Yakitate!! Japan ep.13

January 12, 2005 | 11 Comments

Well, well. It looks like Sunrise Animation has changed the ED Theme for Yakitate!! Japan as well. This one looks really cool and appropriate for the series. The new ED theme, To All Tha Dreamers (Quicktime, 8.8MB) is a swinging rap/boogie music accompanied with a pimp-looking 3D animation of Ken "Daddy" Matsushiro. :D Now, why can't Mai Hime get a new OP as well? That series' OP seems misplaced in the context of current storyline. Anyway, back to this series itself, it's Sushi, Melon, and Melon Bread time for this episode. Personally, these 3 are some of my favourite foods so I really like this episode. For those of you who didn't know, Melon bread is a specialty at Asian bakery. It's a sweet bread with a crunchy cookie crumbs on top of it. Some bakeries actually take the name quite literally and place Melon crumbs instead of cookie crumbs on top of the bread. And if you're in Japan, you can get the Yakitate!! Japan brand from Lawson retail chains. :)

Anyway, this episode begins with everyone from the Southern Pantasia store looking depressed when they realised that Azuma sucks at making Melon bread. Thankfully, not long after this, the owner of the Sushi shop that Azuma met on his way to Izu has come to look for him. Apparently he wants to prove to Azuma that he's not a stingy bastard so he comes with a bunch of Sushi materials so he can feed Azuma and his friends for free. In the middle of the Sushi banquet, however, Azuma gets an idea for his Melon Bread and immediately bolts out to look for the ingredients. During the competition, Mizuno tries to intimidate other Southern Pantasia store's employees by showing them that she's going to use the most expensive Melon available to make her Melon bread. Not long after this, everyone in Group A completed his or her Melon bread and Kuroyan immediately fails everyone who failed to make a good one. Strangely, he doesn't say one nasty word to the losers.

Well, the truth is, instead of saying it out loud, this time Kuroyan decides to whisper lots of nasty insults to the losers' ear to drive down that metaphorical knife to the heart of the losers. As usual though, Kuroyan is taken aback when he sees Azuma's Melon Bread aka Japan 58. The bread looks like Sushi with the bottom part being glued together with a Melon Cream to the crunchy top part of the bread. His reaction to the bread seems to be a good indicator of how good the bread turns out to be. So he declares Azuma the winner. Mizuno is pissed off because Kuroyan hasn't even tried her delicious Melon Bread (oops, unintentional pun there). But Kuroyan tells her what's delicious in her Melon Bread is not the bread but the Melon itself. So it's no dice since this is a Bread competition. Unhappy with her failure, Mizuno refuses to call Tsukino 'Sis' despite her promise. The episode then ends with Ken looking worried about Kawachi's upcoming match.

Impression:

I really like this episode a lot. Between the delicious looking foods displayed and Kuroyan's silly Matrix impersonation, there are a lot of things to like in this episode. Having said that, Mizuno is proven to be a real brat and a sore loser to boot when she refuses to keep her promise to call Tsukino 'Sis'. So it's nice to see Kuroyan giving her the trash talking. It's also funny because Kuroyan is actually an employee of Pantasia but he's not afraid to tell his mind to someone who could possibly be the successor to Pantasia's empire. The best thing about the episode, however, is the ending theme. I have it on a loop at the moment and am still amazed at the rather good quality of the 3D animation. After all, this is just an ED theme. Never the less, it's really funny to see the Manager dancing on the disco floor. It's just so cool in that cheesy kind of way. :D

© memento 2003