Good job on the review. I just bought the manga and I was completely suprised that they translated it. I havent had the chance to read it yet, but I look forward to it even more now.
Yakitate!! Japan tv Review
Yakitate looks at the glory that is Bread! 16 year old Azuma Kazuma is a boy with the legendary Solar Hands, and dreams to create ja-pan; a bread that will become a national symbol of the country. In following this dream he becomes employed by Pantasia, one of the higher status bread companies in Japan. Azuma invents mighty breads to prove his strength to the world while at the same time trying to save Pantasia from its over-bearing rival St Pierres.
Written by littlejonny100
Story & Characters
'Yakitate Japan' is in itself a pun, yakitate meaning freshly made and 'ja-pan' being a pun of 'Japanese pan' (pan meaning bread). So as the title says this is an anime about making bread, a very informative one at that. A must see for anyone making bread, even anyone who has an interest in general cooking, as it has a very educational view and analysis in how different breads (and other foods) are made and the mechanics involved, not only this but there are literally real life recipes and demonstrations shown, another added extra being the 'seed of knowledge' after each episode where a fascinating fact related to the episode is given.
The story specifically looks at our 16 year old boy protagonist Azuma Kazuma, whose dream in life is to create ja-pan, a bread that will become a national symbol of the country. He ends up working in a store with other 'colourful' starting characters. This creates a nice miss-matched mix of characters who work in unison to create the comical atmosphere that gradually evolves over the course of the storyline.
Being a bread based anime this does restrict the plot slightly, as all aspects of the story manage to evolve around bread in some way. The use of 'bread battles/bakeoffs' is used consistently and very time consuming so although there are 69 episodes the plot isn't as extensive, however keeping purpose in mind it is fairly well done. I cannot emphasise enough that this anime is about the glory that is bread!
Rating:
Art
The art itself is not so extraordinary with a common cell animation approach and generally static backgrounds and characters, however here seems to be the place to mention the 'reaction' scenes, that is when a character bites into bread to discover how unbelievably delicious it is. Such moments are the strongest in the animation where it becomes important to excessively exaggerate, whether it be surroundings, expressions or poses. It is the exaggeration in any scenario where the animation in Yakitate stands above the rest with its unique and original representations. As with most anime you'll aslo find the graphics of the animation slowly improve.
Rating:
Sound
With three different openings and six different closings there are quite a few key songs to remember (a recommendation for the disco grooving 'To All Tha Dreamers').
It's always a personal decision but I would say that the voice casting is perfect, not only to each character but also the wide contrast between the many characters. That is, with so many different characters and personalities the voices just seem to slip into place with their assigned roles. Unfortunately I'm not well acquainted with different Japanese dialects and can't comment there however as I further comment on in presentation, language plays an important part in many aspects of the show.
As for the background music it also helps in serving that key purpose, that purpose again being to (over?)-glorify the
making, presentation and eating of bread, a purpose that it serves spectacularly. Still there's a large range of
music styles resulting in music for all occasions and all types of people.
Rating:
Presentation
The title itself is a pun and this anime is dominantly comedic, however for non-japanese speakers a lot of its natural beauty may be lost as the puns, humour and cultural references used continuously throughout often play with Japanese language and culture, this is also good news for the anime purists as a translated dub seems highly unlikely. The humour itself is often cliched and there is a lot of repetition of biting the bread scenes along with their 'reactions', however although the same idea is overused, the method of approach is unique each time resulting is constant outbreaks of laughter. Although I say this I will contradict it by saying that it could just as easily be said that the reactions become increasingly tedious and often unbelievable as the anime progresses, it really depends on personal taste.
Keep in mind this is a whopping 69 episodes so the best test as to whether this anime is your cup of tea is to watch the first couple of episodes, maybe to episode 5, because if you don't enjoy the first few then there's little chance you'll enjoy the rest. If you are brave enough to burn through all episodes I guarantee you will look at bread very differently for some time.
A lot of watching to be done but overall it's PANTASTIC......never mind me.
Rating:
Final Verdict
8.3333 (good)
Reviewed by littlejonny100, Sep 11, 2006
Comments
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ScribbleKitty Sep 12, 2006
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Hiraku-San Sep 12, 2006
Lol finally got the review down XD
Hehe just by reading the story & character got me interested in watching... i mean how could someone actually made an anime that is solely about bread-making ;)... lol and 69 episodes... thats a killer XD... usually i got bored of anime longer then 30 episodes... i find those short anime quite memorable than the longer ones... Lol as far as Japanese humour goes... i think its safe to say that lots of people do understand them XD...Anyway your review is very informative and attractive!
Great job! -
Rhyme097 Sep 14, 2006
Goo dreview... I love this anime ^^
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Chixxa Sep 18, 2006
nice information *__* makes me wanna look !
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Firemace Sep 20, 2006
Mmm... been a bread lover as well as anime, that's very detail analysis. Accurate as well. Good Job there on the review. Couldn't have agreed more with it. ;) Ah, you are truthful on the Sound. >_< XD Very addictive Groovy track. *Pantastic-Japun !*
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loliness Jan 03, 2007
Nice review><
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fairy-wings Jun 15, 2007
Nice review. :)
I was surprised at how much I enjoyed an anime about bread-making, haha. -
SchRita Jan 15, 2010
Thanks for the review!
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