QUOTE
The story focuses on Kazuma Azuma, a boy on his quest to create Ja-pan, a national bread for Japan itself. He initially heads to Tokyo to expand his bread-making horizons at the bread-making chain Pantasia; the story continues with Azuma's exploits with his other coworkers.
The title of this series itself is a play on words; Yakitate translates to "freshly baked", but Japan has a double meaning. Besides referring to the country of Japan, "pan" is the Japanese word for "bread" (stemming from Portuguese "pćo" [2]). Ja-pan is a pun for this series. This mimics the style of the names of other varieties of bread in Japanese, such as "furansupan" (French Bread), "doitsupan" (German rye-based bread), "itariapan" (Italian bread), etc.
Besides the desire to create his Ja-pan, Azuma also possesses the legendary Solar Hands.(Known as Hands of the Sun in Viz's translation) These hands are warmer than normal human hand temperature, and allow the dough to ferment faster. This gives him some advantage at the beginning of the series, but his innovation and many Ja-pans are his greater talents.
Although the story has baking as its main theme, the parts that generate the most interest are the outrageous puns in the story. Especially notable are the "reaction" based puns made by the judges, who go to great lengths to prove a single point about the bread that they had tasted. The series in general also pokes fun at the shōnen genre's tendency to be melodramatic over mundane tasks.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakitate!!_Japan
The title of this series itself is a play on words; Yakitate translates to "freshly baked", but Japan has a double meaning. Besides referring to the country of Japan, "pan" is the Japanese word for "bread" (stemming from Portuguese "pćo" [2]). Ja-pan is a pun for this series. This mimics the style of the names of other varieties of bread in Japanese, such as "furansupan" (French Bread), "doitsupan" (German rye-based bread), "itariapan" (Italian bread), etc.
Besides the desire to create his Ja-pan, Azuma also possesses the legendary Solar Hands.(Known as Hands of the Sun in Viz's translation) These hands are warmer than normal human hand temperature, and allow the dough to ferment faster. This gives him some advantage at the beginning of the series, but his innovation and many Ja-pans are his greater talents.
Although the story has baking as its main theme, the parts that generate the most interest are the outrageous puns in the story. Especially notable are the "reaction" based puns made by the judges, who go to great lengths to prove a single point about the bread that they had tasted. The series in general also pokes fun at the shōnen genre's tendency to be melodramatic over mundane tasks.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakitate!!_Japan
At first I was a bit skeptical when I first saw this manga on the net a few years ago, I was like WTF A BREAD MANGA?!, but I was bored one day and decided to check it out. Now it has turned into my favorite anime *O* It made me want to be baker. But then again I wanted to be an alchemist after I watched FMA, and a tennis player when I watched PoT...
Anyways, discuss (:
My favorite character is Azuma Kazuma. Haha, I love his voice actor and his character in general.
Sorry if there is a thread about this already, but I couldn't find one.
..despite the rushed ending, it's still goood overall..^^
