Fushigi Dagashiya: Zenitendou Episode 180
Fushigi Dagashiya: Zenitendou Episode 180: The Time-Warping Taiyaki Interesting Teaser and Conflict What if the secret to achieving your life’s greatest professional peak wasn't through relentless effort, but a single, perfectly golden fish-shaped wafer? In this chilling episode, The Time-Warping Taiyaki offers a desperate artist the chance to cheat the fundamental laws of mastery, promising to instantly grant the muscle memory of his finest future triumph.
However, the store owner, Beniko, knows that true success cannot be bought with mere sweetness.
The main conflict ignites when the artist, Aoi Shinozaki, risks everything his legacy, his family's studio, and his very artistic identity on a magical pastry, only to discover the Zenitendou's candies interpret triumph in a crueler, more literal sense than he could have ever imagined.
The moment he takes the bite, the clock of his ambition begins to run backward, and the question shifts from Will he succeed? to Which moment of success will define his entire future? Important Characters, Roles, and Motivations Character Role in the Story Motivation Beniko The enigmatic proprietress of the Zenitendou.
Beniko is the impartial facilitator of fate.
Her role is to offer powerful, consequence-laden magical sweets to those driven by deep-seated desire.
Her motivation is to uphold the balance of the Zenitendou's unique contract system, ensuring that the customer's true intent, often fueled by greed or impatience, dictates the final, bitter price.
Aoi Shinozaki The episode's protagonist, a highly skilled but struggling traditional potter.
Aoi is motivated by fierce pride and desperation.
His family's 300-year-old pottery studio, Shinozaki Kiln, is failing due to modern competition and lack of innovation.
He needs to win the prestigious Golden Kiln Award next month to secure a massive government grant and save his legacy.
His motivation is purely to regain the honor and financial stability of his family name.
Kouji Shinozaki Aoi’s younger cousin and apprentice, who has taken a second job to support the studio.
Kouji represents the path of honest, slow-grinding effort.
He is motivated by loyalty to Aoi and the family tradition, but he secretly wishes Aoi would embrace modern business practices rather than relying solely on abstract, traditional mastery.
He serves as the voice of reason that Aoi dismisses.
Important Scenes in Sequence 1.
The Desperation and the Invitation The episode opens in the dilapidated Shinozaki Kiln studio, the air thick with dust and despair.
Aoi Shinozaki is shown smashing a beautiful but flawed pot in a fit of frustration.
He has spent years trying to replicate the transcendent quality of his great-grandfather’s masterpiece, the Moonlit Jar, but always falls short, wasting precious materials.
He receives a final eviction notice that threatens to close the kiln in thirty days, just before the deadline for the Golden Kiln Award submission.
That evening, utterly defeated, a single, scarlet maneki-neko (beckoning cat) sticker appears on the eviction notice.
Following an irresistible compulsion, Aoi finds himself guided through a dense, fog-shrouded alley to the glowing red entrance of the Fushigi Dagashiya: Zenitendou.
2.
The Temptation of Instant Glory Inside the shop, Beniko, framed by shelves of impossibly colorful candies, greets him with an unsettling calm.
She presents the Time-Warping Taiyaki a golden, perfectly textured treat that smells faintly of freshly baked clay and ozone.
She explains its mechanism: One bite allows the eater to instantly relive, and retain the muscle memory of, the singular moment of their most perfect, recognized triumph in their chosen field.
It is a shortcut to ultimate skill.
Aoi, blinded by the image of himself hoisting the Golden Kiln Award, pays a disproportionately high price: the antique gold-inlay palette knife that belonged to his great-grandfather, the one item representing his slow, honest journey to mastery.
Ignoring Kouji's panicked, frantic call on his cell phone, Aoi bites into the Taiyaki.
3.
The Flurry of False Success Immediately, the studio around him dissolves into a vortex of light and sound.
Aoi’s mind is flooded, not with the future triumph he anticipated, but with a different memory.
He is suddenly ten years old, standing on a stage, awkwardly clutching a brightly colored, lopsided clay dog.
He hears the cheers of his primary school peers and the exaggerated praise of a local news reporter: “A triumph! The youngest artist to ever win the town’s annual Junior Clay Sculpture Contest!” The memory snaps back to the present, leaving Aoi dizzy but with a strange, powerful sensation in his hands.
He rushes to the wheel, expecting the fluid grace of a master, and begins to throw a pot.
He works with an effortless, dizzying speed, finishing the piece in mere minutes.
He has the speed, the confidence, and the perfect dexterity but the resulting shape is not the ethereal, delicate curve of the Moonlit Jar.
It’s the brightly colored, lopsided, technically juvenile Clay Dog.
4.
The Revelation of the Cruel Loop Aoi, horrified, realizes the tragic truth: the Taiyaki had granted him the muscle memory of his first-ever recognized triumph, not his future ambition.
To the magical confection, a win is a win, regardless of artistic merit.
Driven to desperation, he realizes the Zenitendou only gave him what he truly asked for: a guaranteed, recognized success.
He tries to replicate the Moonlit Jar, but his hands, now permanently calibrated to the ten-year-old’s dexterity, refuse to execute the complex, subtle movements required for true artistry.
Every pot he throws is technically flawless in its execution, but structurally and aesthetically equivalent to a child's art project.
His ambition for the Golden Kiln Award is now impossible; his hands can only create kindergarten-level ceramics, though with the speed and precision of a machine.
How the Story Ends: The Unmaking of a Master The story culminates on the day of the Golden Kiln Award submission deadline.
Kouji finds Aoi, eyes glazed over, surrounded by hundreds of perfectly formed, but aesthetically worthless, clay dogs and simple bowls.
Aoi, in a final, frantic attempt to break the curse, tries to carve a complex pattern into one of the pieces, but the knife only manages simple, blunt marks the marks of a ten-year-old who has not yet learned control.
The Dramatic Twist: Beniko appears momentarily, reflected in the glassy glaze of one of the clay dogs.
She does not speak, but Aoi hears her voice echoing: The price of skipping the journey is that the journey itself becomes forfeit.
He realizes the true cost: the Taiyaki didn't just give him a skill; it erased the struggle the decades of effort and failure that were necessary to develop his adult artistic eye and judgment.
His technical skill is perfect, but his soul and maturity as an artist are gone.
In a heartbreaking final scene, Kouji, seeing Aoi’s ruined state, picks up the one remaining piece of unfired clay and, with slow, agonizing effort, begins to throw a simple, honest mug.
