Yakitate!! Japan ep.16

February 5, 2005 | 5 Comments

The highlight of this episode is probably the part where both Azuma and Koala demonstrate how sometimes bread-making can be a complex and intricate work of art. Animation-wise, it's good to see the anime finding a way to show Azuma's 'magic' in an effective way despite the fact that the scene was already in color to begin with. It's certainly not as surprising as the manga version, but there's not much that the animators can do about it since the difference of the two medium makes it impossible for the two version to be identical. This is interesting because color is actually one of the elements that makes anime stands out better in comparison to manga. But in this case, the easy access to color actually limits the effect that the story tries to demonstrate.

Anyway, the episode begins with Mizuno gloating the fact that her Koala is good at making Yakisoba Pan. Kawachi thinks that it's possible that Azuma's most dangerous enemy is not Suwabara but rather the Koala. Suwabara who overheard this obviouisly is not happy with Kawachi. Ken, however, tells Suwabara that he agrees with Kawachi's assessment, noting that Koala's skill is in the same level as a manager at a famous shop and therefore is not suitable opponent for beginners. Upon hearing this, Ryouroumen-san becomes interested to engage Koala in a fight, especially when Kuroyan is about to award Koala with prize money for making the best Yakisoba Pan. After fighting the guy, Ryouroumen-san confirms that Koala is indeed not a normal person.

Ken suddenly realises that Koala is none other than Mokoyama. He couldn't tell from the bread that Koala made but the fighting spirit is unmistakably that of Mokoyama. Ken believes that Mokoyama was fired by the owner of St.Pierre since the guy is not the sort of person who tolerates mistake. Meanwhile, Ryouroumen-san manages to snatch Koala's mask but is surprised when he finds out another Koala face underneath the mask. When Ken sees the face, he becomes even more convinced that the person is Mokoyama for some reason. Because of this, after Kuroyan announced that the next theme will be animal bread, Ken warns Azuma and Kawachi that Mokoyama is very good when it comes to making animal bread.

Thanks to his knitting ability, Mokoyama can actually uses 20 threads of dough to make make the scales of a Dragon. Strangely, Azuma does not seem to be that worried about Mokoyama ability. Despite not being able to do something similar, he believes that knitting 20 doughs does not have anything to do with winning or losing the round. With that in mind, he once again drags Tsukino to become his shopping helper. Once the two left, Kawachi and Ken ends up talking about Mokoyama and how the manager used to be jealous of the guy. However, after his promotion at St.Pierre, Mokoyama gets too overconfident to point that he leaves bread making to his subordinate and spent his time on useless things such as nail painting.

Back then when Ken challanged Mokoyama to a competition with Azuma, he apparently did it partly with the intention to return Mokoyama to be a good baker that he used to be. Unfortunately that didn't work too well. Now that Mokoyama has lost everything, it means he may go all out on Azuma on this particular competition. If that is the case, Ken believes that Azuma has no chance of winning this round. Meanwhile, Tsukino is seen suffering in pain because Azuma has personally made her a personal slave to carry his groceries. Tsukino complains about the situation as well as wondering why so far Azuma has bought only green things. Because of this, Azuma lets Tsukino knows that he plans to bake his bread and turn it into green color.

On the day of competition, Azuma runs late as usual so Mizuno uses the opportunity to rub it to Kawachi that if he loses, he can work as a cashier at her store. Kawachi is pissed off about it and tells the brat off. When Azuma finally arrives at the competition, Kuroyan tells them that they're going to have an additional judge to judge the competition. After Kuroyan says this, all of a sudden a bulldozer's arm appears and destroys the wall within the competition. On top of the arm sits an overweight man Kuroyan refers to as Deebu Hashiguchi. Along for the ride is Heidi, a girl dressed up in French maid outfit. Apparently Deebu used to be a famous gourmet mangaka but then he gorged himself on the finest foods and became fat.

Anyway, after this out of the ordinary introduction, the competition between Azuma and Koala begins. Koala wastes no time in showing off his ability at dough-knitting while Azuma is seen busy with a bunch of greeneries in his corner. Upon seing this, Kawachi asks Tsukino about Azuma's plan and therefore is informed about the 'baking it green' plan of Azuma. Kawachi is dumbfounded by this because both he and Tsukino knows that it's impossible to bake a bread and have the result in color other than brown. However, when Tsukino confirms Ken's guess that Azuma bought a starch syrup, Ken tells the two that Azuma will create magic. Once the baking is completed, Koala produces a Dragon pastry that looks wonderful. Azuma's bread, on the other hand, is in the form of a green turtle, surprising everyone in the room.

Impression:

LOL. The Deebu Hashiguchi joke never fails to amaze me. Although I really hope that is not the a reflection of the actual Yakitate!! author, Hashiguchi Takashi. I do wonder sometimes if food manga authors actually have a cooking/baking knowledge themselves. That seems to be necessary in my opinion or else they'll be forever relying on the expert of actual chef/bakers. Not exactly cost-effective in my opinion. Anyway, this episode also presents a sub-plot that I think is a bit ridiculous and unusually weird even by this series' standard. Despite some over the top reactions and ideas, the series normally is grounded on reality. So when Koala is shown to have another Koala face underneath the mask, I find this to be rather hard to swallow, figuratively speaking. This development has suddenly put the series into the realm of implausibility and I find this to be a little bit disappointing.

© memento 2003