Yumeiro Patissiere episode 2 review; Enter Vanilla, the sweets spirit.

 

      Well, today is the big day, Ichigo leaves home and heads off to the St. Marie Academy. After a long bus ride into the country side, Ichigo makes it to the entrance of the academy and takes a long walk down a path leading to the school. When Ichigo finally makes it to the main building she’s amazed at the size and beauty of the school, and she spots a large statue of a woman. While Ichigo looks at the statue, a fellow student tells her that the statue is the queen of the sweets spirits, and if a student can see a sweets spirit their dreams will come true.

       Ichigo finds out that the girl is Rumi Katou, and she’s gonna be Ichigo’s roommate. After Rumi shows Ichigo to their room, she has to rush off for class prep leaving Ichigo to make her way to class where she runs into pretty boy Hanabusa from class 2-a. He tells Ichigo that they’re in the same class and he presents her with a welcome gift of roses made of candy, so he escorts her to class. Hanabusa tries to take his lady’s hand but Ichigo says she’s not that lady like. On their way to class, Ichigo runs into two other male students Kashino & Kashino “>Andou, and Kashino isn’t very friendly to Ichigo.

       When Ichigo finally makes it to class, the other girls are impressed that she arrived with the three princes. Soon, Ichigo changes into cooking uniform and is assigned to the same group as the three princes, and soon all the girls get jealous. The class get assigned a project of making crepes, and soon Ichigo finds out that she’s way over her head.

       Well, when the groups are finished with their crepes, the three princes all get passing marks but Ichigo’s creation is a total mess and they recieve -10 points. Ichigo apologises and tells everyone that this is her first time making crepes and she’s a complete novice at making sweets.

       After tasting her creation Kashino goes off on Ichigo telling her that if she isn’t serious about sweets she should just go home, and Ichigo starts crying. Later, that night, the other students notice that Ichigo is missing and we see her sitting outside in the rain near the bus stop. After a little bit of thinking, Ichigo returns to the school’s kitchen and begins to practice on her own.

 

       After several failed attempts, Ichigo looks towards the painting of the queen of the sweets spirits and asks for her wish to come true. Soon, a small fairy named Vanilla appears and says her dreams will come true. Well, Ichigo thought it would be easy getting her wish, but what Vanilla is really doing is teaching Ichigo how to cook.

       When Ichigo finally gets the hang of it, Vanilla makes a recipe card and sends it back to the queen, whenever a sweets spirit makes a dish with humans they have to send back a card. Vanilla tells Ichigo that sweets spirits are born to make sweets delicious, they’re born in the sweets realm, and when they reach a certain age they come here for training. They must find a human partner and train with them and if they do good enough they can become patissiere in the royal court, now Vanilla’s chosen Ichigo as her partner.

 

       After Vanilla and Ichigo talk about stuff, Ichigo vows to work hard and take everything in small steps. Ichigo and Vanilla then enjoy snacking on her crepe dish late into the night. After the closing song we get shown a little clip of Aoki Sadaharu, a real Paris trained patissier, who helped in the creation of the sweets for this show. Well, that’s all for this episode.

       Well, this was a pretty nice episode that establishes the tone for the rest of the series, Ichigo must work very hard and overcome many obstacles in order to reach her dream of becoming patissiere like her grandmother. Many bloggers had compared this series to Full Moon but I think they’re a little off the mark, while the character designs might be similar to Full Moon , this is not a magic girl show, and there will be no transformation scenes other than Ichigo working hard and transforming in to a good cook. While this episode introduces Vanilla, a sweets spirit, Vanilla will function like Fool from Kaleido Star did. Vanilla will give Ichigo advice and encouragement, and that’s her magic.

       I also see a pretty cute “love/infatuation” triangle developing, while Henri caught Ichigo’s eye in the first episode, he too old for her, and while she might pine of him, that’s all it’ll be. I think the infatuation triangle will be with Ichigo at the top and Hanabusa/Andou fighting for her attention. Hanabusa is nice and kind to Ichigo, so she already likes him, but I think that the cold and serious Andou will eventually want some of the sugary sweet Ichigo. You know that the line between love and hate is very fine indeed. Well, until next week’s episode I’ll have a piece of cake, and keep thinking of sweet girls and cute boys.