It’s been officially confirmed that the Food Wars! Season 5 Episode 3 release date is being delayed even further due to the SARS-COV-2 coronavirus pandemic. The remainder of the final season, from Food Wars! Shokugeki no Soma Season 5 Episode 3 onwards, will be postponed until later in summer 2020.
The Food Wars! Season 5 release date initially occurred on April 10, 2020. The initial indefinite delay of Food Wars! Season 5 Episode 3 was announced in mid-April and then further delays were announced in May 2020.
The new Food Wars! Episode 76: Noir will be delayed until late July 2020, the summer 2020 anime season.
“Due to the effect of the spread of COVID-19, further broadcast of the fifth plate will be postponed until July 2020,” stated the official Twitter account for Food Wars! Shokugeki no Soma. “Further information will be announced as soon as the new date is fixed. We apologize for the inconvenience.”
The entire fifth season will restart on July 3, 2020, which means Food Wars! Season 5 Episode 3 will come out on July 17, 2020.
Japanese TV stations Tokyo MX and BS11 will continue to rebroadcast reruns of episodes from the Food Wars! Season 4 anime.
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Updated June 1, 2020: Food Wars! Season 5 rebroadcast plans announced.
The Food Wars! Season 5 delay could have been longer than July 2020
The English version of the announcement simply stated the anime is “postponed until July 2020”. It should be noted that the Japanese version of the announcement states that Food Wars! S5 E3 will be delayed until “July or later” or delayed until “after July of 2020”, which means the Fifth Plate could have been held back even further if Japan’s state of emergency hadn’t lifted on May 26, 2020.
Food Wars! Shokugeki no Soma: The Fifth Plate (Shokugeki no Soma: Go no Sara) is being produced by animation studio J.C. Staff. The company has a reputation for running many anime projects at the same time and their schedules are often tight.
Director Yoshitomo Yonetani is helming the final anime season of Food Wars! Shokugeki no Soma. Writer Shogo Yasukawa is writing the scripts, while character designer Tomoyuki Shitaya is producing the art.
The Food Wars! Season 5 opening (OP) music theme song is “Last Chapter” as performed by nano.RIPE, while the ending (ED) is “Crossing Road” as performed by Mai Fuchigami.
2020 anime schedules suffer from coronavirus
In April 2020, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe declared a national state of emergency, which was supposed to end on May 6, 2020. But Japan’s state of emergency was expanded until May 26, 2020.
Unfortunately, Tokyo and the areas nearby maintained a state of emergency for longer than other prefectures.
Anime studios’ schedules have suffered from cascading effects due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and the mitigation efforts by all nations. Like many other anime studios, Studio J.C. Staff is located on the outskirts of Tokyo, which has struggled to contain the viral spread.
Many studios outsource parts of the production process to contractors located in China and South Korea. Sometimes compositing is outsourced entirely, and these companies handle multiple projects at the same time.
The Food Wars! Season 5 anime is just one of several major anime that have suffered delays. Black Clover, Pokemon Journeys: The Series, The Promised Neverland Season 2, My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU Season 3, The Quintessential Quintuplets Season 2, Re: ZERO Season 2, Sword Art Online: Alicization Final Season, and No Guns Life Part 2 have all been pushed back to later dates.
The few anime which are not being delayed had production schedules where the episodes were completed before the pandemic swept the world. Included in this shortlist is the Tower Of God anime, My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!, and Ascendance of a Bookworm Season 2/Part 2.