Mako Kawai is a college student whose social anxiety disorder leaves her so meek that she can't even go into restaurants by herself. But after a chance reunion with her old gradeschool friend Shinon Ogawa and meeting Kurea Furudate, she finds herself joining the Food Culture Research Club, which turns out to be quite a bit different than what she expected.

Food for the Soul seemed like it could be more my speed than the premiere of Mono was. For one thing, I love to cook. I daresay an interest in food is more universal than an interest in action photography, but as I'll discuss in a minute, that turns out to be a double-edged sword here. Secondly, Food for the Soul has a touch more bite to it. It's still quite gentle and sweet overall, more like a pound cake with lemon zest added than a lemon tart. The girls of the Food Culture Research Club are all quite kind, including Kurea, who offers to give Mako her sauced katsudon at her mother's restaurant when they run out just before Mako can put in her order. However, any show with as dead-on accurate a description of mental illness as this has the potential to do something with it. If you suffer any kind of anxiety disorder, Mako will hit pretty close, not only in how she gets home from a mildly pleasant social interaction and immediately starts screaming at herself about all the ways she thinks she messed up, but also in her description of how she became more nervous about trying new things and putting herself out there over time, leading to her slowly withdrawing.

The only problem is that, unlike Kurea's katsudon, I'm not sure this show has the sauce. The general animation is as pretty as we've come to expect from PA Works, but the cooking animation is... Look, food anime is as crowded a field as restaurants in Toronto. You have to bring something special to the table, especially if you're focusing on Japanese homestyle cooking. And Food for the Soul isn't doing that. The preparation sequence is done entirely via tight close-ups of Kurea's hands, completely removing the sense of who's preparing the food and the satisfaction they get from it. The motion was slightly jittery instead of smooth and confident. The pastel colour palette, while pleasant when it comes to characters and backgrounds, makes the food look washed-out and undercooked. When you exist in the same field as things like Delicious in Dungeon, Food Wars, Gourmet Girl, Sweetness and Lightning, Ghibli movies, etc., you have to do better than this.

Is it possible that my brain is simply rejecting the prospect of another anime about girls who are obsessed with food after covering GoHands' most recent crime against nature? Absolutely. If we were going to try and dissect what Food for the Soul is lacking on its own merits, however, I'd say there's just an intangible sense of depth and substance that this anime struggles to convey. If I were to resort to hacky food metaphors, I'd probably go on at length describing how certain recipes ask you to add small amounts of seemingly inconsequential ingredients, like soy sauce or tomato paste, that end up contributing greatly to the overall flavour profile of the dish and can heavily alter the taste, texture and colour if more is added than what's needed, and conclude that Food for the Soul is missing that extra tablespoon of mirin in the broth.

It's ironic, really, that a show all about the joys of creating a good meal from scratch would represent the anime equivalent of a fast-casual dining experience. Sure, a trip to Chipotle might technically be a step up from just dipping through the McDonald's drive-thru, but we're still talking about an assembly line process for delivering cheap, convenient products. Dammit, there I go with the food metaphors again.

Point is, while I'm sure Food for the Soul will have plenty of fans, and in a weaker season it might've been something I'd commit to watching weekly, I can't say I'm really feeling all that enthusiastic about it. It's perfectly fine, but there are too many shows airing at the same time that are overflowing with creativity, vision and flair for "perfectly fine" to cut the mustard this season. It wasn't fresh-baked enough to get a big reaction from me. It's not so much a grand cake as it is a modest cupcake trying to stand out with brightly coloured sprinkles. Insert some other food-related line here. I'll put it on the warming tray for later, but it didn't impress me enough to make the priority list.