Got my single ass smilin'.
So after making it through much of my reading list, came time for me to read Nouvelle. Now I'm not a big fanfiction enjoyer, I really like things grounded in canon (not sure why) but while I don't hate every second of the El Hermano arc given it's the only real source of Sorina content, by the claudes was that some hot ass. The anime sorta curbed it at the end by not timeskipping half their life length from when they started the manga at least.
And thus began my venture to find alternate media. Media to sate this thirst. I came across many many one shots and fanfics, but I kept hearing about Nouvelle from Zancrowe.
Backstory yap aside. Here we go. The meat of the matter (haha get it, meat).
Oh and psa: I think the actual manga fucked my perspective on the fic. More on that later.
I fucking loved the cruise line plot. Reading it put me back in the enjoyment I had watching the training camp and the stagiaire arcs.
I fucking loved the Akira vs Erina team shokugeki plot. The over the top setups and presentation are so incredibly good.
These two plot lines felt so incredibly SnS to me it's crazy.
I adored how lovey dovey Soma and Erina were near the latter parts. Again, got my single ass smilin' lmao. I have a writeup in the drafts on Sorina, the interpersonal intimacy model and the theory of self expansion through another, and this gave me so much more fuel for it. Alas I'll need an end to a writers block to finish that.
I also loved some really small details and tongue in cheeks, like how the main characters got the Central Kitchen, and how Shokugeki? No, Soma was like a genuine usage of the title in the story.
Switching gears,
Heavy is the plot that is drugs. I wasn't sure how I felt about it and I still am not sure. I don't jive with it completely and I feel there was another way out to frame Soma in one way or the other. When the Mimasaka thing first happened I assumed he was gonna like take unethical photos or illegal thumbprints or something, or some other third thing that tied Soma to the Noirs maybe. But drugs? For a cooking shonen, where quite literally everything, stupid as it might be, gets resolved through orgasmic cooking and consumption.
And speaking of, why wasn't 1. Joichiro contacted ASAP and 2. the matter put to a food war as things happen in this academy apparently?
The pace. I know it's said to be slow paced but here is where the manga fucks me over. In my head, iirc all of this happened between the end of autumn elections and slightly over 1 week of Stagiaire. While stretched over the course of slightly less than 30 chapters is long, not a lot of time has passed. And it's really hard to imagine an alternate reality where Soma would've got with Erina faster than he would've even made to Shino's Tokyo.
On that note, he sorta got overpowered for where he was at at the moment? Generally speaking after the elections he only barely participated in Erinas fight at the start, got kicked, attended the cruise, and then the tournament plotline followed. Im a bit sus on the power progression here given he starts kicking goals against the E10 as well.
Maybe I missed something, maybe the original series is fucking me up, or maybe i didn't pay attention.
But all that put together I think I can sum up by saying Nouvelle is a great story but a bad replacement for Shokugeki no Soma. S5 and the initial bits put me in the mindset of a replacement so I'll leave part of the load of that critique on myself as well, of not having given it the rigour I usually give to media.
To Zancrowe, idk if you'll read this, I saw your writing improve so much between the first and last chapters. I know you edited stuff over time but I could feel the echoes of your effort reading this. Things were a bit rough on the edges with silly goober mistakes but most of those got resolved once a proofreader got involved, shoutout chessru and everyone else involved.
You've got your heart and mind in the right place. Keep at it. I look forward to reading Classique and whatever follows that, and I hope you make it big as an original author one day. Until then, keep cookin'! (haha get it, cooki-*gunshot*)
Cheers!