Food Wars! might’ve come to an end in this week’s issue of Weekly Shonen Jump, but that doesn’t mean that Yuto Tsukuda, Shun Saeki and Yuki Morisaki’s cooking manga is done just yet. In the same issue that carried the series’ final chapter, a Food Wars season 4 was announced, giving life to the dying series.
Season 4 of the Food Wars anime, titled Shin no Sara (The Plate of God) in Japanese and The Fourth Plate in English, was announced for an October premiere this year via the series’ official website. That’ll be just a couple of months after the series comes to an end proper in Jump GIGA, where it has been moved to finish out the BLUE arc in a special serialization titled Le desert. A promotional video was also streamed online by Warner Bros.
While the announcement carried a rather definitive premiere date, it was lacked, rather conspicuously, the studio that would be tackling this fourth season.
You could assume that J. C. Staff will be taking on the project, given that they tackled the previous three seasons, but they aren’t exactly in a good place when it comes to production schedules at the minute.
They’ve already run afoul of One Punch Man fans with their disastrously downgraded One Punch Man 2 anime adaptation, and they currently have a whopping four other shows planned for the next summer season – including the highly anticipated Index spinoff A Certain Scientific Accelerator.
It certainly wouldn’t be unexpected if J.C. Staff decided to offload season 4 of Food Wars anime because of this. But, then, the question begs itself – who in their right mind would want to take on the project instead?
Judging by the original Food Wars! manga, Shin no Sara will finish off the ‘Central’ arc that was left on a cliffhanger last year by the second part of the third season. This’ll provide anime-only fans with some resolution, but manga-only fans know much better.
According to many readers of the Food Wars! manga, the Central arc is essentially the last decent arc, with the series only going downhill from that point onwards – up to the disastrous BLUE arc that brought the series an abrupt cancellation.
So while Food Wars season 4 might inject some life into the series despite the original manga coming to an end, it’s hardly its saving grace. The only light at the end of the tunnel is the prospect of an anime-original ending to let the series go out on a high note, but I’m not exactly holding my breath.