Antique Bakery

Antique Bakery (Seiyou Kotto Yougashiten) is a manga, or Japanese magazine, that was created by Fumi Yoshinaga. Yoshinaga is a well-known mangaka who writes mangas mostly about boys. She has had several of her manga works licensed for release in the United States. Antique Bakery was first released in 1999 and won the Kodansha Manga Award in 2002. It was turned into an anime drama and ran on Fuji TV in 2001.

Synopsis

Eiji Kanda is a an amazing boxer. He discovers, though, that he is going to permanently damage his eyes and is told that he has to quit boxing. One evening, while he is walking on the road, upset about his fate, he finds the Antique Bakery Shop. It is open much later than it should be, and he goes in, curious. Two people are there, Tachibana and Ono. Ono wants Tachibana to tell him which cake tastes better, but he can not tell the difference. Eiji has a sweet tooth and tells him that he will taste the cakes for him. He falls in love with the delicious cakes and vows his loyalty to Ono, begging Ono to allow him to be an apprentice. Ono agrees.

A sports writer, Momoko is trying to find Eiji so that she can write about his last match. She can not find him, even though she discovers that he is no longer boxing. Sitting at her desk, she asks one of her co-workers to bring her some cakes from a bakery in the area. When the co-worker comes back, he sees Eiji’s photo on her desk and remarks that he has seen Eiji at the bakery he just went to. Momoko heads to Antique’s. There are dozens of different stories, each about Ono and Eiji trying to create cakes in order to satisfy customers.

Characters

• Keisuke Tachibana – Tachibana is the owner of Antique Bakery. He also works as a waiter. He rebuffs Ono’s attraction to him, and seems uncomfortable by it. In Tachibana’s past, he came from a very wealthy family. He was kidnapped by a man when he was young and only remembers that the man who kidnapped him had a love of cake. Because of this, his captor fed him cake every day. His captor was never caught, and Tachibana has lost any taste he had for sweets.

• Yusuke Ono – Ono is known for being an amazing baker, and an amazingly outright gay man. Whenever he falls for a man, they fall for him back. The co-workers end up fighting over him and then he gets fired for starting the problem. Ono is also scared of women.

• Eiji Kanada – Eiji is a boxer who had to quit boxing and ended up becoming a baker’s apprentice under Ono. He has a huge sweet tooth and is one of the few men that Ono is not attracted to. He lives with one of his ex girlfriends, who is a nurse.

• Chikage Kobayakawa – Chikage is a friend of Tachibana from his childhood. He was sent by Tachibana’s parents in order to keep an eye on Tachibana and to watch out for him. He is a clumsy waiter and has a crush on Ono. He does not believe that Ono feels anything for him, but Ono cares for him as well.