I mean, my my reading of this as his little gay crush is flippant. But if I didn’t know that the big anime rivalry being subverted by so we're just not noticing you're supposed to be in a rivalry was a joke about anime rivalries, then that reading would be sincere because I'd have no other way to understand that whole dynamic.
Dia: There's like a thing that I've really noticed is a lot of the background characters don't look like background characters, which is the thing you would not notice if you were--
Duck: There is an abundance of people drawn as anime protagonist. They've got the spiky hair, they've got the colours. They've got the purple eyes.
Dia: Yeah, there are like there are multiple establishing shots of corridors, which features someone doing the glasses glint with the middle finger lifting the glasses, pose?
Duck: Yeah.
Dia: All of whom look exactly like every like dark haired, clever glasses, anime protagonist character.
Duck: There’s Mauru who was the, his entire character is to be a reference to his the clever glasses one. Yeah.
Dia: Like there's a lot of it's a very self referential show. And I think it's a lot of animators very into referential, I think partly because of the working model.
Duck: How it’s done a lot of time.
Dia: It's, this is the difference between like European comics, American comics, like manga manhwa, they all have different working models.
Duck: Yeah.
Dia: And there's different definitions of like the creator, the partnerships, etc. And manga in particular, tends to have the mangaka model, I think does lead to a lot of interreferentialism, because a lot of it is like, one man production team. But those one man production teams talk to one another a lot.
Duck: Ye.
Dia: As opposed to we are a bunch of doubles. Whereas like American comics, for a really long time tended to be there is a three man production team. And the three men change every week.
Duck: Yes, I think my impression, at least of the, the sort of how manga is produced style, is, it's quite like a lot of fanfiction communities will go through really noticeable rounds of interest in a particular trope or a particular AU.
Dia: Yeah.
Duck: All of the fics are being written by independent people, the people are not actually collaborating on this. But because they are all talking to each other and reading each other's work, somebody gets a great idea. And then people get sparked off that to write their own version of that idea. So as you look through the list of what's been written, it's like, Well, earlier in the year, everyone was doing the coffee shop thing. And then prior to that, it was this really strange one where this guy's a minotaur.
Dia: Yeah.
Duck: It's unclear why that guy was a minotaur. It's because somebody had that idea and everyone else picked it up.
Dia: And it's also very funny when like some of them are deeply predictable and some of them aren't especially when you're like consuming the media and you're watching it going Yeah, yeah, there's gonna be a lot of like praise kink adjacent whump with this dude.
Duck: Right.
Dia: Like you some of its really predictable and then some of its like, You got to get to the fandom like, wow, everybody was into coffee shop AUs just everybody. Like, they’re fine, but everybody?
Duck: I was expecting to have 16 variations on that attempted kidnapping did succeed. And then there was a rescue. Great story, by the way.
Dia: Yeah.
Duck: I was not expecting the minotaur.
Dia: Yeah.
Duck: Why were you all into minotaurs? Why is it always that guy who's the minotaur.
Dia: Quite a lot of it is when it's like normal stock AUs, like I'm not surprised that there's a firefighter au or a flower shop au. I am surprised that it's always this guy. Really, he’s the florist to you?
Duck: Yes. Yeah.
Dia: Like, I'm not the biggest fan of like, I tend to like read not that many like, you know, coffee shop florist, whatever.
Duck: I think we are both what they call canon settings snobs.
Dia: Or rather, I don't mind non canon settings. I just like my non canon settings weirder.
Duck: Fair.
Dia: Like I'm so happy to have a coffee-- like one of my-- I'm happy to have a coffee shop. I just, the coffee shop has to be haunted.
Duck: That does sound great.
Dia: Yeah, I know right? I should write that. Anyway. My point being like that’s just not my thing but I do notice them and I always like get like mildly het up when I see too many, like go past that all disagree with me in the same fundamental way. I'm like, Okay, you fucking heathens with your college aus.
Duck: He would not be a math major.
Dia: Yeah, anyway, we are very off topic, my point being like, this anime is very prone to being self referential and interreferential and intrareferential. And all of those different types of references that all technically mean different things and I don't care about them right now.
Duck: Look them up yourself.
Dia: Yeah, those, that's your homework, go learn about Japan and also references. Food Wars in specific is designed in such a way that it does mean that like, they're the references are more overt because they happen primarily in imagined spots or are whole plot references like the sort of general genre tropes of--
Duck: Being a sports anime.
Dia: Being reinvented for a world where sports is food competitions. An I think--
Duck: Yes, yeah, a full a full animated 10 second spot that does not have to have any plot connection, any setting connection apart from recognisably these two characters in some kind of conflict.
Dia: I think that recognisably, if this were a true archaeological reading, where we didn't know that much about the study, or even when we did know quite a lot, but we were always willing to learn more like my Ovid example earlier.
Duck: Yeah.
Dia: In a true archaeological reading, we would be absolutely surrounded by bears.
Duck: Looking at all of those--
Dia: Absolutely surrounded by bears.
Duck: We’d be not looking up those texts we'd have, we'd be making a list in every episode or every imagined spot. Okay, this is a reference to some other work. So we know that there was another work that had these traits.
Dia: Exactly. And I think that's kind of the most interesting thing about thinking about things through this lens is looking at the world around us and going oh, which of these things would be meaningless, and unrecognisable without the specific cultural context?
Duck: Right, there's a whole bit about this guy's the white knight and he wears armour and, but specifically, he's like a very Disney Knight where he's in the playground and he’'s got the shiny sword, and then the animals of the forest are coming and eating out of his hand. And I think you have to have a lot of background for that to make sense, because nothing in this anime is going to explain it to you.
Dia: Exactly.
Duck: You just have to know about white knights and forest animals eating out their hands.
Dia: And I just think that's neat.
Duck: There you have it. That's the review.
Dia: Now, the review is we're surrounded by bears.
Duck: The review is we're surrounded by bears. Okay. Having concluded that we are surrounded by bears, should we find out what we're doing next time?
Dia: Yes. Let me just quickly open--
Duck: Actually first, we should decide whether we're putting this back in the pot--
Dia: Yes!
Duck: And if not what to put in instead.
Dia: I mean, I would be happy to put it back in the pot?
Duck: Are you enthused by it? Or do you want to do something new? Because I have a candidate.
Dia: I am ambivalent, I would say I was fairly ambivalent and I feel like there is more to say of this. But there are schools of analysis I really don't want to get this on.
Duck: Okay, I have I have a candidate for replacement.
Dia: Okay, what is your what is your stake in should we put this back in the hat or not? Would you rather have this your replacement?
Duck: My stake is I'd quite like to just put the replacement in.
Dia: Okay, let's say let's take this out of the hat. We have done Food Wars, we have deemed it full of bears.
Duck: We have taxidermied it it is standing in the corner. Its eyes flashing eerily when the lightning goes. So I'm not putting in to replace it an absurdist anime although I have been watching a couple. Assassination Classroom is wild.
Dia: That’s been sat on my list for a while I have heard fun things.
Duck: I'm enjoying myself.
Dia: And there's a crossover starring my favourite character in My Hero Academia , so I'm probably gonna end up watching it just so I can read that. The main reason I watch anime is because there's a crossover I want to read.
Duck: Instead, I would like to put into the hat the book Just City by Jo Walton, sorry, The Just City by Jo Walton.
Dia: Gotcha.
Duck: Uh, which I will tell you the premise.
Dia: Okay?
Duck: Which is that the Goddess Athene sets up Plato's Republic, with the help of everyone who's ever prayed to her in ancient Greek to live there.
Dia: Amazing. I love it. I'm excited.
Duck: It's great. It is a book Rich in themes and implications.
Dia: Okay. Would you like to roll a 15 sided die?
Duck: I would love to roll with 15 sided die. Let me just pull up the dice roller. Same one I always use because it's the one that my browser history remembers that I have used… 15 sided. Seven.
Dia: Biographical. This could go in many directions.
Duck: Okay, okay.
Dia: And 101.
Duck: 101. 57.
Dia: Oh, for heaven’s sake, I have to do homework again. Shadows of the Apt.
Duck: Oh, no, that's a 10 book series.
Dia: Oh, God.
Duck: I am not going to ask you to read the 10 book series.
Dia: I would not do it if you asked me.
Duck: We are gonna have to reroll this one.
Dia: Okay.
Duck: Because Shadows of the Apt was written by Adrian, Adrian Tchaikovsky and I am one degree of separation from Adrian and I feel deeply weird doing a biographical reading of my friends friends.
Dia: That's fair.
Duck: Like that's, I'm vetoing that just because it's Adrian.
Dia: That’s very fair.
Duck: Okay. An early number this time, 15.
Dia: 15. Oh, ah, so it's in mediaeval French.
Duck: I’m doomed. The dice gods hate me.
Dia: The dice gods hate you. Do you want to reroll again?
Duck: No, I'm gonna do a biographical reading of stories in mediaeval French, although you will have to find me a translation because I do not read medieval French.
Dia: I will find you a translation. Let me--
Duck: I will be wrong about everything and therein will lie the fun.
Dia: Um. Well, we don't know anything really about the author except that she was French.
Duck: Great. I know one thing about-- I have-- I have one point of analysis I'm fairly confident of, and will be right on and--
Dia: We don't actually know that for sure. She was called Marie de France, which is a good indication that she was probably French.
Duck: This feels like a strong clue, even.
Dia: Okay, so next time, you can join us, listener, for a biographical reading of Les lais de Marie de France.
Duck: I believe there are werewolves?
Dia: There are werewolves.
Duck: Excellent. Gay medieval werewolves.
Dia: And the werewolves are gay.
Duck: There was a whole thesis written on this by someone who I feel like I've heard of. About the gayness of the mediaeval werewolves.
Dia: This is an area in which I have some familiarity, I'm going to really struggle to let you take the lead on this one, because I have so many opinions.
Duck: I’m going to be wrong on so many things and you're gonna know all the things I'm wrong about. And I think that's gonna be a productive conversation for the listener.
Dia: Im just gonna have to sit there and vibrate.
Duck: It's alright. We, okay, I'm saying now, we're changing up the structure just a little tiny bit, which is that next time after I do my analysis, you get to do the correction.
Dia: We'll see.
Duck: We'll do a whole segment where you explain to me the points of which I was wrong.
Dia: We don't actually know anything about her. So you could be right. No matter what you say. You could be right.
Duck: The possibility is always there. Yeah.
Dia: Unless you say like she was, you know,
Duck: A werewolf.
Dia: A time traveller from the modern day. You're probably
Duck: I assume these were autobiographical and therefore she was a gay werewolf.
Dia: She was, I think she was a gay werewolf and also a bird and also a tree and also, whatever the one that shot the deer that shot him in the penis was.
Duck: An unlucky man.
Dia: It's very gender, you'll, you'll enjoy some gender.
Duck: I'm looking forward to the mediaeval French gender.
Dia: I'm gonna see if I can, I will start looking to see if I can find you an English version. I'm sure they're widely available in English. Um, it's just about quality of translation that I need to worry really.
Duck: Yeah, just just find me one that you feel is up to the job. And I will trust your judgement call.
Dia: Because I have modern French editions but no English ones. Otherwise, I would just post it to you.
Duck: That's fair. I unfortunately also do not read modern French.
Dia: Yeah, okay.
Duck: The two weeks is not enough time for me to learn.
Dia: I think that would be a fun challenge.
Duck: Next, join us-- Okay, let's-- Join us next time for a biographical reading of the English-French Collins dictionary. This has been Analysis Roulette. We've been watching Food Wars and next time, mediaeval French werewolves. We are nothing if not eclectic.
Dia: God knows thats true. Goodbye!
Duck: See ya.
[exit music]
Duck: You've been listening to Analysis Roulette, a podcast applying a randomly selected mode of analysis to a randomly selected creative work, just to see what happens. Your hosts have been Dia and Duck. You can find us on Spotify or on YouTube, and if you'd like to get in touch you can send us an email at analysisroulette@gmail.com. And remember, if you like our show, share it with your friends, and if you don't like our show, share it with your enemies. Thanks.