Anime Pilgrimage RTT

Yakitate!! Japan – episode 54

February 13, 2006 on 9:33 pm | In Yakitate!! Japan | 1 Comment

“The bread battle in special localities! In the end, he’s a pop idol!”

The unwelcome return of put-upon Kawachi mingles with overwrought music and bad designs to make an okay episode of Yakitate!! Japan.

Kuroyanagi’s challenge leads the “Yakitate!! 9!” competitors to Ooma. There they have to make a bread using a regional specialty. Ooma’s traditional specialty is the “super tuna”, but Yukino quickly seizes all of the province’s stock.
Azuma, being the logical thinker that he is, proposes that the team take on another ingredient. Kanmuri meanwhile warns his team mates that their opponent Tsubodzuka may be a pop idol, but his idol group goes by the name of “Cooking Meal Assemble People” and he is therefore to be feared.

Too much of this episode falls on the old standby of making fun of Kawachi for cheap jokes. The insinuation that Kawachi makes bad bread, or used to, is fairly offensive as he has always been a more than competent baker. Moreso than this, the bread in question is French bread, which always used to be Kawachi’s specialty. This is a blatant disregard for continuity and character, the sort that I grew very tired of during the Monaco Cup.

Other than this, I think that “Yakitate!! 9!” should be played without so much damned sabotage. This show is much more fun when the competitions are honest and fair; the shadowy cruel and broken version isn’t much fun at all. To add insult to that injury, production values were really down this week.