Antique Bakery 2008 Full Movie

[Earlie Schwoyer]

AntiqueBakery follows the lives of the four workers at Antique, a ptisserie in residential Tokyo: store owner and manager Keiichirō Tachibana, pastry chef Yusuke Ono, apprentice pastry chef Eiji Kanda, and waiter Chikage Kobayakawa. Antique is so named because the ptisserie is located in a former antique shop, and uses antique tableware and furniture in its caf. The series focuses on the men as they encounter a variety of comedic and dramatic scenarios, often focused around workplace comedy, the creation and development of pastries, or romantic intrigue. Though the series largely proceeds as a slice of life story without an overarching plot, Tachibana's desire to find the man who kidnapped him as a child is a recurring storyline; the series climaxes with Tachibana working with the police to find a child kidnapper.

Antique Bakery was serialized in the monthly manga magazine Wings from June 1999 to September 2002.[8] Upon its conclusion, the series was collected into four tankōbon (collected volumes) published by Shinshokan. In North America, Digital Manga Publishing published an English-language translation of Antique Bakery as four volumes published from 2000 to 2002, making Antique Bakery Yoshinaga's first manga series to be translated into English.[9] Volumes in the English language release feature scratch and sniff covers.[10]

Following the conclusion of the Antique Bakery manga series, Yoshinga began writing and illustrating Antique Afterwards (それからのアンティーク, Sore kara no Antiiku), a spin-off manga published as a series of dōjinshi (self-published fan comics).[8][19] In contrast to the main manga series, Antique Afterwards is more overtly influenced by the yaoi (male-male romance, also known as boys' love or BL) genre, and has sexually-explicit content. This includes both sexual encounters merely alluded to in the original series and slash fiction-inspired scenarios that depict same-sex sexual encounters involving the series' canonically heterosexual characters;[20] for example, in one such story, three female customers tell each other improvised erotic stories involving Antique's staff.[21] Fourteen dōjinshi in the Antique Afterwards series have been created by Yoshinga.[19]

In 2001, the manga was adapted into the live-action television drama Antique: The Western Cake Shop (アンティーク 西洋骨董洋菓子店, Antku: Seiy Kott Ygashiten), which aired on Fuji TV from October 8 to December 17, 2001.[22] The series was directed by Katsuyuki Motohiro and Eiichirō Hasumi, and written by Yoshikazu Okada [ja]. Its theme song, "Youthful Days [it; ja; zh]", is written and performed by Mr. Children.[23] The series removes all depictions of same-sex romance and LGBT identity present in the original manga; for example, Ono is not gay, but has a fear of women and is romantically pursued by an original female character not present in the manga.[24]

In March 2008, Nippon Animation and Shirogumi announced that they would produce an anime adaptation of Antique Bakery, which aired on Fuji TV's Noitamina programming block from July to September of that year.[27] The series' primary production staff included Yoshiaki Okumura [ja] as series director and Natsuko Takahashi as scriptwriter; the cakes and pastries depicted in the series were designed by pastry chef Toshihiko Yoroizuka [ja].[28] The series' theme song "Life Goes On [ja]" was written and performed by the band Chemistry.[29] In North America, the series was licensed by Nozomi Entertainment, which released Antique Bakery on DVD on April 5, 2011.[30]

Antique Bakery is noted as Yoshinaga's first major commercial success as a manga artist, following a career in which she was best known as an author of boys' love (BL) and dōjinshi.[8] In Manga: The Complete Guide, writer Jason Thompson gave the manga series four out of five stars, writing that it avoids "cliched sitcom plot while managing to be both character-driven and totally hilarious," and praised its pacing, artwork, and dialogue.[1] Reviewing the series for The Comics Journal, Noah Berlatsky wrote that its "pop Freudianism is depressingly ill-advised" in regards to the tragic backstories of the primary characters, while he praised the series' art and character designs.[35] In his review for Anime News Network, Jason Thompson commended the series' simple art, and praised it as "one of the few bishonen manga which depicts gay characters and prejudice in even a remotely realistic way."[9]

Reviewing the anime adaptation for Anime News Network, Carl Kimlinger praised the series' animation and characters but criticized its romance and kidnapping subplots, writing that Antique Bakery "top-loads its plot with preposterous romantic entanglements and forces unnecessary structure onto it with Tachibana's kidnapping."[36] Cathy Yan lauded the series' voice acting in her review for Manga Bookshelf, but criticized its animation as overly reliant on CGI elements.[37]

Tomoko Aoyama has considered the depiction of cooking in Antique Bakery in relation to the Japanese concepts of hare (晴れ, used to describe things that are special and exotic) and ke (ケ, used to describe things that are mundane and trivial). While the elaborate cakes and pastries of Antique Bakery are self-evidently hare, she notes how Antique Bakery complicates the hare-ke dichotomy through its presentation of gender.[42] While male professional cooking and connoisseurship are generally regarded as hare and female cooking is seen as ke, the main characters of Antique Bakery subvert "assumptions based on age, gender, sexuality, appearance, occupation, education, class, [and] status."[42] For example, Ono is a skilled chef but is coded as female as a result of his homosexuality, while Kanda is regarded by others as cute (a feminine trait) but vulgar (a masculine trait).[43] Desserts in general are seemingly ke for being delicate and "unmanly", but their exoticism as French pastries for a Japanese clientele, as well as the level of skill and craftsmanship required to create them, renders them as hare.[43]

Akiko Mizoguchi discusses Antique Afterwards in her research of yaoi dōjinshi, noting that while most dōjinshi are derivative works created by fan artists, Antique Afterwards is notable as a fan work created by the artist themselves.[20] Mizoguchi considers the series a form of underground comics despite being created by Yoshinaga, noting that the series contains material that would be regarded as too explicit by shōjo editorial standards, and that Antique Bakery publisher Shinshokan has not acknowledged the existence of Antique Afterwards in either Wings or in the series' tankōbon editions.[20]

Antique Bakery (西洋 骨董 洋菓子店 Seiyō Kottō Yōgashiten?, "Western Antique Cake-Shop") is a manga by Fumi Yoshinaga depicting the lives of four men who work in a small bakery. It was published in Japan by Shinshokan and in English by Digital Manga Publishing. The series won the 2002 Kodansha Manga Award for shōjo manga.[2] The manga was adapted as a Japanese TV drama, with the title Antique or Antique Cake Store, that was broadcast on Fuji TV in 2001, a TV anime, airing on July 3, 2008 on noitaminA, and a Korean live-action movie.

The television series differs perceptibly from the story of the manga. While the four main male characters remain the same in many of their relationship dynamics, the BL/homosexual aspect of the original manga is significantly reduced to almost nothing.[citation needed] There is the notable addition of Itsuki Momoko, a female sports journalist who appears in the first episode of the series.

- In the manga, Ono and Chikage developed a relationship (and indeed, shared a near-kiss or two) that came close to, but was never consummated. In the series, the dynamic between Ono and Chikage is reduced to one scene where Ono gives Chikage The Look of Supposed Seduction.

- During a particularly funny scene, Eiji tries to teach the Awkward Kid how to kiss by using Ono as the model of the "girl"-- the camera angle turns away to Tachibana's horrified expression as he walks in on the three of them, and the audience never really knows for sure whether or not Eiji and Ono have kissed.

Comic Book Bin's Avi Weinrib enjoyed DMP's scratch-and-sniff covers.[10] Al Kratina found Antique Bakery "fluffy, light, and disposable".[11] Chris the 4th Pip thought the characters showed "surprising depth".[12]

Janet Houck, writing for Mania Entertainment, felt that the story of the first volume was choppy, using many flashbacks, and that the volume should have been given a higher rating due to its depiction of Ono's backstory.[13] David Welsh enjoyed the character-driven story, especially the Christmas story, which was rooted in a business perspective.[14] Jessica Brooks of Anime Jump enjoyed that although food-themed manga is usually about food preparation, instead Antique Bakery is about customer satisfaction. She also noted that Ono's homosexuality was essentially "played for laughs", although she did not feel this was a negative.[15] Tom Rosin, for MangaLife, felt that the first volume was "about cakes more than anything else", and that he felt hungry after reading Tachibana's sales pitches.[16] Katherine Dacey, writing for Pop Culture Shock, felt that the main theme of the series was a "slice of life friendship story".[17] Johanna Carlson noted that the series is faux-yaoi.[18] Robin Brenner, writing for TeenReads, noted that the series' plot is not "the point" about this manga - the funny character interactions and elegant character artwork are.[19]

3a8082e126