[Yakitate! Japan][WAFF] Rising to the Challenge

[Brian]

An utterly pointless bit of WAFF set in the conclusion of the Yakitate! Japan series.  My hope is that this is readable even without knowledge of the series -- though it will contain spoilers.

I'll have a properly .htmlified version of this up once I get home (later tonight).

[Oroboro]

D'aww. :D

No idea about the series, but it was cute regardless.

---

I noticed a few typos, but that's honestly only because I loaded the file into Word and it caught them, so you can probably handle that on your own, right?

Whatever your goals in writing this, it put a smile on my face.

Edit:

<-- (Not that smile)

[Brian]

Kneads moar bread puns!

Yes; this was a revision-fail; it's the unedited 'just completed' version.  I'll polish it up a bit before the .htmification.

Thanks for the feedback; glad it worked, even if the really is just a WAFFY and mostly cliche 'dumb shounen hero finally figures one important part out' story. :D

[Merc]

The office of the president and owner of Pantasia was a spacious, borderline extravigant affair.
extravigant->extravagant

Azusagawa Tsukino herself hadn't found much need for the plush furniture and expensive wall art that it had come with, initially.
The herself feels redundant. Sentence reads just fine without it. The comma and placement of the initially makes it feel like she hadn't found much need, but later -did-. Given the following sentences, this is not correct. Removing the comma and/or placing initially before come would give it the intended reference that she hadn't found need for the stuff that was already there when she got it.

replaced with a modest (but fully equipped) kitchen for baking.
...it didn't already have one installed? REALLY? *eyes Brian with doubt*

In the time since winning the right to run the company in that amazing, globe-spanning baking duel
Nitpicky, but globe-spanning feels weird to say given circumstances. They technically only had duels in two countries, Monaco and Japan. Also, she didn't really 'win' right to run the company. Kirisaki bought out the stock with the help of Yukino. He basically -offered- Tsukino the opportunity to run the company.

It's implied he'd have offered it to her regardless of whether she accepted the challenge after Monaco, due to wanting to foster competition between his dual-owned company using Yukino and Tsukino, as Yukino was his partner, and Tsukino is the one who was (a) attached to Pantasia, (b) in a pretty damn antagonistic relationship with Yukino. You could make an argument that running in this case doesn't refer to the presidency but ownership and that she 'won' the right to that by prompting the japan challenge that would kill her 12 billion, but still feels like an odd line to me.

Not a major complaint, honestly, but felt it was worth commenting on.

she remembered Azuma's gift from the prince. Dressed as a clown or not, he'd given Azuma a ring, and after winning the deed to her small store
The ring was given to Azuma by Pierrot's mom~! There's a couple of further mentions of the ring (obviously) and Pierrot, but I'm not highlighting them again.

And she always had the deed to her small store? All three sisters had their own stores, it's one of the reasons Kanmuri wanted to move there, because he knew about Yukino/Kirisaki's plan to buy out shares and figured Tsukino's store could operate independently in worst case. I don't recall, did she bet the deed at some point though? No idea honestly. (And if you were talking about Pantasia in general, given Kirisaki's challenge, that was totally not a small store!)

She baked, too, though she knew her skill was negligable compared to his.
negligable->negligible

It was a good, managable length to have in a kitchen, though.
managable->manageable

Though the students he taught all should have known better, he still found himself going over their workstations and checking for anything that wasn't clean or correctly placed.
I don't really like how this sentence is structured. Because it starts 'Though X, Y happens', I feel that a 'because Z' is missing in there...even though it -is- there. All I can think of to try and fix it is adding a comma after workstations, but the sentence still feels weird to me. Actually, given the He hummed to himself after wiping up the last stray bit of flour. sentence soon after, some continuity between the two sentences like a statement about finding a dirty workstation and having to talk with the student, or some such, would be nice.

Before he could continue that line of thought, he heard the door open, glancing over and seeing Tsukino peeking in,
After the door opens, a new set of actions is occuring, so either that comma should be a period and start of a new sentence, or you should add an and. Since there would already be an and two words after, a new sentence might be the preferable correction. Personally, I think continuing it works better, with a minor edit like and glancing over, he saw Tsukino peeking in, maybe?

You'd have to modify the sentence anyway for fragmented structure even if you started a new sentence, honestly.

her face slightly red as she saw him, her eyes lighting up
This is weird way to end the sentence. Because the face colors and the eyes lighten, there's a contrast, and you should provide a better transition between the two fragments.

the samurai-slash-baker's son
...why do you actually write out the slash? Why don't you actually use a / in there? o_o

All I can think of is that it's an attempt at a pun given the series source, since the story lacks them for the most part, but it's actually more distracting?

There had been some minor detail, hadn't there? Something about kneading dough that was slipping his mind at the moment.
He was clearing stray dough earlier! Clearly someone didn't clean their workshop! It's what started him on his new bread idea! I know he's kinda dim sometimes, but that's pretty fast to forget!

"Oh, yeah -- you gave me some shares of Pantasia for my work. Did you need those back?"
Then again...he might -actually- be that dim?

It's more ... in terms of giving one another things, I was thinking about this?" she asked, her face going red again as she raised her hands, one pointing at the ring on the other.
Suggestion: Use ellipsis after about, and move the this? to after she points to the ring, for extra emphasis?

"Oh! Yeah! One of the ladies that was taking lessons today had a ring on that same finger! It didn't take her long to see what my reason for giving that ring to you was, though!"
...okay, so the line earlier -wasn't- about the stray dough. Man, some student's messy workstation just got plain forgotten somewhere in this whole thing. Either that or Azuma had to clean his own station after doing the rounds. He had to get that stray dough from -somewhere-, dammit! Where did it come from? WHEEEEEEEREEEEEEE?!?!?!

Mystery afoot!

rest of fic...
Nothing else caught my eye.

Overall final comments: Azuma and you are such utter TROLLS. Poor Tsukino.

Cute fic, Brian. Sure to avoid being panned by your critics!

[Jason_Miao]

I don't know what purpose the last scene break serves (or second to last, if you're counting the one that separates the story proper from the notes).

Other than that, I have nothing. 

Cute fic, Brian. Sure to avoid being panned by your critics!

Avoiding pan is not the purpose of this series.

[Brian]

I don't know what purpose the last scene break serves (or second to last, if you're counting the one that separates the story proper from the notes).

PoV shift.

[Brian]

The office of the president and owner of Pantasia was a spacious, borderline extravigant affair.
extravigant->extravagant

Grah ... forgot to spellcheck.  _Again_. >_<  Alright; used all your spelling/grammar comments, unless otherwise remarked.

Azusagawa Tsukino herself hadn't found much need for the plush furniture and expensive wall art that it had come with, initially.
The herself feels redundant. Sentence reads just fine without it. The comma and placement of the initially makes it feel like she hadn't found much need, but later -did-. Given the following sentences, this is not correct. Removing the comma and/or placing initially before come would give it the intended reference that she hadn't found need for the stuff that was already there when she got it.

Dropped the initially entirely.  The 'herself' actually feels like it lends the sentence a smoother flow to me, but I'll go with your suggestion since that's just a vague feeling on my part.

replaced with a modest (but fully equipped) kitchen for baking.
...it didn't already have one installed? REALLY? *eyes Brian with doubt*

Tsukino: "No, that's why there's now two kitchens in the office, instead of one kitchen and a wet-bar."

But -- you make a point that there may have been one before.  I'm not sure.

In the time since winning the right to run the company in that amazing, globe-spanning baking duel
Nitpicky, but globe-spanning feels weird to say given circumstances. They technically only had duels in two countries, Monaco and Japan.

I'm going to leave it in anyway -- it's just too much fun as a line.  Aside from which, for the Monaco Cup, they actually went to a deserted island in the seas, South America, and France.  It's a bit of a stretch, and I know I forgot/misremembered other details -- but that I'm still pretty sure about.

Also, she didn't really 'win' right to run the company. Kirisaki bought out the stock with the help of Yukino. He basically -offered- Tsukino the opportunity to run the company.

Yeah, I forgot this part.  Before I try and revise the story, refresh my memory on how things worked?  I had thought that they were at least gambling the store on it -- hence a line from Azuma about protecting Tsukino('s bakery).

It's implied he'd have offered it to her regardless of whether she accepted the challenge after Monaco, due to wanting to foster competition between his dual-owned company using Yukino and Tsukino, as Yukino was his partner, and Tsukino is the one who was (a) attached to Pantasia, (b) in a pretty damn antagonistic relationship with Yukino. You could make an argument that running in this case doesn't refer to the presidency but ownership and that she 'won' the right to that by prompting the japan challenge that would kill her 12 billion, but still feels like an odd line to me.

Well, that implication is a long-after-the-fact shounen-style retcon.  Doesn't fit the tone, so we're going to go with the implications in arc -- from Tsukino's perspective, yeah, Yukino was a horrible monster.  No, wait, Yukino was just always a horrible monster.  (And then an inflatable doll, but that's another matter entirely.)

Not a major complaint, honestly, but felt it was worth commenting on.

Mmm, I think it's something that can be refined here, so probably should -- thanks for pointing it out.

she remembered Azuma's gift from the prince. Dressed as a clown or not, he'd given Azuma a ring, and after winning the deed to her small store
The ring was given to Azuma by Pierrot's mom~! There's a couple of further mentions of the ring (obviously) and Pierrot, but I'm not highlighting them again.

Forgot that -- easy to fix.  "The Queen of Monaco" makes a nice contrast to befriending the crown prince instead of just referring to him more often.  And ... I thought it was called the Ring of Perroit?  It summoned him when Kirisaki and Kuroyanagi were abducted by UFOs.

(Note to anyone who hasn't read the series: None of that is made up.  None of it.)

Okay, going through and cleaning up, I may have actually addressed the first concern:

More than simply winning the baking tournament -- and the eternal friendship of the crown prince of Monaco -- she remembered Azuma's gift from the queen of Monaco in recognition of his victory and service.  She'd given Azuma the ring, and after securing the safety of the small bakery they had started from -- and much more -- that ring had been passed to _her_.

And she always had the deed to her small store? All three sisters had their own stores, it's one of the reasons Kanmuri wanted to move there, because he knew about Yukino/Kirisaki's plan to buy out shares and figured Tsukino's store could operate independently in worst case. I don't recall, did she bet the deed at some point though? No idea honestly. (And if you were talking about Pantasia in general, given Kirisaki's challenge, that was totally not a small store!)

I (possibly incorrectly) recall the deed for the southern store being wagered against Pantasia's Monaco cup victory.  The above revisions should cover that, anyway.

Though the students he taught all should have known better, he still found himself going over their workstations and checking for anything that wasn't clean or correctly placed.
I don't really like how this sentence is structured. Because it starts 'Though X, Y happens', I feel that a 'because Z' is missing in there...even though it -is- there. All I can think of to try and fix it is adding a comma after workstations, but the sentence still feels weird to me. Actually, given the He hummed to himself after wiping up the last stray bit of flour. sentence soon after, some continuity between the two sentences like a statement about finding a dirty workstation and having to talk with the student, or some such, would be nice.

For the first sentence being awkward, I think it was missing a clause; here's a revision:

Though the students he taught all should have known better than to leave messes, he still found himself going over their workstations and searching for anything that wasn't clean or correctly placed.  A few minutes of the day taking care of that seemed a fine way to 'cool down' from the rest of the work he'd done.

I'm not sure about the students actually leaving a mess; they should typically be pretty well behaved by the point when they get to train under him.  But, okay.

For you:

That and the fact that his students rarely left anything worse than the smallest of messes -- take today's spilled flour on a single workstation.

     Nothing so severe it warranted trying to admonish the student, at any rate.

Before he could continue that line of thought, he heard the door open, glancing over and seeing Tsukino peeking in,
After the door opens, a new set of actions is occuring, so either that comma should be a period and start of a new sentence, or you should add an and. Since there would already be an and two words after, a new sentence might be the preferable correction. Personally, I think continuing it works better, with a minor edit like and glancing over, he saw Tsukino peeking in, maybe?

You'd have to modify the sentence anyway for fragmented structure even if you started a new sentence, honestly.

I tend to err on the side of breaking things out into more sentences for clarity when needed:

Before he could continue that line of thought, he heard the door open.  A glance over to the source of the noise revealed Tsukino peeking in; her face reddened faintly, her eyes lighting up as they met his.

the samurai-slash-baker's son
...why do you actually write out the slash? Why don't you actually use a / in there? o_o

All I can think of is that it's an attempt at a pun given the series source, since the story lacks them for the most part, but it's actually more distracting?

Because it looks awkward in narration to actually use a slash.  I wanted to avoid using the term--  Wait, I can just replace the 'slash' with 'and'.  No, that doesn't work.

Screw it 'samurai baker' is correct, too.

There had been some minor detail, hadn't there? Something about kneading dough that was slipping his mind at the moment.
He was clearing stray dough earlier! Clearly someone didn't clean their workshop! It's what started him on his new bread idea! I know he's kinda dim sometimes, but that's pretty fast to forget!

He was cleaning up flour, not dough. :p

"Oh, yeah -- you gave me some shares of Pantasia for my work. Did you need those back?"
Then again...he might -actually- be that dim?

I kind of am going with a 'break-making mild idiot-savant' take on Azuma here.  He's a genius with bread and pretty much everything to do with baking.  But as Kawaichi points out, he doesn't understand anything about cooking if it doesn't involve bread or baking.  His only other strengths are math and agriculture, which I figure ties into baking measurements and his background (and also baking again).

It's more ... in terms of giving one another things, I was thinking about this?" she asked, her face going red again as she raised her hands, one pointing at the ring on the other.
Suggestion: Use ellipsis after about, and move the this? to after she points to the ring, for extra emphasis?

What about this:

"W...well, yes, I can see that," she agreed, shaking her head.  "Ah, but that's not even what I was thinking about.  It's more that, um ... in terms of giving one another things, I was thinking about...."  She trailed off, shifting her shoulders.  Her face went red again as she raised her hands, one pointing at the ring on the other as she concluded meekly, "...this?"

...okay, so the line earlier -wasn't- about the stray dough. Man, some student's messy workstation just got plain forgotten somewhere in this whole thing. Either that or Azuma had to clean his own station after doing the rounds. He had to get that stray dough from -somewhere-, dammit! Where did it come from? WHEEEEEEEREEEEEEE?!?!?!

Mystery afoot!

I don't know what this stray dough is about.  And the workstation was never meant to be implied as being that messy -- I think that should be a bit better clarified, here. >_>

Overall final comments: Azuma and you are such utter TROLLS. Poor Tsukino.

Cute fic, Brian. Sure to avoid being panned by your critics!

I think I'll be okay; I'm kind of on a sweet roll, here.  It's easy to give into temptation and loaf about, not serve up toasty slice-of-life fics like that, but....  Yeah, I should thank you for the feedback; it's the yeast I could do!  And for myself, I should be sure to avoid too many rye puns.  It is fun....  They can turn sour, dough.

Yeah, this is getting towards batter-ey; I should call this the end and bag-ette.

...I'm such a crusty old heel; those were all terribly stale.

[Merc]

replaced with a modest (but fully equipped) kitchen for baking.
...it didn't already have one installed? REALLY? *eyes Brian with doubt*

Tsukino: "No, that's why there's now two kitchens in the office, instead of one kitchen and a wet-bar."

But -- you make a point that there may have been one before.  I'm not sure.

It's not anything from the manga at all, just something I found funny, given what these people are like.

Yeah, I forgot this part.  Before I try and revise the story, refresh my memory on how things worked?  I had thought that they were at least gambling the store on it -- hence a line from Azuma about protecting Tsukino('s bakery).

***

Well, that implication is a long-after-the-fact shounen-style retcon.  Doesn't fit the tone, so we're going to go with the implications in arc -- from Tsukino's perspective, yeah, Yukino was a horrible monster.  No, wait, Yukino was just always a horrible monster.  (And then an inflatable doll, but that's another matter entirely.)

***

Mmm, I think it's something that can be refined here, so probably should -- thanks for pointing it out.

Heh, okay. I do think the intent comes through well enough, and I'd have to really re-read a fair bit of the manga to recollect all of the circumstances regarding the situation, but since intent comes through well enough, it's generally fine. I might actually go ahead and reread it and let you know. You do have a point that implication/retcon is there, I might just be inserting my own opinions there too.

And ... I thought it was called the Ring of Perroit?  It summoned him when Kirisaki and Kuroyanagi were abducted by UFOs.

It...might have been? I can at least verify that it was definitely granted to Azuma for being the MVP of Monaco by the queen though.

More than simply winning the baking tournament -- and the eternal friendship of the crown prince of Monaco -- she remembered Azuma's gift from the queen of Monaco in recognition of his victory and service.  She'd given Azuma the ring, and after securing the safety of the small bakery they had started from -- and much more -- that ring had been passed to _her_.

*thumbs up*

Though the students he taught all should have known better than to leave messes, he still found himself going over their workstations and searching for anything that wasn't clean or correctly placed.  A few minutes of the day taking care of that seemed a fine way to 'cool down' from the rest of the work he'd done.

*thumbs up*

That and the fact that his students rarely left anything worse than the smallest of messes -- take today's spilled flour on a single workstation.

     Nothing so severe it warranted trying to admonish the student, at any rate.

*repeat, rinse, lather those thumbs*

Before he could continue that line of thought, he heard the door open.  A glance over to the source of the noise revealed Tsukino peeking in; her face reddened faintly, her eyes lighting up as they met his.

That's fine. It flows a looooot better now.

Screw it 'samurai baker' is correct, too.

Yeah, that's for the best. I think you're right about a slash itself looking awkward as well.

He was cleaning up flour, not dough. :p

Hey, I did this at 2-3am! Cut me some slack! =p

"W...well, yes, I can see that," she agreed, shaking her head.  "Ah, but that's not even what I was thinking about.  It's more that, um ... in terms of giving one another things, I was thinking about...."  She trailed off, shifting her shoulders.  Her face went red again as she raised her hands, one pointing at the ring on the other as she concluded meekly, "...this?"

Yeah, that's good. I mostly just figured it gives emphasis to the action by splitting the statement so the 'this' was said after the gesture.

I think I'll be okay; I'm kind of on a sweet roll, here.  It's easy to give into temptation and loaf about, not serve up toasty slice-of-life fics like that, but....  Yeah, I should thank you for the feedback; it's the yeast I could do!  And for myself, I should be sure to avoid too many rye puns.  It is fun....  They can turn sour, dough.

Yeah, this is getting towards batter-ey; I should call this the end and bag-ette.

...I'm such a crusty old heel; those were all terribly stale.

Heh. =)

[Brian]

Aces; thanks again for the feedback, Mercury-for-hire. ;D