With the Pantasia newcomer bakeoff coming to the close, Ryou finally hands out the various prizes to each of the winners. Kazuma and Shigeru get their internships to France, and Kawachi thinks that he’s getting the 300,000 yen 3rd place prize, but he quickly finds himself disappointed that the 3rd place prize money was split between him and Suwabara for tying 3rd place. Also, Suwabara got the internship to France, while Kawachi is given the 4th place Pantasia gift card (with evil Yukino on the cover) and the chance to apply for the main branch. When Ryou calls out for those who want to apply for the main branch, Kawachi steps forward, which depresses Kazuma a bit, but he knows that Kawachi wanted to work for the main branch. Kawachi is also sad to see that Kazuma won’t be joining him at the main branch as well. Meanwhile, Shigeru requests that she be moved to the Tokyo Southern Branch, which Ken accepted immediately. So now everyone is given a week to prepare for their respective move. And with the strong showing by Kazuma and Kawachi, business at the Southern Branch picks up, so you see Ken bringing out the hammer for everyone to work hard while business is booming.
The next morning, Kawachi is shocked to find that Kazuma is baking bread inside a rice cooker since he believes that the rice cooker isn’t hot enough to bake the bread properly. While he and Kazuma debate the appropriateness of using the rice cooker, a small boy arrives at the store requesting for Japan #57, but unfortunately, Tsukino tells the boy that they’re all sold out. However, the boy recognizes Kazuma from TV and quickly goes to ask whether he could bake him a sample of #57. Kazuma says that they don’t have any leftovers at the moment, but he could give the boy a sample of Japan #2, the rice cooker Japan! And not only does Kawachi produce another great reaction from eating Japan #2, we the viewers get a chance to be able to bake Japan #2 ourselves as Kazuma describes the process of making and baking it! However, be sure you set yourself a lot of time to bake it since it seems to require 3 hours or so of baking inside the rice cooker plus the addition time you need to knead and have the bread rise appropriately! At the end of the episode, the boy goes home happy learning that he himself could even bake Japan #2, while across the street of the Southern Branch, Yukino and a mysterious bearded man, who most likely is the owner of St. Pierre, discuss their next move to take down the Southern branch!
It was also interesting to learn that the Meister Kirisaki was the son of the current owner of St. Pierre, and followers of Yakiate will probably recognize that the owner is most likely the same baker from episode 1 who showed and taught Kazuma how to bake. Man, looks like things will be getting interesting from here on out 
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This post was written by...
Kungfucius – who has written 275 posts on Sea Slugs! Anime Blog.
One of the original founders, and a fan of long-running shounen series.
