This post is quite lengthy - if you're going to read this, please be patient ^^; I hope everyone who watched Yakitate! Japan will read this, so they can share their thoughts on it as well.
It is strongly disadvised for those who haven't finished the anime to continue reading from here on as my post contains many OMG SPOILERS. Proceed at your own risk :D
So, I just finished watching all the episodes at once (with lots of intervals, of course), and I must say that I am not really satisfied with the ending. It was a beautiful show indeed, and I had anticipated it with lots of eagerness when I read in the manga that an anime was in the making. Back then I only had read it until the Monaco Cup so I didn't know what would be coming next. As I am abiding to rule 7, not to watch anime until the series is completed, I waited until an ending was in sight to watch it.
Yakitate! Japan somehow reminds me of a badly prepared essay.
During the essay, you write down the main subject and at first it's splendid. But at a certain point, new ideas
flow into your mind and you suddenly think of adding them, as it would positively upgrade your essay. You will take time
doing that; you will waste your time on explaining irrelevant things and foolishly think that you'll still make it
in time.
At first it works out, but after some time you'll notice that you don't have much time left BUT you can't go back and erase everything, it's already too late. So with the time pressure, all you think about is to finish your essay, without caring about the quality. In the end you managed to finish to scribble it down, and you're glad and confident you'll pass.
Of course, the professor/judge will appreciate the detailed way you described things in between the brackets, but he'll definitely let you fail, why? Because your ending literally sucked. It's obvious, no?
It's basically the same with Yakitate! Japan. Everything was fine until the Monaco Cup. But Yakitate 9 was something that just couldn't have happened in so few episodes, the concept was too far fetched and you could tell that the last episodes were amazingly rushed. Especially the last episode, which I just finished watching 5 minutes ago, ended way too fast. Nothing against open endings, I mean, if the show actually had ended at the Monaco Cup, everything would have been okay. After that it was just the usual Dragon Ball effect: stronger opponents keep popping up, even more amazing breads are made, and then the ultimate bread appears! And the next episode, there's an even more ultimate bread than that! And so on.
Anyway, I'd like to draw the attention to the unusual number of episodes we're having with Yakipan: 69. (no. it's definitely NOT what you think, baka -_- ) Usually, anime series are laid out such that they can fill a season or two. If aired every week, they'll be either 12/13 (three months), 26 (half a year), 52 (a whole year), and so on. Of course there are exceptions, but this unwritten rule is what most anime producers stick to. As Yakipan clearly doesn't follow that rule (even with the double episodes), the number of episodes could have been a variable then. With that in mind, there wasn't really a need to set such a short deadline (unless the cost of the production or the drop of interest by the masses triggered this decision).
Hence, from the start of Yakitate! 9 on, they accelerated the pace. One match per episode already is quite straining, but they really had to make things even more difficult with their long recaps at the start of the episodes - some were 3 minutes long! I mean, half a minute is okay, considering that the episodes aired only every week (while I watched everything at once), but 3 minutes were way too much! They summarize the whole episode - why? If you missed the previous ep, then it's your own fault; record it or buy the DVDs later on! Many anime don't even have that, so it's for all intents and purposes an useless feature which wastes precious time. Take the recap time from all the episodes; I haven't checked them all, but if it hadn't been for those, 2 whole episodes and even more could have been gained to properly conclude the anime.
Episode 67: "We're just shortening things. Nobody wants to see the travel scenes anyway." Of course, if you need to have lots of plot to finish the tournament at 69, you need all the time you can get (though, let's think of the recaps...) No problem. Suddenly, What the!?!?
Episode 68: A whole episode dedicated to Kuroyanagi's reaction! It's nice to see a parody of LOTR and it's definitely worth a laugh, but it's BORING after a few minutes. It was so freaking annoying to see how they wasted their precious animation time for such a worthless thing. My hopes of having a long and interesting final shrunk dramatically.
Episode 69: No introduction. We're immediately in the finals, place and ingredients? Oh, just side notes from Tsukino. Meister Kirisaki? Oh, yea, he's awesome. Erm... Azuma? Already kneading, no, baking the bread? Holy, that was fast! How did you do that? No time to explain! In less than 5 minutes the bread was done and there we go, reaction. That's what 69 episodes of Yakipan boil down to: Japan completed in 5 minutes and noone knows how. The bread's there, it's as easy as that! Kuroyanagi's and Pierrot's explanations were too short - argh! The same concept gets boring as well, especially when always concentrating on the reactions, that's why they should have stopped at the Monaco Cup. Even the most elusive play of words gets boring after a while.
In the end, to put it very bluntly, the ending just sucked. An anime of such a greatness shouldn't have deserved to be finished like that and I'm honestly very disappointed how the show got ruined like that. It had potential to become one of the best anime, but it's now second-class. Not trash, but not high-class. Like the essay that fails. And there's nothing that can be done anymore, a second season would make things even worse. Not even Azuma can fix this, unfortunately.
I'd still recommend the show to other people though ;) After all, you won't see many anime about bread-making, so... :P
(I'd so like to see an OVA with only Tsukino, Mizuno, Sophie and Monica in swimsuits though... XD)
~neko
