Yakitate!! Japan

Yakitate Japan is manga about making bread. For me, this was my first experience with cooking related manga right after Cooking Master Boy. What is different is that Yakitate Japan is solely about making bread rather than cooking in general. It does expand a little to cover other things that are related to bread making, but bread is the focus. The story is about a young boy named Azuma Kazuma who gets into making bread because of the nearby bakery. He really enjoys it and attempts to make bread on his own. His first goal is to get his grandpa to enjoy his bread. Heeventually expands his goal to making the first true bread that can be associated with Japan. To do this, he must obtain work at Pantasia by passing their exam. From there, Azuma can start building the one true Japanese bread. It starts off as a local competition, but it eventually turns into a global competition and the creation of a bread focused TV show. Towards the end it also decreases the emphasis on bread and begins to focus on what can go into bread. However, the story ends a bit abruptly. The artwork for the series is surprisingly good. The character art improves over the course of the series, but it is by no means bad in the beginning. Lots of diverse environments and characters are featured in the series and it really does showcase the author's talents. The backgrounds are detailed and included in many frames unlike some people who try to get away with drawing as little of the environment as possible. This carries over to the extras that the author does including making special pages for some of the real bread recipes that are included in the volume release. The main problems that I have with this series is the characters. While Azuma is someone who is heavily focused on his dream of creating a Japanese bread, at no point does it ever feel like he is moving closer. He creates a lot of new breads using different methods, but we almost never see his inspiration or thought process. His relationship with Tsukino does not make significant progress during the course of the series. His co-workers are eventually downgraded to commentators when they can no longer keep up with the development of new bread. If you enjoy cooking anime or manga, Yakitate Japan is a good series. There are a good number of jokes and a huge cast of characters that react to the food as they eat it. It has all the standard surprising cooking technique twists and strange ingredients placed into food. The main character is dedicated to his craft and gifted at it. There are a few surprising twists though the main character almost always wins. Overall, Yakitate Japan is one of the better manga that has been made about cooking. The problem is that the characters never really develop and if they do, it is quickly ignored because the supporting cast simply cannot keep up with Azuma. If you are in it for the strange and wild foods along with over the top reactions to them, then Yakitate Japan might be what you are looking for.

I'm not one to often write a review, so don't take this commentary too seriously. (I've read everything but for the sake of my mental sanity, for the moment, I'm not taking into account the 70 last chapters that... well you'll see) I understand why some people wouldn't appreciate this manga and the old fashioned humor but as a whole I think it manages to et over the lack of solid story or its weak set of orginal characters. The characters are clearly copy pastes of a lot of similar mangas but honestly they still get their own little characteristic trait permitting them to have their own"mini- development arc" (except Kinoshita-boy, tho he is the real MVP). As for the story, (tho I'm really biased as it was one of the first mangas I read when I was 7 or 8) it's just a blast to see so much goofiness, and I feel like we don't need to care if everything transitions well or if things actually make sense one by one. Because I'm just focused on the page I'm reading, and I'm not gonna lie, I was actually super involved in the dramatics moments even when it just mix into the comedy, the characters are so extremely serious about it, I just get into the story a little too much. The art is really correct and pretty much similar to most of this type of manga of the time, but the breads drawings are super cool and made me actually hungry. So as I said it's a 100Pourcents sure that I have no real objective vision but as I re-read it 10 years later, I still think it's as much fun as I remembered from beginning to... maybe not the end, and a pretty wild ride into another world of "gourmet reactions" type manga. (I actually prefer the type of "reactions" we get in Yakitate ja-pan than what is in food War which get a little old as it doesn't differ a lot, when here... Everytime it just gets better - until chapter ) (WARNING FROM THERE IT'S JUST A TOTAL MESSY RANT TO HELP ME COPE WITH THE ENDING) .... And I would have loved to stop here but... What the heck? I discovered I never read the last volume of the manga when I was a kid and... I honestly never should have. The author was obviously on a cruel rush to finish in a way or another may it be satisfactory or not. I mentioned how I loved the reactions, their originality and "unoriginality" at the same time. Same for every characters that managed to have a specific role throughout the story. But, man, right after that katsuo duel.... Everything went downfall, every character just became unfunny running gag, they lost every flavors that made them appealing and were just ghost of the past struggling to sruvive in the publishing world through incoherent and an even more poorly storyline than ever before. It's not hard to understand what went though the author mind who, more than ever, doesn't hesitate to break the 4rth wall and comment on the bad absurdity he pushed onto his own work. Thing is, it's not like the humor is drastically different, he didn't either brought out a new plotline with brand new characters out of nowhere. No, everything is built over what was alaready presented and developed but... I think the author just stopped caring, and tried to satire his own work. The story was never a seriously thought out, solid one but everything that made it... so refreshing didn't even just disappeared it went straight to the trash. I'm just so sad to me, to discover how one of my now ex-favorite manga ended and collapsed on itself. I just needed to say that, no need to go into the analysis od the"arcs" or "characters in themselves, just read it and it'll speak for itself; nothing to debate honestly. Sorry for the super long review, I have a really complicated relationship with this work.... (and like I said, no need at all to take evrything I said seriously))

i watched the anime many years ago, decided to read the manga now as i was bored and curious to know if there are a lot of changes made in the anime as compared to the original storyline. i think the manga started out okay, however towards the last few volumes of the series, the storyline was getting more and more ridiculous. i was losing interest already but wanted to complete the series so i forced myself to finish it. i think the author just went a little too crazy with the storyline development in the last few volumes that it kinda missed the mark forme.