Seiyou Kottou Yougashiten: Antique

Even though he is the top salesman at his company, Keiichirou Tachibana decides to quit his job to open a bakery. While looking over résumés for a head patissier, one name sticks out in particular: Yuusuke Ono, the young man who confessed his feelings to Keiichirou in high school—and whom Keiichirou harshly shot down. Now, Yuusuke is known both as a genius patissier for his skills in the kitchen, and for possessing a demonic charm that attracts even straight men into his bedroom.

Despite their shared past, Keiichirou hires Yuusuke and starts working on making the bakery a success. Before long, the pair is joined by former boxer Eiji Kanda, who is searching for a new career after an injury forced him to retire early. Everything is looking up for the newly-opened bakery named Antique—but the ghosts of the employees' pasts threaten to upset their simple lives.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Kobayakawa, Chikage Main

Hanawa, Eiji Japanese

Ono, Yuusuke Main

Miki, Shinichiro Japanese

Tachibana, Keiichirou Main

Fujiwara, Keiji Japanese

Kanda, Eiji Main

Miyano, Mamoru Japanese

Nobuyuki, Shimada Supporting

Atsushi Supporting

Taniyama, Kishou Japanese

Sakaki, Sakurako Supporting

Honda, Takako Japanese

Ono, Nagako Supporting

Sonozaki, Mie Japanese

Kaedeko Supporting

Kasai, Tomomi Japanese

Yoshioka Supporting

Kashii, Shouto Japanese

Hosokai, Kousuke Producer

Saitou, Hiroyuki Producer

Okumura, Yoshiaki Director, Storyboard

Hayase, Hiroyuki Sound Director

Reviews

Mar 27, 2009

kiriska

Recommended

In which a man still has traumatizing memories of being kidnapped and forced to eat cake, so he opens up a cake shop in hopes of catching his long-ago tormenter. ...Seriously.

STORY - The absurdity of the above summary still surprises me sometimes, but if nothing else, I have to give Antique Bakery props for being unique. The bakery element is pretty original in itself, but I was more impressed to see an easygoing comedy/slice of life-ish series involving mostly-ordinary, adult characters in their thirties. That Tachibana has reoccurring nightmares involving cake is very, very laughable to me, but thankfully, even though that could be considered ... the main plot of the series, it usually takes a backseat to the everyday shenanigans around the bakery, which I find infinitely more entertaining. I don't really think the series would have lost much if the kidnapping cake trauma had been left out, honestly, but I suppose that's one of the few things that makes this series stand out a little, and Tachibana needed some weird kind of reason to quit his well-paying job to start a bakery.

A lot of people label this series shounen-ai, but I really don't think it is. I mean, yeah, there's a gay character, but there is no romantic center to the story at all. Ono just happens to be gay -- he's a "magical gay," but whatever; he has a few one-episode subplots (including, unfortunately, the first episode), but it's nothing consequential to the rest of the story. Tachibana is insistently straight, so it's really not that important at all. Antique Bakery wouldn't be all that different if Ono was closeted or hetereosexual instead. I guess that's another thing that makes the series unique though -- a gay character without a gay subplot.

Beyond the cake, the shenanigans themselves aren't all that original or of a particularly high quality. They're passable, but that's about it.

CHARACTERS - Tachibana is the only vaguely interesting character in the entire series. Though I'll probably always find the source of his nightmares hilarious, the personality that results is entertaining enough. As a privileged son, Tachibana can pretty much do whatever he wants. He gives no reason for wanting to start a bakery, but those around him accept it. Really, even he doesn't think much about the half-hearted desire to catch the man who kidnapped him; it stems from his frustration at the gaps in his memory more than any want of vengeance or retribution. I think that lack of hatred towards his tormenter and his general easy come, easy go attitude is what makes Tachibana attractive as a character. Then again, his tormenter tormented him by endlessly feeding him cake.

The rest of the cast is pretty stereotypical. Ono is a flamboyant gay man who has the retardedly cheesy talent of making other men fall for him. Eiji is a simple-minded, ex-boxing champion who really, really loves cake. Chikage is the village idiot. All of them have backstory that's tossed around to spice up a few episodes, but none of it really interested me since they seemed more like excuses for the characters to be situated in the bakery than anything else. None of them have much in the way of lasting conflict, and none of them change, so at the end of the day, I just don't care.

ARTSTYLE & ANIMATION - The art style's pretty generic, and I found the occasional transitions to chibi forms rather jarring. There are also random bursts of flowers and other weird shoujo backdrops, but you kind of get used to it after a while.

The opening animation is pretty original and cute, though I wouldn't think that "cute" really suits Antique Bakery. The ending animation is much more generic and rather unimpressive. The animation in the series itself surprisingly disappointing. All of the cake and fancy desserts and baked goods in the series are gorgeous, which is appropriate, but that's about all that's worth praising, sadly. From afar, the backgrounds don't look so bad, but closer inspection reveals many of them to be computer-generated and very clunky-looking. The character animation is cheap and flat and the shading is absolutely terrible -- I shouldn't be able to see all the Photoshop brush strokes, seriously. It's not clean at all. The characters and background don't integrate at all and the whole thing is just a visual mess. The cakes are pretty, but when they don't look like they belong in the same scene as everything else, something's wrong.

MUSIC - I'm not particularly fond of the opening theme. The bouncing, upbeat sound is appropriate for the silliness that encompasses much of the series, but I didn't really feel as if it fit with the accompanying animation for the opening. The end theme is a bit better though and provides a decent, thoughtful tone for the end of each episode. Despite this though, neither songs are very memorable. Maybe I'm just not a fan of CHEMISTRY? The score for the series is comprised mostly of piano and classical music. As a pianist, I suppose I'm biased, but I really loved the piano tracks in Antique Bakery -- for the calmer scenes, they're very soothing, relaxing and just all around nice to listen to; for the more dramatic scenes, they're loud and accompanied by urgent violins. Everything fits well.

VOICE ACTING - Pretty average, though I was surprised to find yet another credit to Mamoru Miyano, who does the voice of Eiji. The man has quite the impressive range and portrays his character well without invoking thoughts of the other (rather prominent) roles he's voiced. I was also pretty fond of Keiji Fujiwara as Tachibana, though it's easier to spot the similarities in the voice to his other roles.

OVERALL - Antique Bakery is not a great series, and it certainly isn't for everyone, but it isn't a complete waste of time either. Really, I don't think there's much to say beyond that.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Apr 24, 2025

LunaPKL

Mixed Feelings

A light anime that reminds me of Bartender, just a mellow anime celebrating desserts. The MC opens a cake shop with his childhood friend to catch a killer, however if you're expecting a deep mystery or a compelling BL romance, then this isn't it. It's just a light anime about four guys running a cake shop, every episode also shows off some of the prettiest sweets I've seen. The ending is a bit unsatisfying, but you'll have fun if you don't take it too seriously. One downside is if you don't like the opening song then don't bother watching it, since every scene either has ... the instrumental version as piano or violin. I loved the opening song so I didn't mind, but by episode 8 it was too big not to notice. Also I have to stress, THIS IS NOT A ROMANCE. There are BL characters and BL scenes, but this anime is mainly a slice of life with mystery undertones.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Jan 11, 2016

whatchamini

Not Recommended

Honestly I have no idea how anyone could give this show a score above a 5. Typically I do not even finish shows that I deem a 5 or lower, but for some reason I kept on hoping it would get better.

Nope.

TDLR: Please do not waste your time watching this anime. It is mediocre at BEST.

Story: 3
Lets be honest: The premise is stupid. A guy decides to drop everything to open a cake shop in order to one day catch the man who kidnapped him because the man made him eat cake every day. However, even with such a dumb premise, ... there can often be other good qualities or even side stories that make up for this (like romance!). However nothing saved the story. There were no romance stories, no resolution at the end of the 12 dull episodes, nothing. Just terrible all around.

Art: 3
Most of the time if an anime has really terrible art, I won't watch. But often yaoi or shonen ai stories get shafted with an animation budget, so I will give them a break. But this turned out not to even be that. One of the characters is gay, another is bi (maybe?), but there are no romance stories, so nothing to justify the terrible art. The characters often do that thing where they bubble out into cartoon versions of themselves for comedy effect, but it does it way to often and is obviously just a way to use less detailed animation for a majority of the series. Also the backgrounds???? So horrible.

Sound:3
Just okay. Honestly I can't even remember what the music was like, thats how boring it was. The voice actors did a decent job I guess, but again, nothing memorable. I certainly wasn't looking them up afterwards to see the other work they have done.

Character: 5
They did a decent job of outlining each main character and providing some background. But overall I failed to connect or really care about any of them. Again, poor art did not help.

Enjoyment: 4
I was struggling to finish all 12 episodes. I thought about quitting on ep 3, but then I thought wait maybe at least there will be a resolution to the kidnapping story. NOPE.

Overall: 4
And I am being generous with the 4. Awful anime. Don't waste your time.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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