I fought to like Food Wars, I truly did. Widely lauded as one of the best anime of the spring 2015 season, I wanted to be part of that bandwagon of praise too. I delayed this article week after week, hoping in vain that I would be able to change an opinion that I set with astonishing swiftness in the first episode. Unfortunately, ten episodes later I have seen no reason to change my opinion, which is: don’t do it. Fuck Food Wars.

Here’s the thing: Food Wars is laugh-out-loud funny when it’s funny, and it otherwise touches on some of my favorite elements: shows about food, humor shows, shows set in high school, competition shows. I’ve watched every episode of Chopped, Kitchen Nightmares, Kitchen: Impossible, Restaurant: Impossible, Kitchen Nightmares UK, Iron Chef America… you get the picture. This is a show I rooted for, and that makes my disappointment over it far worse. So why can’t I love it?

THE FANSERVICE IS SO GROSS AND OVER THE TOP.

I can tolerate a fair amount of fanservice at this point. Almost against myself and despite a really squicky scene with Lili later in the season, I gave the go-ahead to Is It Wrong To Pick Up Girls In A Dungeon? The Heroic Legend of Arslan features a female character who may actually wear less than Food Wars’ Nikumi, and I gave it the go-ahead as well. But the very first episode of Food Wars gave me a woman who’s a snobby, uppity bully for no reason, only to have her receive her comeuppance in the form of a literal foodgasm, complete with tentacles, at the hands of a 14 year old boy. Just in case, you know, you wanted that weird pedo element to your rape jokes.

Does it get better later? Well, no, not really, as Mito Ikumi’s entire character is based on her enormous boobs and the tragic backstory of a father who refused to let her be feminine (what?) and also her boobs (okay?). Top baddie and possessor of the God Tongue Erina Nakiri honestly looks vacuum-sealed into her chef jacket.

Soma always wins, so the plot gets predictable.

Food Wars is kind of like a sports show but with food. In place of hitting a home run, scoring a touchdown or making a dramatic slam dunk, main character Yukihiro Soma serves up sizzling delights guaranteed to give women the most explicitly sexual quivering foodgasms Japanese TV will permit them to show in that timeslot. (Men just get to delight in the food. That’s nice for them.)

But…. Soma wins every time, and it’s not even like he has some kind of internal battle to overcome, or some personality hangup that he exorcises through his cooking. He just… wins. He’s confident that he’s going to win and then he wins. Go Sohma.

The food battles are where Food Wars shines in terms of animation quality, and there’s a small amount of entertainment and interest provided when Soma explains the innovation in his techniques or why he chose to do certain things. But stretching “Soma wins every time” over an entire season with no sign that this arrogant “underdog” will ever doubt his ability or have any reason to check himself? I just don’t find that interesting.

All adversaries are evil because they are snobs, with no variation on this theme.

So to create dramatic tension, Food Wars has to rely on a bunch of culinary snobs. Erina is such an entitled snob that she almost succeeds in having Sohma barred from entering the elite Totsuki Academy, despite his having created a dish that resulted in a foodgasm so intense it pretty much raped her. Then there’s Nikumi, all about using top-ranked ingredients, sneering and prancing until she gets her ass handed to her in another quivering foodgasm. The real estate shark from the first episode throws her weight about the humble Yukihira diner up until the foodgasm administered to her against her will forces her to change her tune and melt into compliance.

It’s not that there’s no dude snobs. The most recent episode, “The Heavenly Recette,” features a brutal chef who sets his students up for failure and permits no deviation from his established recipe. The problem is that snobbishness is the only trick this pony knows. Episode after episode, Soma versus food snobs is the only tool for dramatic tension between characters that Food Wars can summon. It gets played out.

The only other narrative element that provides dramatic tension is the threat that Tadokoro Megumi might get expelled because her nerves continually get the best of her. Sweet, anxious, and cute, I’m hoping she manages to escape the more egregious fanservice already ladled onto so many of the other female characters. But she’s not the main character, so caring about her expulsion goes only so far.

In short: Should I watch Food Wars?

No. For food elements, watch Toriko instead. For high school elements with light fanservice, watch Yamada and the Seven Witches. For a truly funny show, watch My Love Story. Or turn on Netflix and watch Chopped until you pass out.

Food Wars has moments of real hilarity, some creative culinary challenges and innovative, interesting solutions to those challenges, and truly mouthwatering animation of its titular food wars. But the fanservice is egregious to the point of being offensive, the characters are flat and show few signs of change or growth, they adhere with wearying closeness to tired anime tropes and cliches, the plot gets old fast, and every element of interest can be found, done better, in other shows.

Watch Food Wars every Friday at 3:25 PM EDT on Crunchyroll for Premium Subscribers (1 week later for non-premium viewers).