Bread Into Bread: Why Shiawase no Pan is the Best Anime of Spring 2012

I come out of my hiatus (don't worry, I'll try to get back at it now that I have time for stuffs...I'm probably gonna do some conclusions but it's hard to do all of them myself. glares at rest of blog crew) to show you how Shiawase no Pan has dazzled me with its brilliance.

To do so, let's take a leaf out of an English major's book and retrace what the studio obviously thought would be a good idea to do in SnP and run it concurrently to what is going on now in this menagerie of wonders. Then I will show you objectively how SnP has excelled in this lineup.

Note: I also had to look at the computer's clock to check that it was 2012. This is probably a bad plan.

The brilliance begins

So the studio begins its session. 

A typical day at the Production I.G. workplace

The studio is a mix of the modern and the pastern. Being such a synergetically flexible studio, they create a fitting environment where a fantasy-medieval bakery has plastic trays and grabbers for its bread - and for all intents and purposes looks like the local bakery down my block but without plastic wrapping. 

I guess they're just environmentalists

After getting the seal of approval from whatever the Japanese people call their Environmental Protection Agency (I'll assume that every government not in the Axis of the Arab League has the same structure as America, because AMERICA), the studio keeps on working. But then they realize: they've been working on a fantasy RPG!

WHAT THE FUCK?! THIS GAME ISN'T A DOTA RIPOFF?!

No worries, Itsuro Kawasaki says after his 5th pull at the bong. We got this. Let's include a shipwreck!

Wait, we've already got one...

Let's include a shipwreck-tossed-poor-girl-princess-mage-cleric-thief-tank-DPS-silent-person on the beach! That'll do it!

And the studio cheers.

If you tell her a message and throw her back in the sea she'll pass it on to whomever's on the other beach. Hope they can speak English. 

Uh...I mean Japanese.

Struck by this brilliance, they add the only thing better than girls lost on the beach: lasers.

lasers.

Oh, and they add some imperial people too, because every other fantasy story has had those, and shit, people must like empires. Which is true, because as everyone knows, assholes with power are awesome.

Oh, and the granny. I think her in-game bonus is +15 to the party's average age. It's quite a hidden gem, especially when you combo her with the doctor and it becomes +20 plus Medicare for the entire party. Hence why the director wanted to add her in to every other talking scene, no doubt.

you just don't know the power

Because lasers, the inspired studio decides to give the protagonist some passive abilities:

Can we nerf Rick already

And the protagonist spends an entire episode developing the plot via one treasure hunt with a Chinese catgirl. It also gets spoiled by the empire, because people love empires almost as much as they love crack. And man, do I do they love crack.

Thanks for intensifying the plot, Catgirl! I knew I could count on you!

But then the writer comes along. "It's too tense for an RPG series! We need more bread!" both sentences resonate with their logical progression from the first phrase to the next.

To appeal to the viewers, they put in an episode completely unrelated to the RPG element of the series and completely related to developing the harem friendships between us all.

But as if that wasn't a stroke of brilliance in and of itself, the producers decide to call in the small guns:

Rie Kugimiya.

Wow! That must be the biggest set of breasts on a Rie Kugimiya character since 2008!

They are blown away by their own genius. How could anybody even think of making an episode that has absolutely no fanservice, is unrelated to the RPG plot, graphics-wise has facial expressions worthy of The Scream, AND has Rie Kugimiya!

Rie Kugimiya!

I've never seen HER acting out a tsundere role. Unfortunately, she'll be overshadowed by her fellow female VAs such as Jun Fukuyama and Mamoru Miyano, but I hope she does well. By doing this, the studio has wisely decided to put voice actors in new and interesting roles, appealing to veteran watchers. Good work!

If this narrative just now didn't make you cry with sheer amazement, let me show you just how good Shiawase no Pan has been compared to other series.

For instance, Accel World loses outright (and because the characters are all middle schoolers despite their actions, so fuck that series):

Medaka Box puts up a valiant fight in terms of food due to the inclusion of Shiranui, but once you notice a fatal flaw in Gainax's planning it's all over:

It easily overtakes Tsuritama, Hyou-ka, Sankarea, and even Korean Zombie Desk Car 2: The Second. Wait until you see this:

A total of four people that are not weirdos?! That's so many - unimaginably many, maybe too many. It brooks no argument that Shiawase no Pan is incredibly nondescript. The other series mentioned above with their misguided bursts of creativity don't even compare.

Finally, compare the number of additional posts I've written about each series. 

Is further persuasion even necessary?

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Anyways, I hope that this has opened everyone's eyes to how good Shiawase no Pan is, and I wish that everyone marathons it sometime in their anime-viewing experiences to know what I have been feeling as I go through this series. Thanks for reading!