Food Wars! The Third Plate: Totsuki Train Arc
食戟のソーマ 餐ノ皿 遠月列車篇 (Shokugeki no Souma: San no Sara - Tootsuki Ressha-hen)
- Ecchi
- Gourmet
- School
- Episodes
- 12
- Duration
- 24 min per ep
- Aired
- Apr 9, 2018 to Jun 25, 2018
- Status
- Finished Airing
Synopsis
A bleak shift settles over Tootsuki Culinary Academy after the Elite Ten stages a coup, placing Azami Nakiri in control as director. Under his rule, students are pressured to follow his doctrine of “true gourmet” and punished—up to expulsion—for stepping outside it with their own ideas.
Souma Yukihira and the residents of Polar Star Dormitory won’t fall in line. Joined by other defiant first-years, including tenth seat Erina Nakiri, they rally against Azami’s supporters. With corrupt instructors and the intimidating Central organization working to force them out, Souma and his allies have to stand together and outlast every scheme aimed at driving them from the academy.
Otaku Consensus
Totsuki Train Arc is widely treated as a rebound for Food Wars! after a less electric second season, with J.C.Staff and Yoshitomo Yonetani preserving the series’ comic timing, glossy food presentation, and shounen-battle energy. The cour’s strongest reception centers on its Advancement Exams structure and the sense of pressure created by Central, while the most consistent criticism is adaptation compression: reviewers noted that the opening and early episodes signal a lot of manga material being packed into only 12 episodes.
Why You Should Watch
Watch Totsuki Train Arc if you want tournament-anime escalation without leaving the kitchen: it delivers the rhythm of a sports bracket, the tactical reversals of a battle shounen, and enough culinary explanation to make the victories feel earned rather than random. It scratches a similar itch to Haikyuu!! or Kuroko’s Basketball when they turn preparation, teamwork, and pride into high-pressure performance, but Food Wars! swaps courts for recipes and judges. This cour is especially for viewers who liked season one’s blend of absurd sensual comedy and genuine craft detail, since the food still looks indulgent while the school politics give each cook-off sharper stakes. If ecchi is a dealbreaker, the nudity-tagged reaction gags remain part of the package; if you can roll with them, the arc is brisk, competitive, and unusually focused.
Key Characters
- SSouma Yukihira
Souma remains compelling because his appeal is not raw genius alone, but the stubborn, diner-trained habit of treating every elite rule as a challenge to be tested in public.
- EErina Nakiri
Erina’s presence gives this cour its sharpest character tension, as her aristocratic palate and tsundere defensiveness are pushed into direct contact with the classmates she once judged from above.
- AAzami Nakiri
Azami works as an unusually ideological antagonist for a cooking anime, turning taste into doctrine and making the act of improvising a recipe feel politically defiant.
What Makes It Stand Out
- 1
The cour is a compact 12-episode continuation of The Third Plate, aired from April 9 to June 25, 2018, so its structure is tighter and more exam-driven than the longer first season.
- 2
J.C.Staff keeps the franchise’s established visual grammar intact: hyper-polished food close-ups, exaggerated reaction imagery, and quick comedy beats are treated as part of the cooking battles rather than side decoration.
- 3
The Advancement Exams material gives the season a travel-and-test framework, reflected by AniList’s unusually specific Trains tag at 54%, a rare tag emphasis for a school gourmet anime.
- 4
The adaptation’s pace is one of its defining talking points; contemporary reviews noted that the cour seemed to be squeezing a large amount of manga material into its run, which creates momentum but reduces breathing room.
- 5
The season’s appeal sits at a very specific genre intersection: AniList tags it as Food at 100%, Shounen at 78%, Educational at 67%, and Nudity at 61%, accurately capturing its mix of recipe logic, competition structure, and ecchi reaction comedy.
Fun Facts & Trivia
- Fun fact 1
- Yuki Morisaki is credited for Original Work Assistance, a notable production detail because Food Wars! relies on culinary credibility and recipe logic more than most battle-shounen adaptations.
- Fun fact 2
- The anime’s core source trio is reflected in the credits: Yuuto Tsukuda for the original story, Shun Saeki for original character design, and Yuki Morisaki for food-related assistance.
- Fun fact 3
- Yoshitomo Yonetani directed the cour, with Shougo Yasukawa handling series composition and Tomoyuki Shitaya adapting the character designs for animation.
- Fun fact 4
- Despite being a later franchise installment, Totsuki Train Arc remained highly visible with a MAL popularity rank of #299 and 461,582 MAL score votes, showing that the series still had a large active audience by 2018.
- Fun fact 5
- AniList lists 2,196 favourites and a 77/100 score for this entry, placing it close to MAL’s 7.92/10 audience reception and suggesting a fairly stable cross-platform consensus.
Studios
- J.C.Staff
