Yuna gets to work setting everything up for her new bakery in the fourth novel of Kumanano’s Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear series. Then it’s a trip over a mountain to get to the seaside, in pursuit of food she is craving.
This volume contains chapters seventy-five to ninety-five, plus three extra stories.
Front cover of the fourth novel of Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear, featuring Yuna and Kumayuru
The Bear Necessities
Yuna takes a break from adventuring to embark on a whole new kind of enterprise – opening her own bakery! But selling pudding to the masses is hardly enough to keep the Bloody Bear occupied, and soon, she finds her culinary appetites whetted by a new challenge: the chance to get her hands on rice, miso, and soy sauce. The only problem? The port town she needs to get her goods from is under siege by a kraken!
Actually there’s a little more going on at the port town, but I’ll get to that in due course. Taking things in chronological order, the first arc of this particular novel revolves around Yuna establishing a bakery and bringing everything together to get it up and running.
Things go fairly smoothly – this is Yuna we’re talking about, after all – but some challenges do arise. Particularly with the bakery’s popularity, and figuring out the best opening hours. It’s a learning experience for everyone involved. But hey, it does allow Yuna to interact a little more with adventurers she has met previously.
Seems like everything that Yuna does in this particular novel is connected to food in some way. After opening the bakery, Yuna’s desire for rice, miso, and/or soy sauce leads to her climbing a mountain. After all, that’s the quickest route towards the ocean.
Naturally it’s a treacherous climb… for anybody who isn’t Yuna. She’s determined to get her hands on that food, and if she has save people along the way then she’s going to do just that.
Not just people – an entire seaport finds itself in a rather dire situation before Yuna arrives there. It is her time at said seaport that makes up the majority of this volume.
The seaport has its fair share of problems. So it does turn out to be quite fortunate that an adventurer happens to arrive – and no ordinary adventurer, either. Although as far as Yuna is concerned, everything she does for the place is just ordinary adventurer stuff. Some of the stunts she pull off, though, definitely put her far above any normal adventurer.
Plenty of people have their doubts about her at first, but, once again, this is Yuna we’re talking about here. There is very little that poses a threat to her.
Although we do get a rare moment of Yuna reaching her absolute limits when it comes to dealing with the biggest problem the seaport has. This particular problem might be Yuna’s biggest challenge so far; not many foes up until now can claim to have had a battle of attrition with the Bloody Bear.
It’s always fun to see Yuna in action, and it is for that reason that I can probably say that I slightly preferred the seaport stuff over the bakery stuff from this volume. Both were enjoyable, though.
Another fun volume of Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear. Yuna gets to do her adventuring thing, whilst happening to improve the lives of lots of the people she meets. All because she wants some specific food. Of course.
Rory Muses 