Anime Pilgrimage RTT

Yakitate!! Japan – episode 57

April 11, 2006 on 7:56 pm | In Yakitate!! Japan | Comments Off

“Ooh, mango!! CMAP’s big counterattack!”

An episode almost manages to go by without beating up on Kawachi. Not quite, though. One of the better reactions of recent times and a general air of team work help this episode achieve a modicum of success.

The episode begins with Tsubodzuka giving acupuncture to the Pantasia team, which leads Tsukino to ask “Why are you all naked in my office?” Tsubodzuka warns them that the CMAP members actually hate each other and are not a team at all.
Kirisaki tells the members of the CMAP team to split the bread making tasks three ways – and in this fashion, they can go to Saito and win the mango battle!

The greatest strength of this episode is that, until the manager and Tsukino arrive, Kawachi acts as a part of the team for once and nobody picks on him. The standard device of having Kawachi in the audience to comment on both sides proves his downfall this time, as he is not on hand to advise Azuma about the dangers of fruit juice combined with bread.
This is the episode’s biggest hole, as the Pantasia team produced a failed test bread but did not bother making a prototype for the bread that they are going to offer unto Kuroyanagi.
Call me crazy, but it makes no sense.

CMAP is proving itself to be one of those groups made up of types – camp, silent, nerd, hothead – and they’re all annoying. The idea is that they’re a team in name only, and as such are totally unlikeable. Perhaps the power of Azuma’s bread can purify them; I do not know. All I know is that it’s likely to be a geological age before I find out.

What we’re left with is an almost quite good episode, with a mango enema and a flame arm on offer. Not bad Yakitate!! Japan at all.