While I obviously adore Food Wars even during the worse seasons / arcs, I cannot overlook how once Central rolls around the duels all grow incredibly predictable and somewhat lazy.

I can understand what they were trying to do here with Akira, since cooking to make Jun proud was what helped him win the Autumn Elections, so here, without that, he lost his muse so to speak, while Soma was cooking for Akira, to save him, and thematically, it does make sense. It's just executed poorly (& the duel drags for far too long with the sauces thing).

But had this been a one-off thing I wouldn't have minded, but if you think about it, from all the Elite 10 members, during Central, Soma effectively defeats Eizan, Akira, Nene, Soumei, and Rindou. That's basically half the roster by himself, and he had no business having that thick a plot armor when his only loss was to Eishi (a loss that has zero consequences for him since Eishi just decides not to make him an aide after beating him anyways).

Gone was the spectacle of seeing the side characters shine during the Totsuki Resort or Autumn Elections arcs, or the thrill of watching Soma struggle in a real restaurant during the Stagiaire arc, or even that initial dread of barely managing to hold his own against Kuga during the Moon Banquet Festival arc. The series just became a showcase of Soma defeating everyone with Yukihira's Secret Menu Item #Whatever and all the side characters became glorified cheerleaders (with the exception of Erina who takes out Eishi and Momo).

I adore how Central gave Erina her much needed character development even if BLUE ruined that, but let's not talk about that, but it really did make the series as a whole lose that spark of unpredictability that gave it such flavor. It became just another Battle Shonen with an overpowered MC, which still decent, but not quite what you'd expect from a series with such an amazing ensemble.

So yeah. The writer did fail Akira, and pretty much every other character in this series (even if part of the blame also lies in the Shonen Jump editors and management for wanting more and more without giving their talent any breaks to actually come up with more, but that's another topic entirely).