Unless you’ve been living under a rock (or that the only summer 2008 anime guide you bothered to check out is THAT’s where the bloggers’ comments about it are all homophobic and doesn’t really do this series justice), you would know that Antique Bakery is not BL, or at least, not like your typical BL which is almost immediately associated with Buttsecks and Lustful panderings. It’s Buttsecks-Less! If you don’t trust me, then trust the great Omni. Or JP. Or other ones who have read the manga and know what it’s really about. (That Antique Bakery review by Floating_Sakura of Manganews is by far the best I’ve seen)

To quote an excerpt from another wonderful review of Antique Bakery from Slightly Biased Manga (for those who are too lazy to click on the above links and read them):

…But it’s not a Boy’s Love series! Fumi [the author] likes to tease cause she knows that’s what you think she does. Mostly it’s a lot like Flower of Life where random events and conversations carry the series. A lot of the stories deal with the customers at the bakery and random little events in their lives, some deal with the backstories and lives of the three that work at the bakery, and the conversations at the bakery itself are interspersed with copious descriptions of every kind of delicious cake imaginable.

Emphasis on the first part to serve as a message to those who were turned off by this series simply because they thought it was BL: YOU’VE BEEN HAD. Fumi Yoshinaga must be going “JUST AS PLANNED” on you now.

As Sepherest from the gaiaonline forum aptfully puts it, “[Antique Bakery is a] fantastic dramedy with some BL elements”. Emphasis on some. Also notice that it comes after the drama comedy aspect of the show. As I’ve said in our summer preview, this show is slice-of-[cake]-life, more than anything. But I guess some of you never really believed me, did you =/ まあいいか~

Ok, so you probably read (or took a peek at) the manga, and saw these (spoiler tags, just in case):

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“OMFG. GAY LULZ” some of you might be saying right now. Taken out of context, no doubt it looks gay. Within context, well yeah it’s still gay. But the good news dear ladies and gentlemen is that the BL elements of the show doesn’t get any more worse than this, it’s not portrayed to be explicit like other BL craps out there because the scenes are not made for pandering in the first place *turns on her anti-FYG shield*

*SPOILERS ALERT*

There’s more to these pics than meets the eye. The first pic there with Ono and the uke, for example, basically proves his demonic gay charms, the reason why a renowned chef like him has been fired from so many bakeries he worked at. The next set of images show Ono getting smitten by the klutzy bishie Chikage whom he lures with his charms, and succeeds at it because Chikage is the type of guy who’s “plain too stupid to tell the gender of his crushes”, as Ara describes him. But as you can see in the last image above, Ono didn’t want to take advantage of the innocent young lad so he decides to end Chikage’s agony and just make their relationship of the platonic friendship level. And with that, Chikage is able to work in the bakery without much fuss. Later on you see some Ono x Chikage antics like that of Ouran Koukou’s Hikaru x Kaoru, as extra service to the female customers, but it’s completely harmless (less harmless than Hikaru x Kaoru’s antics even) and all for the lulz.

I think I’ve said enough about Ono already. As much as I want to talk about the other characters, I’m afraid to make this post any lengthier than it already is, so I just want to say that the other chefs in this series are equally interesting, or even more interesting than Ono.

We have the street-punk-hottie-turned-boxer-turned-chef in the person of Eiji, and the rich-kid bakery boss Tachibana who rejected Ono’s confession way back high school. These two are among the rare few guys who could resist Ono’s charms, and is the only reason why he can work so well with them without troubles. Tachibana’s past and how it affected his dealings with people also adds layers of depth to this series, and if the anime will follow the manga closely, we might just see the last few episodes dedicated to this plot. Sorry to burst your bubble but Tachibana’s past is not about a past love or such gay stuff. Click the following spoiler info if you want to know:

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It seems that I wasn’t able to resist babbling about the characters after all

But as with most character-driven slice-of-life series, others might find this boring unless you get into the characters. That’s when you’ll feel the magic of this show, when they start to grow on you I just wonder if Totali will take his love for slice-of-life to another level and take on the challenge of watching Antique Bakery. I mean, this could be considered less gay than Nabari no Oh. You won’t see any [unrealistically] gay flowery backgrounds here, that’s for sure.

I’m not sure if I’ll be blogging this, but for sure I’m gonna watch it from start to end. If we still had our old banner, this blog would’ve represented this show down to its core lol. I fail so much for not recognizing this affinity we have with Antique Bakery until Kabitzin pointed it out. On a random note, I love how the character designs are faithful to Fumi Yoshinaga’s artwork in the manga, and the SD faces are just hilarious It’s also great to see Miki Shinichirou as Ono, and Miyano Mamoru as Eiji :3

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