Anime Pilgrimage RTT

Yakitate!! Japan – episode 56

“Kuroyanagi in danger!! The lost reactions!”

There’s not much point in me saying anything beyond the very basic, as my misgivings are the same in every episode.

The new Yakitate!! 9 match is to be held in Ookuchi, and the specialty is Chinese dumplings. The Pantasia team are challenged by Ryuu-san, the chef who trained Kawachi and Azuma in the arts of yakisoba and assassination back in episode 15.
Unfortunately, Kuroyanagi gets electrocuted and loses his sense of taste. Can Azuma create a dumpling so delicious that it restores balance to the delicate instrument that is Kuroyanagi’s tongue?!

This episode was okay, but the script writer’s constant insistence that Kawachi is now a useless character should simply be beaten into submission and he should become a valued member of the team; really, I’m sick of this. In what parallel universe is this funny? The universe of the sadists, that’s where.

Some anime is definitely better watched in big chunks; while I was deeply annoyed by the Kawachi bashing in the Monaco Cup, the amount of episodes I could power through managed to display some of the sourness with story. Not so here: at one episode every whenever, I’m much more attuned to the inadequacies of Yakitate!! Japan‘s character treatment. This makes me sad.