Review: Pan de Peace!

Anime has just about covered every bizarre concept you could think of, every weird fascination with something you might consider mundane even. As such it should come as no surprise that there is a short series based on girls who love bread.

The plot is fairly simple. Minami starts her first day of school and finds some surprisingly like minded girls who all share a love of bread. Hanging out with her new found bread-buddies (oh I both love and loathe that term) they set about doing what high school girls do; anything and everything while sharing a love for bread.

I like bread, a lot. Sure it’s not good for dieting but it’s lovely and the show does go to some great lengths to show the various bread and bread-related activities out there. From visiting a French bakery, making their own bread to queuing for the newest most popular bread at lunch in school there is fairly good scope for a seemingly limited topic. I do like the enthusiasm and passion shown from the both the mangaka and staff for this.

My problem is that, for me, bread is not interesting enough to base a series around, I mean I love it, I eat a lot of it and back in my younger days I’d enjoy baking it (well attempt to). The problem is viewing others doing this takes away all the enjoyment involved and only really makes you hungry. Sure they do the usual slice of life comedy antics and on their own I might have enjoyed it a tad more but as it stands the bread angle hurts it a lot.

It also doesn’t help that this show is rather bland. None of the girls I found in the least bit interesting. They’re cookie cutter characters that, other than their love for bread, are easily replaceable. The topics they cover, being done before in many other series just did not do it for me. Compare this to WagaHigh (review below) and whilst they do share similar tropes that did not have problems in making me laugh or smile. It executed what it intended to do better than what we have here.

Partly the look of it as the look is as generic cute girls as you can get. You would not recognise them out of any similar series done and their personalities don’t remedy this either. The production values were okay and the soundtrack was nothing to note. The OP was also bland and forgettable so at least it all matches up to each other.

In a way it is impressive that even with a 2-3 minute run time it manages to be tedious. While I do commend the obvious passion and care for the subject matter it just did not work for me, even in these short bursts. I cannot recommend this unless you have a great love for bread.

Studio: Asahi Production

Aired: Spring 2016

Available:Streaming

Episodes: 13

3.5/10