How ‘13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim’ Turned Me Into A Yakisoba Fan

I don’t know how to feel about 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim. In theory, the game contains just about everything I’d enjoy in a game, and it is made by Atlus no less – a developer that has earned my esteem on many projects over the years. In practice, however, 13 Sentinels is not that compelling of an experience. Some elements of the game are thematically and conceptually compelling, especially in terms of writing and narrative structure. One element that clearly stands above the rest, however, is the character Takatoshi Hijiyama’s unquenchable thirst for his most beloved meal: yakisoba pan. 

Games entrenched in Japanese culture are typically some of my favorites, whether that pertains to the Yakuza series or the Persona series. I hadn’t, however, ever truly internalized the hierarchy of beloved cuisine that Japan is so well known for – outside of Americanized versions of Japanese food. Thus, I had never noticed yakisoba or, in this case, yakisoba pan, on the many elaborate restaurant menus of downtown Kamurocho or Shibuya respectively. 13 Sentinels, however, clearly changed this impression.

Takatoshi Hijiyama’s Infectious Enthusiasm for Yakisoba Pan

Takatoshi Hijiyama’s story in 13 Sentinels begins quite late throughout the experience. In order to reach his storyline, you must bring many of the game’s other stories to a point nearing completion. Once you unlock Takatoshi’s story, you begin his prologue on a rooftop, holding the food that is quickly revealed to be his greatest passion, which you can “consider” amongst other story leads. Almost immediately, however, you run into a story roadblock with a thuggish character who knocks the yakisoba pan from Takatoshi’s grasp, stirring up a fight.

You soon learn more about Takatoshi’s relationships with other characters like Okino, who often passes himself off as a woman, and you are soon sneaking into places like an abandoned factory and the school building that serves as a pseudo hubworld for complex character intersections throughout the narrative. But more importantly for Takatoshi, these roads all lead to yakisoba pan. He even has a chapter that’s literally titled, “The Yakisoba Pan Angel,” if that holy invocation gives any credence to the notion of how obsessed Takatoshi is with this food.

A perseverative monologue from Takatoshi regarding his precious pan is so passionately performed that it lingered with me far past platinuming 13 Sentinels. In considering the yakisoba pan in his hand, Takatoshi opines to himself and the player, “Noodles stir-fried in sauce, enfolded in sweetened bread…I don’t trust much in this post-war world…but if there’s one exception, it’s my yakisoba pan.” Takatoshi’s voice actor delivers these lines so powerfully that it practically adds an exclamation point to the end. Despite the imminent confusion, trepidation, and aggression that Takatoshi encounters at nearly every twist within the story, the yakisoba pan anchors him with a sense of comfort and security.

A Culinary Culmination of Passion for Pan

One of my best friends and occasional Epilogue Gaming contributor, Preston Johnston, loves few things more than cooking and eating food. While I am not much of a culinary connoisseur myself, we have occasionally live streamed experiments in the kitchen together. Our food related endeavors began with the ghost peppers from my flower garden, and together we blended together some of the hottest salsa I have ever had the misfortune of tasting – the kind of spice that immediately spurns a feeling of regret, sending you to the floor in a sweaty, aching fetal position. 

The success of this ghost pepper cooking stream led to a handful of other cooking streams, including another session bringing together other diverse and eclectic peppers from the far end of the scoville spectrum. Thankfully, however, not all streams have led directly to my pain. One such cooking stream involved two distinct recipes: a Bugsnax character and an iteration of Takatoshi Hijiyama’s yakisoba pan, as inspired by 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim.

Yakisoba pan is a rather simple recipe, all things considered. The food can be simply understood as stir fried yakisoba noodles presented on a toasted hot dog bun. Before putting together this tribute to Takatoshi, I hadn’t had yakisoba noodles before. My first impression of the noodles themselves, of which the yakisoba sauce is the main focus, was rather positive, salty and sweet in equal measure. It felt a little excessive to load up an already carb-heavy food onto bread, but that’s what the recipe called for, and I craved to know why I had heard such florid language around this unfamiliar food. I am of course ignoring the bizarre fact that Preston, who had prepared the ingredients for us, had used insect protein powder to make the bread that we were about to eat. Luckily, this unsavory fact didn’t corrupt my enjoyment of the meal. 

A Walkthrough for Recreating Yakisoba Pan

Many months later, Atlus released an official recipe for yakisoba pan to commemorate the 13 Sentinels release on the Nintendo Switch. I haven’t yet put this recipe to task, but their recipe is remarkably similar to what we produced on our own, cobbling together inspiration from generic recipes on the internet. Atlus recommends the following.

Yakisoba Pan Ingredients:

2 brioche hot dog buns

Butter

16 oz yakisoba noodles

Sesame oil

¼ onion, minced

2 cloves garlic

½ cup cabbage, minced

1 jalapeno pepper, diced

8 oz bean sprouts

8 oz pork belly

Salt and pepper

Japanese mayo (optional)

Aonori

Red pickled ginger

Yakisoba Sauce ingredients:

2 tsp Worcestershire sauce

1 tsp soy sauce

1 tsp mirin

1 tsp ketchup

½ tsp sugar

Salt and pepper to taste

Somewhat humorously, Atlus’ recipe describes the “difficulty” of this recipe as “medium,” as though it were a game of its own. The cook time for this recipe rests at 25 minutes, and this recipe aims to serve 4-6 people. I can’t help but question this last detail, as only two buns of bread are to be utilized. Either you’re cutting the yakisoba pan into tiny sections, or those are some massive buns. In any case, I enjoyed my own armchair version of yakisoba pan enough to recreate the official meal one day. If you’ve read this far and are interested in trying out Takatoshi’s obsession, Atlus goes further into detail regarding the actual process on their website. 

In an era of video game cook books, I find it incredibly fun to reify fictional foods, bringing key aspects of the stories I consume to life in other, more tangible mediums. Perhaps my experience cooking 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim’s foods to life will give me the confidence to reproduce other beloved foods like Leblanc curry or Takoyaki. Whether those foods click in the same way, I’m willing to branch out of my comfort zone. Yakisoba pan turned me into a yakisoba fan.

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