Yakitate!! Japan

Yakitate!! Japan (Freshly Baked!! Japan) was the series that got me back into anime after a few years of absence. I mean it’s about BREAD, who can resist? Thank my brother for downloading this back when it aired. Now he’s all anti-anime telling me it’s just a phase = = “. Screen shots from episode 1.

And that boy is…

…AZUMA KAZUMA

Main cast: Yumiko Koboyashi, Shuhei Sakaguchi, Takayuki Sakazume, Marina Inoue, Chihiro Otsuka, Hiroki Touchi
Genre: Cooking, Comedy
Episodes: 69 (viewed 69 out of 69)
Broadcast period: 2004 Oct 12- 2006 Mar 14
Theme songs: Too many songs to list

Legendary SOLAR HANDS

Synopsis
Azuma Kazuma is a boy with the legendary Solar Hands on his quest to create “Ja-pan”, a national bread for Japan (more on that later). To help him fulfil this dream Azuma heads to Tokyo to find work at bread-making chain “Pantasia” where he learns new skills, meets new people and even gets closer to reaching his final goal.

Notes
Ja-pan is just one of the many puns found in this series. Ja is for Japanese and pan is the japanese word for bread hence Japanese Bread or Ja-pan.
The series has over 10 OP and ED songs so I won’t list them here.
All the bread in the show are actually based on REAL bread from some guy in Kyoto. MAN I WANT SOME JAPAN #43 AND #58 RIGHT NOW.

Shouta Azuma

My thoughts
Yakitate!! Japan may the one of the few series’ about bread that you’ll ever find. The anime is so crazy it works, the characters are crazy, the situations are crazy and the humour is CRAZY. Speaking of the humour, hats off to the subbers for making sense out of all the puns in this series. The humour of this series relies heavily on puns so I thought that they wouldn’t make sense to non-Japanese viewers but the subs do make some sense and some of the humour can still be retained. There are also a lot of parodies in the show that I recognised including Sekachu, Dragon Ball Z, Mona Lisa and even Naruto but Kawachi kicks Naruto’s ass any day (those are from the top of my head, there are SO much more). Also you gotta love a shonen show that likes to poke fun at itself.

An innocent man?

Foreshadowing? I didn’t catch this till much later on

The characters of Yakitate!! are all very eccentric and have traits of their own and who ever thought Samurais could bake bread? I don’t hate many of the characters as they probably turn good after they battle Azuma but Yukino is an exception for she is the EVILEST woman to grace the cooking world. . My favourite characters are Kawachi, Kuroyan and the mushroom head guy (no seriously, what’s his name?) but all the cast are really good and even the minor roles stand out and I remember most of the cast. Even though this is a shonen series the characters do show some sign of development, an arrogant Kawachi of many hairstyles changes into a good friend and a samurai even learns a thing or two about love… even if he still is not sure of human reproduction.

Shouta Azuma’s solar hands

In Yakitate!! Japan Azuma and the gang compete in various competitions where there a variety of foes. They were pretty entertaining but sometimes I was secretly thinking “Come on! Lose ONE match”. I really think they should have stopped at the Monaco Cup because during the last arc the episodes pretty much became fill in the blank “Today the battle took place in __________ and the gang versed __________, something goes wrong with ___________ but Azuma somehow thinks of a crazy plan and they win”. Sometimes these battles aren’t straight forward either with enemies falling in love, a judge with no taste and a few other plot twists here and there. Of course talking about battles you can’t go past the famous REACTIONS. These reactions are the highlight of the show and you have no idea what they’ll make of the various bread recipes. Now onto the bread, this series actually made me fascinated with bread. The bread actually look edible and there’s even an episode where the producers of the show teach you how to make bread (but I PHAILED when I tried).

An oh-so infamous…

…REACTION from the old man

Now technical stuff. Animation is average the series does maintain its quality and I can’t see any episodes where quality drops to ZOMGNARUTOBAD besides I’m not that focused on animation when there’s so much comedy. I quite like the soundtrack and BGM to the series, sometimes those tunes start ringing in your head. The OP and ED songs are really good too especially the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 6th and 7th ED… BAH I LIKE THEM ALL. As for voice acting I found Azuma’s voice really annoying at first but other than him I think every one in the cast is well voiced and I LOVE Kawachi’s voice and his “Nanyate?!?!”, Ken’s “Nandato?!?!” is good too :D.

16 year old Azuma

PANTASIA!

I love the show, but it’s not perfect by any stretch. As I said before the series is a little longer than it needs to be and in my opinion the whole last arc can be discarded (but it does wrap up the series quite well). The show’s humour does become a little strange during some reactions and I sat there scratching my head some times.

Kuroyan :3 (!) and Subaru

Tsukino and Kawachi (Ahou)

Final Judgement
7.5 out of 10, not perfect but that doesn’t stop me from liking (LOVING) the show. Some might take a point or two down for the sheer craziness but I love that stuff.

I was reluctant to do this review because I’m just not bothered at the moment… with school coming up and all but this ended up pretty long. I have a lot more things to say about the series, this is the concise version.

P.S I ship Tsukino and Azuma for some reason