The popular manga series Food Wars, as well as its anime adaptation, has become increasingly popular over the years. And it's not hard to see why. Cooking shows, animated or otherwise, have universal appeal. After all, everyone loves to sit down and eat delicious food, right?

The creators of the anime know this, and they work hard to try and keep that appeal going as much as possible while also keeping viewers hooked with colorful animation and eccentric characters. In a new documentary released by Crunchyroll, the team behind the Food Wars talk about what goes into making the series and the challenges they face when keeping things fresh.

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As with any animated feature, a lot of work is put into making every character and setting stand out. In Food Wars, the dishes are given just as much weight as the characters, so the team specifically chose people who knew not only how to draw dishes, but how to add the special effects needed to really make them pop. "The ingredients themselves are drawn on a cell," said art director Koichiro Bizen, "but we add an artistic touch to make them seem a little different."

Miho Kimura, the head of special effects and color design, and Dayna Akahara, in charge of food setting, also detailed what goes into designing a dish for the show. This includes researching each of the ingredients of a dish as well as finding a local shop that serves the dish and eating it themselves. Drawing the dishes is also very meticulous. Akahara recalls drawing a particular dish of ramen when each noodle had to be drawn individually. The coloring is also important, to make sure that the food doesn't completely overshadow the characters on-screen while also looking appetizing enough for the viewers.

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It helps that the anime's director, Yoshimoto Yonetani, knows his way around a kitchen thanks to his previous cooking aspirations before going into animation.

"I wanted to run my own restaurant, for a while, to be honest. But, well... That business just ruins the skin on your hands. Physically, it just dries you out. And I've got bad allergies. I loved it, but I just wasn't physically cut out for it, so I moved to this industry instead."

It's this history with food that makes Yonetani very particular with his presentation style. He is always thinking about how the food looks on the screen. One aspect that he pays close attention to are the plates and bowls used for the dishes. Deciding which colors and patterns need to be used so that the food looks better is one of the little things Yonetani is always thinking about when a dish is being designed. He would often work with Akahara to design the dishes and the plates that are specific to each character. And unlike some of the storylines in the manga, which tend to get cut for various reasons, food almost never gets cut due to how essential it is to the series, so these little things need to be addressed.

And when everything adds up, the result is an anime that resonates with so many people. The team recalls instances where people wound contact them saying that the show inspired them to become chefs or go to culinary school. It's stories like these that keep the team going and encourages them to push the envelope even further with each new episode.

The full documentary, titled Behind The Scenes of Food Wars | The Making of an Anime is available to watch now on Crunchyroll's YouTube channel. The series is also available to stream on the site as well.

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