Tōtsuki Autumn Election

The Tōtsuki Autumn Election (秋の選抜 Aki no Senbatsu) is a cooking tournament-style event undertaken by a handful of high school first-year students at Tōtsuki Culinary Academy.

Overview[]

The Autumn Election is a competition event for first-year students each year, which serves as a somewhat official ranking of the current class. Many view it as a major stepping stone to enter the Elite Ten Council since many of its highest placing students eventually join the Council.

Selection of Candidates[]

The announcement of the Election participants.

Over the course of the first-year students' first months in the academy, a committee Tōtsuki officials select 40 students who show exceptional ability to participate in the Election. The Tōtsuki Friendship and Rapport Training Camp in particular is one of the biggest contributing factors in their selection. An additional 20 competitors are then decided by the Elite Ten Council themselves, bringing the total to 60 first-year students. The Elite Ten also have scrutiny over which students are involved and can even disqualify some students picked by the Tōtsuki staff, though it appears that a majority of the council must agree in order to do so.

The 60 students who qualified for the event are formally announced and are divided into two Blocks, each containing 30 of the students. Participants are notified of the theme of the Preliminary event just before the start of their summer break. During the course of the summer vacation, the candidates are given that time to experiment and plan out their dish.

Preliminary Round[]

Taking place in the Shokugeki Arena, after a speech by the headmaster of the academy, participants immediately head into their assigned Blocks and begin cooking. Each Block has 30 students and 5 different judges, one of which is a head judge. Students are given a maximum of three hours to cook their dishes and may make any preparations for their cooking as needed beforehand, mainly securing their own ingredients and bringing in whatever utensils or appliances they need to complete their dish. Otherwise, students do not need to utilize the full three hours and may present their dishes to the judges once finished.

Each of the five judges are able to give a maximum 20 points each to a student's dish with a cumulative 100 points for a "perfect dish." Judges are particularly brutal in their scoring with many students scoring as they are all notable figures in the culinary industry. One judge, Osaji Kita, states that a combined score of 50 would be an "average" dish, but many students fail to reach this threshold, with some even getting single digit final scores. Judges can even give a score of 0 such as Natsume Sendawara.Despite the harsh scoring, a select number are able to get substantially high scores.

Once all 30 students from each Block have presented, a final ranking is made between themselves. The top four scoring students of each block qualify for the main tournament. In the event of a tie for placement, the judges will have a final deliberation for a tiebreaker.

Main Tournament[]

Competititors being bathed in the purifying moonlight.

The 8 students who made it to the first round of the main tournament are matched up against each other via lottery. Opponents in the Semifinals are also randomized, meaning that there is no fixed opponent for each round, except for the final match. Each match has a different culinary theme that is also decided randomly.

The main tournament of Autumn Election is held in a special arena known as The Chandra's Room, a culinary battle field that is otherwise reserved only for Food Wars between members of the Elite Ten Council. The unique feature of this arena is that the ceiling can open, used to allow moonlight into the venue. The view of the moon traveling across they sky is used as way to measure the time left that the competing chefs have to complete their dish, ending once the moon is obscured by the unopened part of the roof, which takes two hours. The open roof is also used to bathe said competitors in a "purifying moonlight" as they step forward to present their dish to the judges.

Students are allowed to bring any appliances or utensils they need to create and complete their dish and must provide their own ingredients.

The day before their quarterfinal match, the Elite Ten Council informs the competitors of their opponent and their battle theme. According to Senzaemon Nakiri, the purpose of that round is to show the student's flexibility and ability to think on their feet, as they are given less than a day to pick out and create a dish to fulfill a certain theme. From the semifinals onward, the participants are given a week to prepare.

For the judging portion, students must prepare enough servings of their dishes for each of the judges. Unlike the Preliminaries, there is no scoring involved, which is meant to prevent any ties from happening as much as possible. The judges each must choose the dish that they felt was better overall. In most cases, the results were unanimous. The judges themselves are comprised of several notable figures in the culinary industry, such as the Tōtsuki Alumni.

Though the matches are already cooking duels, students are allowed to hold their matches as a Shokugeki if both parties agree to have one, as per rules of declaring one. The cooking time will remain the same, however the judging changes into a Shokugeki style of judging where each judge will vote individually and the individual with the most votes will win the match.

Despite the fact that the judging round was never to result in a tie, for the first time in Tōtsuki history in the 43rd Election, a semifinal match was declared a tie because one of the judges could not pick a decisive winner, something the other judges agreed upon despite declaring a winner themselves. Due to this circumstance, the finals was changed into a three-way duel. It is not known if there is a special reward for winning the Election, aside from being crowned the best student of that generation.

Notable Tōtsuki Autumn Elections[]

43rd Annual Tōtsuki Autumn Election - The Autumn Election for the 92nd Tōtsuki Generation students.