[[quoteright:202:http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/yakijatop.jpg]]
%%[[caption-width-right:202:some caption text]]

In the world of ''Yakitate!! Japan'', bread is SeriousBusiness. And no one takes it more seriously than Kazuma Azuma, a teenaged baker whose dream it is to create a national bread for his native country of Japan. It's an uphill battle however, as Japan is a land where rice has always ruled and where bread has never been held in very high regard. But all that is about to change thanks to the efforts of our gastronomically savantish hero, who, with his "solar hands" and 10 years of self-study, has become a master of his craft.

The story begins with Kazuma heading to [[TokyoIsTheCenterOfTheUniverse The Big City]] to apply for a position at ''Pantasia'', one of Japan's biggest bakery franchises. Unfortunately, once he gets there he finds himself having to compete for the job with about 30 other applicants, most of whom have had some sort of formal training and education. Will a young, naive boy with pluck and determination be able to measure up in a CookingDuel against Japan's finest up-and-coming breadmakers?

...Well ''duh''. This is a {{shonen}} series, after all...

During the course of the show, Kazuma gets to strut his stuff in several baking {{tournament arc}}s, as well as meet a cast of wacky characters, including:
*Kyousuke Kawachi - {{The idiot from Osaka}}. Kazuma's co-worker and one of his more lighter-hearted [[TheRival rivals]].
*Kai Suwabara - A grim-faced master swordsman who took up breadmaking for philosophical reasons. Rival to both Kazuma and Kyosuke and the series' {{AntiHero}}.
*Shigeru Kanmuri - Harvard-trained TeenGenius who looks to the cold hand of Science to create the world's next Big Bread Breakthrough.
*Tsukino Azusagawa - TheChick. Outcast granddaughter of the Pantasia chain owner. Is vying to become his heir along with her stepsisters, the annoying Mizuno and the psychotic {{devil in plain sight}}, Yukino.
*Kageto Kinoshita - (aka the "Mushroom-head" guy). Another of Kazuma's co-workers who usually gets stuck doing all of the work while everyone is off competing in tournaments. The series' {{butt monkey}}.
*Ken Matsushiro - {{The Obi Wan}}. Kazuma's boss and mentor. Wears a {{funny Afro}} and has a thing for horses. (No, not ''that'' sort of a thing...) Is a [[LargeHam MASSIVE Ham]].
*Ryo Kuroyanagi - Hard-assed tournament judge with a talent for making overblown and very elaborate [[PungeonMaster pun-based reactions]] to anything he tastes. A {{running gag}} has Kazuma frequently calling him an "old man" even though he's only 22.
*Spencer Henry Hokō - An Italian-American dude all the way from California and worked at the Nagoya branch of Pantasia. [[ButNotTooForeign Thinks he is a true-blue Nagoya guy.]] He shows up during the first TournamentArc and loses to Kazuma Azuma. He returns in the second TournamentArc as a member of Team America.
*Yuuichi Kirisaki- owner and ManipulativeBastard of St. Pierre's, rival of Pantasia. He looks like Gendō Ikari from NeonGenesisEvangelion and is [[HeyItsThatVoice voiced by the guy]] who did the voice of Gendō too. He tries sabotaging Team Japan during the [[TournamentArc Monaco Cup]] and hires the members of Team America to defeat them. He starts Yakitate 25!(9 in anime) as an attempt to humiliate Kazuma. [[spoiler: He was the guy that gave Kazuma the inspiration to start Ja-pan, the national bread of Japan.]]

''{{Yakitate Japan}}'' is notable for being a [[TheParody parody]] of the shonen fighting anime genre, skewering many of the traditional ''shonen'' character archetypes, and the [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotAwesome overblown way]] in which even the most mundane turns of the plot are depicted. It's a fun--and at times, educational--action series. Watch it, and you'll never again think bread is ''boring''.

This series has [[WMG/YakitateJapan Wild Mass Guessing]].

----
This show provides examples of:
*AffablyEvil: Yuichi Kirisaki, who needs to keep up a polite profile in public. Evil, but very smart.
*{{Anime Accent Absence}}: Heck, Spencer lives in Nagoya so long, he ends up talking in Nagoya-ben.
*{{Art Shift}}: The {{Flashback}} sequence where Kuroyanagi recalls being an exchange student in America. He's drawn in an anime style, yet his American classmates are all drawn in a more realistic "Western" style. The recurring character named "Kid" is also drawn in this style whenever he appears.
*{{Battle Aura}} (Although in this series, it ''should'' be called, "Baking Aura")
*{{Bishonen}} (Tsubozuka and Kanmuri. Kanmuri was featured in an omake where it was revealed that you can't tell him from Tsukino if you zoom in enough.)
*{{Biting the Handkerchief}}
*{{Blank White Eyes}} (One of Kazuma's more "dramatic" breads can bring about this effect, with an accompanying {{Near Death Experience}}.)
**And Shadow White.
* {{Boke and Tsukkomi Routine}} (Kawachi and Azuma when they do the "What the hell?" routine ''a la'' [[AzumangaDaioh Tomo]])
*{{But Not Too Foreign}} (Meister Silvan and Sophie Balzac Kirisaki)
**S.H. Hokou is an example of an American based in Japan but not too American.
*{{Butt Monkey}}: Kageto Kinoshita. The sad thing is that, with his talents and abilities, he could easily become cool and popular--if it wasn't for his generic looks.
** Kawachi becomes this later on. His entire role in the manga essentially becomes to be less cool, less respected, and less fantastic than Azuma, Kai, and the others. Even his family starts insulting and looking down on him... that's just cruel.
*{{Calling Your Attacks}} : Calling out the name of one's bread while conjuring up dramatic backgrounds is a favorite tactic amongst tournament competitors.
*{{Catch Phrase}}: Kawachi's "What the heck?!"
*ChekhovsGun (Pierrot Bolnez's ring)
*CombatCommentator: Many characters in Yakitate! Japan, usually the Manager Ken Matsushiro and Ryo Kuroyanagi. Their explanations are usually triggered by Kawachi, {{the idiot from Osaka}}, saying that he doesn't understand what's going on.
* CompleteMonster - While Yukino's done any number of truly monstrous things ([[spoiler: up to and including murder]]), the one that probably has the most impact for the reader, and certainly the characters, is when she [[spoiler: steals Tsukino's mother's ashes and flings them around at a withered dead tree, cackling with glee and shouting insults while a very young Tsukino sobs and begs her to stop]]. The series picks few bones about the fact that she's a literal psychopath who only finds joy in the suffering of others.
* ContemptibleCover - many, ''many'' manga covers.
*{{Cooking Duel}}
*CrossdressingVoices (Yumiko Kobayashi voicing Kazuma Azuma and Marina Inoue voicing Shigeru Kanmuri)
*{{Cross Popping Veins}}
*{{Defeat Means Friendship}}
*{{Devil In Plain Sight}} (Yukino)
*{{Doppelganger Spin}}: a variation, in that Kageto Kinoshita doesn't use it to attack, but rather to make "clones" of himself so he can get his and everybody else's work done. Tournament Judge Pierrot Bolnez also has this talent. Both characters learned this technique while working in the circus, surprisingly.
*{{Drill Sergeant Nasty}}: Examiner Kuroyanagi
*EnemyMime (Shadow White, even though he doesn't dress the part, can imitate people just as well as Marcel Marceau.)
*EnsembleDarkhorse ("Kid".)
*EurekaMoment: Has inspired Kazuma more than a few times.
*EvenTheGirlsWantHer: In an Omake, Tsukino Azusagawa is shown to be receiving a lot of love letters in her shoe box. She's in an all-girls school.
*EvilIsSexy: As the manga goes on, Yukino wears less and less the more you learn of her evil. Culminating in chapters where she wears ''nothing at all.''
**One example: She is somehow able to wear [[http://www.onemanga.com/Yakitate_Japan/44/17/ this getup]] to a public playground and not get arrested.
*ExplodingCalendar: [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] when the cast notes their month-long TrainingMontage only took one page.
* {{Flanderization}}: Kawachi, quickly morphing from JerkWithAHeartOfGold to TheIdiotFromOsaka to the point that it seems like they're two completely different characters.
*FlashBack (Nearly every single time someone tastes bread)
** ESPECIALLY with Pierrot Bolneze, who divulges practically all of his life whenever he tastes the Japan representatives' bread.
*FourIsDeath: Azuma's 44th variety of bread has the power to send people to heaven. Unless the person was at the end of their lifespan, however, [[BackFromTheDead they get better]].
* FumihikoTachiki: Yuuichi Kirisaki
*{{Funny Afro}}: Ken--and Kawachi, at one point
*GeniusDitz: Azuma's math skills and rice knowledge, anyone?
** Suwabara isn't much better, seemingly knowing only two things - bread and swordsmanship.
*GenkiGirl: Mizuno Azusagawa.
*GivingSomeoneThePointerFinger
*{{Ghost Lights}}
*GratuitousForeignLanguage (Tsubozuka. The language differs depending on what country the manga's published in.)
*HardGay (Arguably Mokoyama, who likes to call Matsuhiro "Ken-chan".)
*HeyItsThatVoice
**[[ExcelSaga Excel Excel]] as a brown-haired boy wearing a headband.
**[[GurrenLagann Yoko Ritona]] as a pink-haired boy genius.
*HikaruMidorikawa (Shizuto Narumi {eps. 57-58})
*{{Hurricane of Puns}}: Barely a chapter goes by without some horrendous pun, many of which are lost entirely in the English translations. Even the series title is a pun: "pan" is a Japanese for "bread", so "Ja-pan" can be read as "Japanese bread", which plays on the names of other varieties of bread like "furansu pan" (lit. "French bread"), etc.
*{{Idiot Hair}} (Kazuma)
*ImportantHaircut: Kawachi, from dyed blonde hair, to Afro (which, in reality, is a crewcut with an Afro wig on top), to shiny bald and back to dyed blonde hair again.
*{{Large Ham}}: MISTER KEN MATSUSHIRO!
*LawyerFriendlyCameo: One of the enemies in the Yakitate!! 25 arc is the mascot for a certain brand of seaweed.
*LighterAndSofter: While the manga's subject is rather tame, much of the contents from it deserved the Teens rating. However, the anime is clean enough to put on your typical Saturday morning slot.
*{{Looming Silhouette Of Rage}}
* MarinaInoue: Kanmuri Shigeru
*{{Mask Power}}: Meister Kirisaki, whose mask apparently contains {{Hammerspace}} where he keeps his "rating birds".
*MediumAwareness (When the manga shifts to colour in the middle of a page,they wonder how they can suddenly see colours now).
** Then there's volume 17. [[spoiler: Azuma reacted so strongly to a competitor's bread that the manga changed its name to ''It's Yakitate!! Japan''. Azuma even hands Kawachi a copy of the manga to prove it.]]
*** This happens in the anime too, and they rewind back to the opening credits to see it.
*MirrorMatch: The battle against the ninja in the Yakitate!! 25 arc: Both sides made bread with the same ingredients and preparation techniques. The only difference was the way the bread was kneaded.
*MissConception ([[spoiler:Suwabara]] is convinced that [[spoiler:Monica]] is pregnant, despite them having only "embraced a number of times". It's clear from the context that he doesn't mean "had sex" when he thinks it, either.)
*MoralEventHorizon: Yuuichi Kirisaki returned home to his starving and dying kids while they were respectively 10 and 5 to eat a large bread right in front of them and denying them to eat any of it, all the while commenting on how delicious it was.
*MonsterClown: Pierrot Bolnez isn't a villain, but his powers and abilities are so uncanny that he arguably qualifies.
*MsFanservice (Monica Adenauer, who tries to intimidate Suwabara using this. It fails.)
*NaughtyNuns: Mako Graham, the nun who taught Kawachi to go afro (sort of), is far from the nice nuns you see around everyday. She even hand-signals as if she was smoking.
*NobuyukiHiyama (Iwashiro Tetsuo from the manga Wild Life {episode 58})
*{{No Fourth Wall}}
*{{Noblewomans Laugh}} (Yukino)
*NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: Michael Schumacher doing an InitialD before going to Formula One? Azuma mistaking Lake Iglesia with Julio Iglesias? Kaiser's fans behaving like the Detroit Tigers fans? They're all here.
*PaintingTheFourthWall (Once,when Azuma reacts after tasting an opponent's bread,[[spoiler:he pulls out the manga to show Kawachi that his reaction was so profound it ''changed the title'']])
*{{Paper Fan Of Doom}} (A Mecha version of Yukino wields one of these during a bread-reaction hallucination.)
*PeekABoo (In a manga {{omake}},a cat nicks Tsukino's bra while she's changing and she chases after it into the main shop. Cue BeatPanel of the boys' reaction)
* QuirkyMinibossSquad: CMAP is an invocation, as they were actually trained to become quirky because they were celebrities.
*RealityWarper: Ryo Kuroyanagi
*RieKugimiya (Monica Adenauer)
*{{Scary Shiny Glasses}} (Hiroshi Kaname and Yuuichi Kirisaki)
*{{Serious Business}}: Apparently it's serious enough that a cooking duel between breadmakers from two competing bakery chains can warrant a stadium-sized audience and "Death of Anna Nicole Smith"-level media coverage.
**However, even more serious is the art of reacting to bread.
*{{Shout Out}}: One of Kuroyanagi's overblown pun-based reactions to tasting a turtle-shaped dessert has him turning into Gamera, the giant, flying, fire-breathing turtle ''kaiju''.
** The Black Tri-Stars from MobileSuitGundam show up as three expert bakers from St. Pierre's Kyūshū branch. They tasted Kazuma's Black Ja-pan and had a reaction where they fought the Nobel Gundam from GGundam which was piloted by Yukino. They quit after the reaction.
** In one episode, Pierrot eats "Alexandria" Egyptian Bread, with Kodaimai Miso flavoring and turns into Detective Conan.
** In another episode, Kuroyanagi turns into Super Kuroyanagi (a parody of Super Sayain) by eating Takumi Tsubodzuka's Super Toro Aburi. He fights Kawachi in a DBZ-style fight. He turns into Super Kuroyanagi 2 (a parody of Super Sayain 2) and Super Kuroyanagi 3 (a parody of Super Sayain 3) as a result of eating Urchin-roe Chawanmushi bread.
** In another episode, Kuryonagi turns into a parody of Monkey D. Luffy by eating Kazuma Azuma's Ōkuchi Wafuu (Japanese-style) Ja-pan Man.
** Kawachi Kyousuke tries some kelp marinated in soda and turns into Pepmiman, a parody of Pepsiman. He rescues a girl from drowning at sea. He also beats two sharks that tried to eat the girl.
** And there was yet another sequence involving Kawachi as a [[{{Naruto}} blond ninja in bright orange clothes]].
*ShownTheirWork (They have a bakery consultant; nearly all of the facts,and the out-there ingredients and techniques used to make the breads are real. There's even a recipe in one of the manga volumes for Kazuma's rice-cooker bread)
** The anime has a little [[AndKnowingIsHalfTheBattle segment at the end of each episode]] dedicated to showing off the research they did.
*TalkingAnimal (Mokoyama turns into a talking panda as a reaction to smelling Kazuma's Triple Bamboo Leaf manju)
* TakehitoKoyasu (Ryo Kuroyanagi)
*{{The Power of Friendship}}
*ThinkerPose (In episode 31, Kawachi Kyousuke was stripped of his clothes except for his underwear, and he was covered in bread and made to look like "The Thinker" by Rodin after he broke the bread "The Thinker" statue made by the rest of the group.)
*{{Time to Unlock More True Potential}}: Kyousuke Kawachi's visit to the "Afro Church"
*TomokazuSeki (Pierrot Bolneze)
*{{Training From Hell}}: Kyosuke's attempts to give himself "solar gauntlets".
*{{Tuckerization}}: Kanmuri is named after the author's editor and a minor character (Kanmuri's father) is named after the author himself (and even looks strongly like Hashiguchi).
*{{Unusual Ears}} (Mokoyama's pointed ears give him a devilish appearance)
*{{Wearing A Flag On Your Head}} (Monica Adenauer wears a two-piece bikini with American Flag Print in episodes 45-46)
*{{What Do You Mean Its Not Awesome}}: It's safe to say that if most people reacted to tasting bread the way the people in ''this'' series do, bread would be immediately classified as a Schedule I Controlled Substance.
*{{Whos On First}}: One dialogue sequence involves ''naan'' bread, which just happens to sound like the Japanese for "what"; another involves "croissant" being mistaken for a name ending in the honorific ''-san''.
*{{Woolseyism}}: The English translation of the manga does a pretty good job of translating the Japanese puns into English ones.
*{{Zettai Ryouiki}}: Tsukino, at school and at work.

----
<<|NoteworthyAnime|>>
<<|{{Manga}}|>>