Yakitate!! Japan

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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. He ... eventually 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.

It's a great manga at least until the end of world competition in monaco. what next? regression is not an option, so he ventured outside of the premise. It's no longer about bread, but about all food and the heroes will travel to entire part of japan. while the idea is good and refreshing, it's proved to be too overwhelming for the manga. He constantly has keep looking for a new theme and new setting. So he endep using a template and rushed the story.
The opponents are far more interesting and colourful than before, but they always ... vanish into thin air, they don't reappear, save have an impact onthe story.
Eventhough the opponents are the best in the world in their field, Azuma magically always find a recipe to defeat them,. The manga start to make no sense at all, The author seems to make fun no disrespect culinary experts.
The gag is repetitive and boring, our heroes always stay at a sstrange inn that seems to be a pun of the place's specialty.

The manga was great at the beginning. The ideas for different kinds of bread were fresh and interesting. The characters seemed alright. The reactions to the bread were also unique to this manga and provided some comic relief.

After a while, you will notice that the characters have absolutely no development. Most of the characters are in fact reduced to observers, and the MC is an undefeated champion with absolutely no personality.

The bread ideas became more and more ridiculous and unreal, to the point of being completely disjointed from reality. And as the funny reactions became more and more ridiculous, they started to seem forced ... and unnecessary.

Near the final chapters, it's apparent that the manga was axed and had to be brought to a sudden and unsatisfactory end.

The manga would have greatly benefited from proper planning: it should have been much shorter, the side characters should have been much less passive, and the reactions should have not become the center point of the manga.