Homo Bakery Makes me Hungry

No seriously, watching this show makes me want to go out and buy some cakes. *drool* In order to convey the degree of my lust hunger, delicious pictures following the jump.

subliminal advertisement

During my pursuit of furthering my animu guru wisdom, I came across Antique Bakery. I remembered that it had to do with gays and cakes, which is always a winning formula, so I gave it a spin, and what a ride it had been.

you are not giving him much of a choice dude

First episode had basically nothing to do with the bakery, but about how much of a raging gay the chef is and how the protagonist is the only man who was able to resist the fragrance of the forbidden fruit that the chef radiates in the past. Which is pretty cool and all, but is pretty damn misleading as well, because I almost thought the cake was a lie. Almost.

subliminal advertisement strikes back

The show then proceeds to introduce the fabulously raging staff working at the bakery: “straight man” Tachibana, “gay of demonic charms” Ono, “sweets fucking now or I ragequit” Eiji, and “my air-headedness is supposed to be a moe point” Chikage. It’s a good thing only one of them is gay, or this paradise would drop to hell very quickly.

drenching in the rain: the gay men version’s background of roses and sparkles

At various points, Ono’s raging personality causes troubles for the shop. Especially for Chikage, who was not fortunate enough to be born with immunity against raging demonic charms, and was only saved the virginity of his ass due to his air-headed naivety. Eventually they settle down as co-workers and evaded the BL route. I guess the viewers are supposed to take it as some sort of character growth, with the whole bond-beyond-sex thing going on, but I would still prefer the Ono x Chikage ending. Damn flags, where is the save point?

revenge of the subliminal advertisement

Every episode is a kind of stand-alone arc that focuses on one of the staff in the shop; in other words, episodic story telling that does not directly relate to each other except for the reoccurring main characters. This style has powerful advantages, but comes with great risks as well. On one hand, the show is allowed to go very in-depth into a single character without needing to worry about relevance to the rest of the series. However, because there’s so little relations to each other, every episode MUST be an interesting story in and of itself (for excellent example of a good episodic approach, see Mushishi, which I will do a review on sometime after I rescue my old HDD). In terms of being interesting, the story is like a shitty roller coaster: filled with ups and downs, but generally fail to have the final push that distinguishes the awesome, and why I made the analogy in a previous post that “the plot is like tying a bunch of different sized M&M on a string and call it a diamond necklace”.

hungry yet? because I am

If you are into cakes and delicious action filled in one screen, then this show might prove to be a nice appetizer. Or maybe you just want some of that FujiKei x WakaNorio voice action, which is sure fine too. If you want cake action, go watch yakitate japan or something. In summary, I offer this screen shot:

I see what you did there

PS. Someone, go open an Antique Bakery near my place, I would like to purchase some of that homo cake service. Sigh, I should probably go to bed before I start bingeing at 12am…

just to drive the point home

dedicated to George