WARNING: the following contains spoilers for Season 5, Episode 8 of Food Wars!: Shokugeki no Soma, "The Missing Half of the Moon," now streaming on Crunchyroll.
The BLUE tournament is proceeding as planned, and the dust barely settled on Soma's victory over Sarge before Takumi and Erina Nakiri are thrust into their biggest challenges yet.
Takumi also made it to the single-elimination tournament, and he must take part in a team battle against the chef known as Don Kama. The problem: Don Kama has a crew of assistants, while Takumi stands alone. Something is very wrong here.
Many Against One: Verrine Style
Don Kama is a noir chef and is thus highly talented, but he is not operating alone. Noir chefs sometimes form highly-coordinated teams, in the same vein as Terunori Kuga's platoon of Chinese food chefs, and Don Kama's colorful team is surrounding Takumi like wolves around a lone deer. In this team battle, Don Kama is going all out, and strangely enough, Takumi has no one by his side. Takumi checks his phone and reviews his text messages with his brother Isami, but it seems that Isami never read Takumi's most recent message. Did something happen to him? Yes, it did: Don's other minions kidnapped Isami and tied him up somewhere, leaving the older Aldini brother alone to face the music.
Don Kama is confident in his victory, and he and the team get to work. They are making verrines, colorful little dishes made in upright glassware, and add layer after layer of fresh ingredients to their various creations. Don and his crew are using grooved shakers to mix up the ingredients and add a light, frothy bubble quality to them, and the result is a trio of verrines with dazzling glitz and incredibly deep but light and refreshing flavor. The three judges are astounded that Don and the others had included an incredible 100 different layers among just three different verrines, and Takumi can do little but watch. Isami is still missing and as the time limit reaches 00:00, Soma and the others are totally lost. It seems not even they can bail Takumi out of this.
Many Against One: Battle Of Attrition
Meanwhile, Erina Nakiri is also finding herself overrun by a legion of hostile chefs. Ever since the BLUE started, she has faced unusual challenges, since she is a prominent entrant to the BLUE. With her incredible skills and reputable God Tongue, she is above the three gate challenges, so Asahi Saiba prepared something special for her. Erina must stand alone in an open field, and all chefs who fail at the BLUE's other challenges may face her -- but not one at a time. Erina is like an action hero, fighting off the enemy boss's henchmen in waves, and it is clearly taking a toll on her. To her credit, she is still standing after all the challengers are taken out, but she might not be able to keep this up for much longer.
This is all going according to plan. The mysterious bookmaster is updated on Erina's status, and this hidden woman smiles to herself and comments that the God Tongue has no place being in the BLUE at all. Why is that? This remains to be seen, but it's clear that Erina had better watch her back, even after fending off those endless challengers.