Yakitate! Ja-Pan

Yakitate! Ja-Pan

Anime Review

Another week, another anime review ^^. This week lets have a look at the tastiest anime there is, Yakitate Ja-Pan.

clockwise from top: Ken, Kyousuke, Azuma and Tsukino

Storyline
French bread, German bread, English bread, Italian bread... every other country seems to have a bread named after it, but sadly there's still no "Japan(ese) bread".

Kazuma Azuma has been obsessed with baking ever since his sister introduced him to the wonderful world of bread when he was a boy.

Now, at 16, he wants to create Japan's first national bread, which he plans to call "Ja-pan" ("pan" is Japanese for bread, of course).

He has his hand to aid him: Unlike ordinary teens, Kazuma's hands (nicknamed the "Solar Hands") are much warmer than normal, hence helping dough ferment faster and better.

With his unusual ability and weird and wacky bread creations (which he names Ja-pan #1, Ja-pan #2 and so forth), Kazuma is soon considered a genius at baking bread.

Kazuma's quest eventually takes him to Pantasia, a famed bakery chain in Japan, where he meets many friends (Kyousuke, Tsukino and Ken - a burly man with afro) and foes who both envy and admire his legendary Solar Hands.

At Pantasia, Kazuma has to take part in an exhilarating series of bread baking competitions that, more often than not, involve more than his fate at the bakery.

69 episodes in total.


My End Verdict
Yakitate! Ja-Pan, has the most gastronomically outrageous bread-making competitions ever. The main reason to watch this show is undoubtedly the ridiculous and overdramatic comedic scenes, which mostly involve judges during bread-making contest. This show cleverly mixes serious bread-baking competitions with light-hearted, comedic judging scenes.

The overdone reaction from the judges, who usually go to great lenghts to demonstrate how much they love the bread, recurs throughout the series and never fails to entertain each time.

Rating: This rowks, seriously! 5/5