A shounen action series …
… about baking bread?
Azuma Kazuma, the protagonist of Yakitate!! Japan, is a sixteen-year-old with an immense talent for baking. He’s bumptious, naive and not terribly bright, but he is extremely dedicated to his craft. He has a special gift, “solar hands” that make dough rise unusually fast, and he has a quest, creating the bread that will allow Japan to take its place among the great bread-making countries of the world. The first episode relates Azuma’s introduction to baking; the second concerns his come-from-behind victory in his first competition at the major dojo bakery he hopes to join.
The premise sounds ridiculous, but it works. Kazuma is a typical shounen hero, but not to an obnoxious degree, and the other characters introduced so far have possibilties. The show is energetic and done with a light touch. Whether there is 69 episodes’ worth of story there is another matter, though, and I’m not sure that I want to invest that much time in it.
If what I’ve seen is representative, this is a good show for all ages.
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Comment by
GreyDuck
September 13, 2008 @ 6:55 am
I lost interest after a while, but my kids ate it up. If you’ll pardon the expression.