Anime Yakitate!! Japan

[Syk3]

My God, no thread about this anime yet. If you've seen it, then shame on you. :p

Let's see, how do I put this without making the anime sound ridiculous? Well, Yakitate is about.. baking bread. Yeah. Wonderful, delicious, beautiful bread. And the great thing about this anime is that while the premise may sound lame, it's very conscious of this fact and often presents itself as seriously as any other anime, with the result of being absolutely [i]halarious[/i]. The introduction to the episodes pretty much sums it up:

"There's English bread, German bread, and French bread, but Japan's bread, [i]Japan[/i], does not exist. In that case, there's no choice but to create it. This story is a serious, biographical ballad of a boy who possesses Solar Hands, Azuma Kazuma, who will create a Japanese bread made by and for the Japanese people, which can be presented to the world proudly."

The word [i]Japan[/i] is actually a pun (they're very fond of puns on the show) - [i]pan[/i] is bread in Japanese, so [i]Japan[/i] can be directly translated into Japanese bread. :p As you may guess, the show is somewhat encultured, but the sub that I watch is great at providing little references at the top of the screen to explain whether the dialogue is referring to history, language puns, pop culture, etc. Also, the Solar Hands that they mention in the intro is this cool feature alluded to a lot, where a person's hands are naturally very warm and therefore good for making bread ferment quickly. ;)

If anyone is interested in watching it, I think it's still going on, and it's up to 66 episodes so far (I'm up to 32, though I watch an episode or so every day). Pretty impressive for an anime about baking bread, huh? XD

[Panda]

I love Azuma Kazuma and his stylish pink headband!

When my my hubby -- and his Solar Hands-- and I started watching this series he started baking a lot of bread. We had melon bread several times since starting that series. Carb overload!!

When I first saw this series it was on a video tape one of my friends in Japan sent to me and I thought: "Anime about baking bread....okay." But it's a really funny series. Or should I say punny. There are tons of puns in that show. It really keeps you on your toes to catch all the different puns that are made concerning bread. Speaking of puns, as Syk3 mentioned "pan" is bread. Well if you say "pan da", it means: "It's bread". This is one of those puns you will see in several animes. (.Hack//Legend of the Twillight Bracelet and Ranma 1/2 are a couple I can think of off hand.) Yeah, go figure, I would get a kick out of a bread pun concerning pandas. :p

Currently I am up to the Monocco story arc. I have kinda slacked off on watching the series but should get back to it as soon as I get some spare time to watch anime. Yakitate!! Japan is a great series, I absolutely love it.

[DBZgirl88]

[COLOR=#004a6f]I love Yakitate!! Japan. I recently discovered this anime. It's a great series, and it's quite a shame that there is no hub for it on theotaku.com.

In anime, and Yakitate!! Japan is no exception, even the most normal, boring everyday things can be made exciting, including bread.

The show is absolutely hilarious, especially Kawachi Kyousuke, with his trademark "nan yate?!!!" ("what was that?" or "what did you say?").

Anyway, as Panda said, the anime makes use of a lot of puns, as well as parodies of other animes. There's a Naruto and Dragonball Z puns to name a few, and also a pun of Lord of the Rings.

Anyway, I'm wondering if anyone else has seen this anime and what they think of it.[/COLOR]

[aoi_hikari]

I watched a fansub of this some time ago and I really liked it, but I forgot the title!! ;_; All I could remember about it was that it was about making bread... One day I saw a blog post with "Yakitate!! Japan" in the title, and I was like, "Hmmm...may as well check it out..." and I saw some screenshots and I was like, "Omg, it's that anime that I wanted to watch that I forgot the name of!! O.O" So yeah. Now I'm watching. I'm only on episode 8 though...

[miss april]

Speaking of the bread competition, I love this show because you may impersonate some movies & shows like Detective Conan, Lord of The Rings, etc.

For these characters, I love Azuna Kasuma, a jolly person.

Where can you see a Samurai Baker who'd scared of heights, a poor baker who always had problems on creating a bread, and a baker who wears the pink headband?

And special mention, the clown who had a zipper in his costume!

Hahaha...

[Meggido]

I have to say that the first dew arcs of the anime were great for me. By the time we got to the world championship (and I only watched to the end of that arc) It was getting to be very repetitive. I do have to say that the one thing I kept watching for were the reactions. They were absolutely hilarious.

[2010DigitalBoy]

[COLOR=DarkOrange]Ever since I saw the clip in AMV Hell I've been interested, since I happen to be a pretty big bread fanatic. On the other hand, though, this is more of the thing I'm happy enough knowing exists without necessarily have to necessarily see it ^^;; since it appears to be a massive series I'll leave it be. I'm sure if it ever sees U.S. release my bro will be on it though.[/COLOR]