Shokugeki bas a better cast of characters than MHA. The protagonist is light years better.it can be high stakes in the scheme of the world (MHA sucks at this because they never built a world worth caring about) or high stakes as the scheme of character dynamics (which they're inconsistent in).
kishimoto is a hack, but he could at least consistently put the characters he did feel confident in into positions where they could shine. MHA seemingly does it by accident because the last time this happened was in S2
"they're just trainees" doesn't work because there's no weight to anything they do. there's plenty of shows where entire themes are centered around meaningless tasks. who's really putting in work and growing? their idea of training one kid was to put him in a hot tuband because the writer knows that's wack, they started slapping gadgets on everyone. its pathetic. there's no satisfaction to what they show off afterwards because the road itself is wack.
there's more development and weight to a cooking show than MHA. its more satisfying to watch megumi craft a new noodle dish than these animation showcases in MHA
They're just trainees works here because they're training to be heroes. Hero trainees aren't supposed to be the first line of defense against full fledged villains. In order for that to work you have to make the full fledged heroes completely incompetent. Heroes vs villains this is supposed to be high stakes by nature.
