Review of Kogepan (2001)
A piece of bread was bumped off the plate and spent too much time in the oven, so nobody wants to buy it, blocking the natural path of its bread life (pan jinsei). The old guy makes some friends, but watches the fresh younger bread with inebriated jealousy.
A cozily unclassifiable look at the daily life of anthropomorphized baked goods. It’s well executed, curiously effective metaphoric fluff: Kogepan is an intellectual pachyderm surrounded by normal people, only partly understanding that successful pursuit of the conventionally imagined meaning of life (being sold, in the case of bread) ends in misery (consumption, in the case of bread). Incidentally, the German pupper character Bernd das Brot, who is also a depressed loaf of bread, debuted a year earlier.