Yakitate!! Japan with a Side of Bread

My best friend fell in love with this series a long time ago, but I couldn't seem to get into it. I don't know if I was too distracted at the time, or if I just didn't have broad enough interests (I do tend to like shojo best). Finally though, I am watching and enjoying Yakitate!! Japan.


Yakitate!! is the story of a young boy named Azuma Kazuma. At age six his sister dragged him (literally) to a bakery, and the baker taught him to make bread. There are French, German, and English breads, but no Japanese bread, which inspires the baker to try to create one. His goal is make a bread worthy of carrying the country's name; that ultimately surpasses rice. Azuma continues this quest, making bread after bread, and naming them Ja-Pan, which is a pun ('pan' in Japanese means bread).


In the first episode we catch up with Azuma as he is leaving for Tokyo to compete for a position at an elite bakery called Pantasia. Arguably what makes this series most enjoyable isn't its storyline, but the absurd reaction scenes we see whenever another character tastes Azuma's bread. Depending on the variety and flavor, the taster lapses into a comatose hallucination of different worlds, time periods, outer space, etc. These scenes seem to get more bizarre and hysterical as the episodes progress.

One thing I have found about watching Yakitate!! Japan is as my title implies: It makes you crave bread. So bake up some Ja-Pan and watch an episode or two.

~Itadakimasu!