Anime: Yakitate!! Japan

This is the one of the most ridiculous series I have ever watched. They go on an on about ingredients and cooking techniques. The main character never loses, well once, so there is virtually no suspense. The blond kansai guy just rattles on and on about how he doesn't know what's going on.... for 69 episodes. It's like a bad pokemon with bread instead of monsters. Bread. Also in the last part, well most parts, they just throw away the bread contest rules whenever they want and everyone is cool with it. Some of the "bad guys" do really horrible things, but it's alright in the end, because they learn that baking BREAD is fun. Bread. Hold on a second......................................bread. Also if you make bread with a petalite board it will send you momentarily to heaven. They even made a Cannabis bread that changed history. But I digress...

Animation

Below average. Not a lot of detail even for the bread. The characters are unoriginal. Unrealistic techniques used for alternate bodie types used for expression and comic effect, sometimes it was just weird. Whole palette scheme is mostly pastel in color. It's like the color theme was a Bubbalicious banana strawberry gum wrapper.

Sound

The music was horrible, with a lot of rehashed slightly changed classical, Queen like or generic anime tracks. Nothing here stood out in a good way. Most of the yelling, screaming, groaning and other sound effects were just done by the voice actors, before which they probably drank a gallon of cappuccino and snorted uh... I mean..drank some coke. The main judge character was a decent VA, but at some point during the series the viewer is made to put up with a screeching psychopathic, noble born, food addicted jester. I think it's about 20 episodes you'll have to put up with the clown, who voices his sniffing sound effect. Kunka kunka?

Story

The story as I said in the intro is about baking bread in contests. The Hero is a natural born baker with magic glowing warm hands. That means he can make some damn good bread! The bread is so great that it sends people who eat it on magical acid trips. These trips are confusing, rambling stories that eventually lead to a HORRIBLE pun concerning the name of the bread. The great baker boy (who wears a pink hair band) must succeed and win in these contests, so that the gentle man who brought him to the art of baking and now has turned into an evil bake monger gorging himself on delicious bread in front of his own starving children, doesn't take over the bread store the boy works at. The contests take place all over the world and Japan, featuring special ingredients and themes A LA Iron Chef. It's amazing there was 69 episodes of this, when great series often only run 24 or 12 episodes. After awhile you realize everything is going to be great with everyone and even evil characters, won't get any come up ins, because bread is about being happy and this show is about bread. I really never stop a series, so I actually watched through this almost as fast as I could, even though the repetitive storyline and annoying characters never got any better.

Character Development

Basically there really isn't much. The blond yelling kansai dude, who is always amazed the entire show, does become a little more understanding of his tiny baking coworker and does develop more muscles for baking purposes. If there is one thing I learned by watching this show, is the more muscular your arms are, the more heat they'll carry to your hands and the better bread maker you will be. Azuma Kazuma (seriously) the bread making young hero, is basically excited when the show starts and manages to stay positive and excited the whole show, while baking bread. There is a very small, as small as possible, because that would take away from the bread time, romance between the bakery owner and Kazuma, but Kazuma doesn't know it, because he's too busy baking bread all the time. Most of the characters tended to remain the same through out the series, due to the time constraints of having to fill most of the show with "reactions" to all the hallucination inducing bread.

Value

If you like baking bread you might like this show. If you like over reacting, yelling, crazy characters with a lot of the color yellow, maybe it's for you. So if bread is not your thing it might just be worthless.

Enjoyment

Do to everything listed above I have to say none. Although I did learn who Pepsiman is...

I would like to say that I wrote this review, because of the multiple other reviews, which I didn't feel do it justice or at least to balance the perception of this series. I have a lot of favorite series, that I feel are great, but I would never be satisfied of my work on any review I might write. Therefore I stick to series like this most of the time in reviewing to help people, who through lack of a selection of opinions, might get the wrong idea about some shows like this. This is a public service. Bread.

Story

The premise for Yakitate!! Japan - Azuma Kazuma, a Japanese boy who aspires to create a bread which will be forever associated with the nation of Japan - is actually quite promising. All the elements are present for plenty of character growth, difficult trials, and exciting twists and turns in the plot. Unfortunately, the creators of Yakitate!! Japan fail to make use of this potential, and instead disappoint with a plot which is increasingly repetitive and unimaginative.

The anime follows the same formula from episode to episode, essentially without variation. There is some sort of bread-making competition in which Azuma is pitted against an opponent whose skills are perfectly suited for the type of bread being judged. Everything looks hopeless for Azuma until he comes up with a last-minute trump card to gain an edge on his opponent. The episode then concludes with a disproportionately large amount of time dedicated to the judging of the bread. This is usually a very involved procedure, as the judge(s) in question will display "reactions" to the bread they have sampled. Usually, the more delicious the bread, the more absurd and lengthy their reactions can be. One memorable episode actually consisted of nothing else but a judge's reaction.

I believe it would be perfectly valid for anyone above preschool age to feel insulted by this plot. After all, one of the joys of finding a new story is being surprised by the unexpected. It seems that the creators of Yakitate!! Japan have forgotten this basic element in storytelling, because after the first few episodes, almost everything is predictable with a high degree of accuracy.


Animation

The animators of Yakitate!! Japan deserve credit on three fronts. Firstly, the main characters maintain a relatively consistent look throughout the 69 episodes. Given the lack of internal consistency that pervades the other aspects of the series, I was extremely surprised not to find a single episode where Azuma or some other main character is drawn so poorly as to be unrecognisable. Secondly, as the reactions to the bread created in the anime grow increasingly preposterous and incongruous, the animators actually manage to keep up with their own dose of visual insanity. (Whether this is truly a good thing is questionable, but I shall give the benefit of the doubt.) Finally, some of the food really does look quite delicious, and since Yakitate!! Japan is mainly about food, there are quite a few opportunities for the animators to show off their bread-drawing skills.


Sound

Neither the soundtrack nor the seiyuu performances are particularly memorable. Perhaps this results from the frequent use of noise sound effects or music containing similar sounds, which may be entertaining to a toddler, but is certainly not appropriate for more mature audiences. The voice acting seems less geared towards bringing a character to life as it is focused on puerile humour and getting easy laughs from small children. The intro and outro music are average.


Character

There are several feeble attempts at character development in Yakitate!! Japan, but given its 69 episode length, these efforts are woefully inadequate. This is further worsened by the fact that the main protagonist is portrayed as a bread-making genius. It is therefore all too tempting to resolve all seemingly insurmountable difficulties encountered by Azuma through some arcane stroke of brilliance which no other person could possibly have imagined, as opposed to forcing Azuma to grow as a person and a baker. This formula is so often repeated that by the middle of the series, I could already predict how any given episode would end.

Most other characters are relegated to the static role of being springboards for the same repetitive jokes which continue throughout the series. In one severe case, a character which begins the series with a great deal of potential is utterly destroyed and reduced to playing the part of a pathetic and useless tag-along in the story. This might be excusable if this gives rise to quality humour, but the audience is instead treated to banal and inane buffoonery.


Overall

There is quite possibly a demand for a show like Yakitate!! Japan among gluttonous Japanese preschoolers or bakers desperately in need of culinary inspiration. Apart from this rather narrow audience, I would venture that few other viewers would derive much entertainment or satisfaction from watching more than the first few episodes.

Yakitate!! Japan is an excellent example of what can happen to an anime if the writer and producers get too comfortable with a well-received formula. By milking it for all it is worth, without ever gathering the courage to steer the show in a new and refreshing direction, the creators of an anime can drain it of any enjoyment that may come from viewing it.

If you absolutely feel compelled to try out this anime, I would suggest watching it until boredom sets in. After that, stop. It is downhill from there.

Yay, It's Yakitate!! Japan ^___^ I've just finished watching the whole series,so I've started writing this review 5 seconds after finishing it (the 5 seconds is the time took to get anidb to fully load up). Let's go!

Animation

I liked the animation. The characters are animated well and the backgrounds are pretty but on the other hand, I've seen better. So I could say it is... above average...?

Sound

Hmm... The OP and ED songs are good but the background music isn't as good. However, a few of the BG music is quite funny. The Seiyuu are great, they really show the emotions of the characters. I especially liked bread judge Ryo and Kazuma's voice =P

Story

The story focuses on Kazuma Azuma, a boy on his quest to create "Ja-pan", a national bread for Japan itself.
Extract taken from Wikipedia.org
The story was very unique (I personally like unique anime) but at the same time, was, er, weird. The story also involves lots of puns and parody but that's fine by me. If you want to know more, I suggest you watch the anime.

Character

Nice set of characters,each quite unique, plus all have a bit of history to them. I don't think I've got anything else to say about them apart from their designs. Some characters are pretty cool but others are quite average.

The end?

The ending to this anime feels... unfinished. If they made an OVA of what happens after, then I would be fully satisfied. It doesn't mean its a bad ending though. Just felt unfinished, Okay?

End of review.

Welcome to Yakitate Japan and the world of Asuma Kasuma, the boy with the solar hands. This anime takes a _very_ humorous approach on a topic that hasn't been touched too often in animes: making bread! You might wonder how making bread can be made into something that would be considered extremely funny, but the combination of word puns, hilarious reactions and bread-making battles works very well. Unfortunately since the anime focuses too much on these things, there isn't much room for anything else even though the shows' length is 69 episodes.

Animation: The animation quality is fairly above average with nice looking backgrounds/environment and OK looking characters. Tsukino is the classic pretty girl, she is kind of cute actually. Yakuno is easily recognized as the evil villain the way her face looks distorted half the time. All in all a great variety of characters that don't suffer from the common problem in cheap animes that everyone looks alike apart from the eye-color and hair-color/do. I noticed however some episodes had particularly good animation, ken had more details in his rugged face, Tsukino's face somehow sparkled a bit more. Having the animation quality vary like that leaves an overall bad impression.

Sound: Overall the music in Yakitate japan isn't something to be overly excited about, the background music seems to be resued alot over the course of the 69 episodes. The OP and EDs are OK for the biggest part even though a few of the ending songs bothered me. Ending no. 2 is a computer animation of ken dancing around to some kind of 70's disco song, not my taste really. Another one was very fast-paced and reminded me of one of the EDs used in Bleach at some point. Maybe the same performers?

Anyways, the voice acting was very good imo, they had a good deal of excellent voice actors. Tsukino had a very fitting cute voice, but not overly cute. St. Pierre's owner had that rough and worn voice that I've heard in several animes. Kasuma's voice actor was very energic, but the biggest applaud goes go kawachi, who had me rolling on the floor a few times with his "what was that?" (cannot spell the japanese).

Story: The story is About Asuma Kasuma who has a dream of making a bread that can compete with rice in both taste and popularity in Japan. He has been experimenting with different kinds of bread since childhood and has created _many_ products all named Japan-xx. Now the time has finally come for Asuma to leave his village and try his best at the newcomer battles held in the main branch of Japans most famous bakery: Pantasia. Will he be one of the few lucky ones to get employed?

Unlike some of the other reviewers here, I think the story has a few issues. Everything is great in the beginning. We learn a bit about Asuma's background, his motivations before his arrival at the pantasia newcomer's battle. Well actually, within the first couple of episodes alot of the important characters get their backgrounds described, including Tsukino, who has a very touching past. I was expecting and hoping for some more drama of this type along the way. Unfortunately the story slowly begins moving down a one-way road, a very funny one I might add, but after a while almost everything that happens is about food battles, word puns and reactions.

However when the drama fades away, the humor will get ever more hilarious and tops somewhere in the Monaco arc. If you finally think you know what kind of humor the show has in store for you, think again.

And now a few words about the food reactions. I thought they were truly funny in the beginning. Scenes like the first landing on the moon which jandeku also mentions and also the "crab" reaction are among these. Later on in the show I don't think they are that funny anymore, since they are "staged" and too long.

The ending is particularly bad from a story-wise point of view. They cut corners whereever they can and there is no real conclusion. Back to square one, if anything.

Character: The overall strongest part of Yakitate Japan. One thing is the character interactions. Asuma and Kawachi are always funny together. Same goes for Kawachi and Ken. Suwabara is also a nice addition to the wacky setup with his ninja-style pride and scary aura.

Also the show takes good care of its side-characters. The good ones (in my opinion anyways) either get a permanent role in the anime after they've appeared, or they show up again later. The most memorable one is KID. This one is a real treat. He looks like Bill Clinton with a crooked eye, and his face is always the same, and whatever angle you see him from he will always be looking directly at you. He appears in all kinds of situations, sometimes guest starring in the food reactions, sometimes he's the friend of Kuroyan, and one time he will show you how to file a lawsuit the american way, it's probably the funniest moment in the entire series.

As I said before, the initially promising drama will quickly fade away and therefore such characters as Tsukino and Yukino will have very stationary roles from there on. For example Yukino seems truly evil in the beginning, but soon her role is more like team rocket from Pokemon. "HA, HA, HA! I'm so evil" and "Oops that plan didn't work either, I'll get them next time" that sort of stuff.

Value/enjoyment: Yakitate Japan is indeed a funny ride all the way through, it's just too bad it turns out to be so one-sided after the promising first episodes. If you expect the show to be pure humor with word puns, wacky characters, food battles and far-fetched reactions, then it's a real treat. IF you expect anything else, you'll be disappointed.

Additional comments: Somehow you can call Yakitate Japan the Initial D of bread making animes since these shows share alot of similarities. Not on the story, not the characters, not on the type of show it is, but on the fact that there is always someone who knows exactly what is going on in the baker's head. Either it's Ken from the sideline or the food-judge who can give in-depth comment on the baker's thoughts, the ingredients used and the way the bread is prepared. And also, like Initial D, there is alot of educational stuff. How to bake bread properly, how does yeast work? All kinds of things you have to consider using different bread-baking techniques is mentioned. Eg. how to fold a croissant properly by not having too many or too few layers. Sometimes there was so much data to process that I had forgotten everything 5 minutes later. I wonder however if everything you learn is 100% true. I doubt any bakers in real life have solar hands or solar gauntlets that can have an impact on how dough behaves. There is even more dubious stuff than that. I guess you could say this has been added for the comedic effect and to intensify the food battles, which is sort of understandable. The problem is just telling these things apart. What is authentic, what is exaggerated and what is completely untrue? I can't always tell and my 12-year old nephew probably can't either.

(This review is based on episodes 1-57. I may change this once I’ve seen the whole series.)

It’s hard for me to write this review, mostly because I have to diss my favorite series. In many ways, Yakitate!! Japan is barely above-average. Pretty-good-but-nothing-special animation, bad music and voice acting, shallow characters, and a barely adequate plot. But that’s not the reason to watch this show. Yakitate!! Japan is probably the single most addictive and fun anime series on the planet.

Animation: Pretty good. The backgrounds are fairly detailed and the bread itself always looks nice. It’s nothing extraordinary, though. The characters are unique and detailed, but they don’t seem to display emotion very well. When they do want to display some sort of emotion, the animators usually resort to some cheap effect… not that much emotion is really necessary, here, though. The reactions, on the other hand, are both hilariously conceived (more on that below) and very enjoyable to watch. Also, this is a very colorful series. Overall, it’s a pleasure to watch.

Sound: Ouch. The music is… horrible. The in-series background music is always too loud, and it all sounds synthesized, and low-quality at that, plus it’s just not very good. The opening and ending themes fare even worse – the second opening had this incredibly fast-paced beat to it that was so annoying I couldn’t even sit through the opening once. Really, there’s no excuse for the music to be this bad. The voices fare a bit better, but not much. As other reviewers have mentioned, the guys all have high voices. It’s not exactly quality voice work at that, it often sounds amateurish. The sound effects… well, I never really notice sound effects as long as they’re there, and they’re here, so, props to them for that.

Story: The plot is adequate and fun to watch, though it’s nothing extraordinary. Basically, the story is there to support a bunch of “bread battles,” in which the characters have to bake bread and a judge chooses the better bread. Part-way through the series, the plot stops taking itself seriously, and… well, I won’t spoil it for you, but suffice it to say, it gets pretty crazy.

Character: There really aren’t characters here, as much as there are a couple archetypes. Two characters have been explored in-depth as of episode 57, and neither of them is the main character, Azuma Kazuma. Azuma himself is an interesting character because he doesn’t fall into the typical shounen-hero paradigm: he’s a genius who never has to work that hard and is never defeated. Unlike most shounen series, where the main character has to work really hard, Azuma seems to breeze by every challenge without a care in the world. Some of the other characters are interesting (Pierrot the clown, despite his many long exposition scenes is perhaps the most so), and all fit in and are fun to watch, but none are deep or memorable.

There’s one character that bears the need for special mention, just because he’s so awesome. There’s this guy in the series, Kid, who is the single greatest person of all- time. Once you see him a couple times, you’ll realize why. However, he’s not a real character, he’s just awesomeness personified, so I won’t really factor him into my score here.

Value: There’s not many anime series I’d re-watch. In face, this is the only series I’ve ever started over from the beginning. It’s that fun. Because there’s just so MUCH stuff going on in this anime, you might have forgotten some of the reactions, puns, etc., and even the ones you remember are just so cool they deserve being seen again.

Enjoyment: This show is… really, it’s the reason I watch anime. Certainly, I love me self a dark, plot-driven, thought-provoking series like S.E. Lain or Monster. I like dramas with believable characters and deep storylines, a la Honey & Clover. I like them both together in an awe-inspiring epic like Fullmetal Alchemist. But I’m willing throw that all away for some uniquely-Japanese craziness.

Though this show is really a comedy, it’s not very funny at face value. The puns (and there are many) are pretty lame (and I don’t think it’s just the language barrier, the show spends like a minute explaining every pun). There are a couple funny situations, but not too many. But the laughs in this come from just how insane it is.

First, there are the reactions – whenever anyone eats one of the breads, they have some kind of reaction. At first, the reactions are mostly just short, thirty-second visions that they have of something that rhymes with the main ingredient in the bread. As the series foes on, people begin to act out what they see in their heads. And then, at around episode 10, all hell breaks loose. The reactions cause actual physical occurrences, and every single one is so great, I’d feel bad spoiling any of them for you. But that’s not all. As the series progresses, the breads gain the power to actually transport people, change time or even change the anime itself.

Speaking of meta-anime, starting around the episodes in the 40s, they begin to make (usually quite explicit) references to other anime series. Be prepared to see Detective Conan, One Piece, Dragonball Z, Galaxy Express 999, Naruto and others appear in the context of bread-making, usually in quite ingenious ways.

Overall, the charm of this series is unbeatable. This really is probably the single most fun anime series ever created. If you like anime at all, or even if you don’t and just randomly ended up reading this review for whatever reason, do yourself a favor and check this out. You won’t be disappointed.

(Author’s note: If you can recommend me an anime series in the review comments I’ll enjoy more than this one, I’ll give it three episodes. If it can hook me in three, and I end up liking it more than YJ, I'll be your eternal lover!)

Yakitate Japan is not your usual kind of animation. This show is about bread making. At first, I was reluctant to download it as it sounded extremely boring. How on earth can they make a comedy out of bread making? After watching it for 3 episodes, I felt in love with this show however, I completely enjoyed this show. It is not only funny and entertaining, there are, to some extend educational value as well (according to one of my friend who is a baker, you can made most of the bread in the show, although some are a bit extreme).

Animation:

The animation is of high quality. All the breads appeared to be realistic and actually look good enough to eat. Every time a new bread is being introduce, it made me hungry. The character design was nice as well, they are not colourful, but most of them seemed realistic enough to be believable (although their actions says otherwise). However, the background was not detailed and the use of colours were often plain, especially when at indoor environment such a the bakery, probably because the studio wanted a realistic look, so they just use grey/white backdrop mixed with a lot of metal appliances colours. Even though the background is quite boring, it helps to make the bread and characters stand out even more. Besides, the characters and breads are so well done and unique that you often will forget about the background anyway, so this is not a serious problem for me.

Sound:

The sounds are excellent here. The original OP did a great job of introducing the show as it is simply and catchy. The OST is not bad either, they work quite well with the show, especially when Kuroyanaki (Don’t know how to spell his name, he is the judge during the new comer exam) doing a reaction, the music make the whole comical situation even funnier because the music there are often too serious, the music seems to be making a mockery out of the whole situation. The use of voice here are good, but I required some adjustment before I can accept them. Most of the male voices were often too high pitch, while the female voices were the other way around, maybe it was intentional, but I am not sure. But once you get to know the characters really well, the voices then seems to be suited for the role they play.

Story:

I don’t watch much animation that deal with cooking, but since cooking animations are rare, and this is the first time that I heard about a bread making animation, I think this must be one of its kind, so there should be a major credit here for originality. Other than being original, this show also did pretty well to incorporate the story line with the theme. So far I watched 34 episodes, but I never found any boring one, all the story line were well planned and give rise to some amazing character developments and scenes. The use of reactions and puns were also quite unique, this show contained so many puns in here that can sometime get quite annoying, but most of the time however, were extremely funny and help add to the reaction moment. The storyline of endless bread battles may seem dry and long, but you don’t feel it when you watch it, most likely due to the large amount of humour used. Also, they have 1 main battle theme and then there are other characters that make different breads, plus most of the bread battles are 1-2 episodes, so this help to add some variety to the show instead of dragging it on. One major flaw in the story line is that Azuma seems to be winning all of the battles (I know he sort of lost 1 later on in the manga version, but the animation version haven’t got to there yet), so it can be a bit dry to watch his development, other than that, I think the story development is an excellent show.

Characters:

The characters are well design, although there are many of them, but they are all likable, even the evil Yukino, who voice over played the evil stepsister extremely well. I found that the supporting characters such as Kawachi and Ken the manager helped the show tremendously. Kawachi is your clown like character, always using a joke or smiley face to divert focus when he made a stuff up. Also, Kawachi is the most interesting to watch because he has so many weak points, yet when he work hard, he can do really well, his character is more interesting than Azuma, who seems to have everything, not that Azuma don’t work hard or not funny, but he just seems too good as a person. Other than Kawachi, all the other characters had a lot of development, you do get to learn some of their past, but when they never reveal too much, so it didn’t get too boring or drag on. Also, there aren’t much lines and development that were wasted, most of them actually lead somewhere, so this make the show seems dynamic and entertaining.

Value & Enjoyment:

I really enjoyed the show, it is definitely worth watching, not just on the good storyline, funny reaction and characters, but also on the delicious breads as well. This series is unique, I was surprised that only 1 English fansub group take on this project. Just 1 little advice, finish watching the animation before read the manga, the manga is a total spoiler for me, especially now during the world tournament stage, this is because the animation followed too closely to the manga. But when the animation is complete, read the manga, it is even funnier as a lot of jokes, puns and omakes were cut out of the animation series.