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Antique Bakery (西洋骨董洋菓子店, Seiyou Kotto Yougashiten?) is a manga by Fumi Yoshinaga depicting the lives of four men who work in a small bakery. It won the 2002 Kodansha Manga Award for shōjo and is being published in English by Digital Manga Publishing. A Japanese TV drama, with the title Antique or Antique Cake Store, was adapted from the manga. The drama ran on Fuji TV in 2001.

Storyline of the Television Drama

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. There is the notable addition of Itsuki Momoko, a female sports journalist who appears in the first episode of the series.

The series begins with focus on Eiji, who is a "genius boxer" who can win any match he sets his mind to. At the end of a particularly good match, he and his coach settle in for a debriefing, in which his coach informs Eiji that he will have to quit boxing because of the danger of his retinas becoming permanently detached. Eiji, with great sorrow, leaves the world of boxing and settles in with one of his ex-girlfriends who works as a nurse at the local hospital.

On a jog one night, Eiji comes across the Antique Bakery shop, which is curiously open despite the late hour. He ventures inside, to find Tachibana and Ono in the middle of a dispute; Tachibana is incapable of judging the quality of Ono's cakes, saying that they all taste sweet and they all taste the same. Eiji jumps at the opportunity to sample the cakes, having the sweet tooth that he does, and is immediately enraptured by the taste and the quality of Ono's cakes. He pledges his undying loyalty to Ono, begging the latter to take him on as his apprentice. Ono, sensing a true passion for cakes in the young man, agrees to take him on.

Meanwhile, Momoko is having a hard time tracking Eiji down. Assigned to write about Eiji's (last) boxing match, she was so inspired by his performance that she chased after him to his locker room, only to be told by Eiji's coach that Eiji was not going to be boxing anymore. While stuck in a writer's block at the newsroom, a slightly amorous co-worker brings her some cakes from a local bakery somewhere. Seeing Eiji's picture on one of Momoko's research articles, the co-worker mentions that he saw that same face at the bakery he had just been to, and pulls out Antique's business card from his pocket. Intrigued, Momoko decides to investigate, and decides to visit the bakery herself.

The series then launches into an episodic sequential arc in which each episode addresses the trials and tribulations of its various customers.

The first customer who we see is a young woman who is about to be married. She orders a wedding cake from Antique. When the wedding cake is finished and she is asked to come in and pick it up, she acts strangely. It is later revealed that her rich and affluent lover had dumped her once he found out that she used to be a bartender.

Another character is an older policeman/salaryman who comes in, almost daily, to purchase Antique's "latest creation." Being an extremely stoic and serious cake connosieur himself, he will not accept anything besides the best that Antique has to offer, and when Eiji subs in for Ono one day, he refuses to buy anything.

There is an episode in which a desperate mother comes to Antique Bakery with instructions for Ono to bake her daughter a "Star Cake." Ono tries many times and each time his cake is rejected by the woman's daughter. Eiji eventually goes to deliver the cake to the daughter, who is in the hospital, and has been sick for a very long time. She still rejects the cakes that Ono bakes, and Eiji tells her that she should come to the bakery herself and try to bake her own cake. We learn that the girl has wanted to be a cake master all her life but will never be able to attain her dream because she is dying of some terminal disease. Nonetheless, Antique Bakery lets the girl jobshadow them for a day, and girl bakes her own "Star Cake" with help from Ono and Eiji. A few days later after the jobshadow, the parents come to Antique Bakery to inform them that their daughter has passed away.

There is a couple; the man is a rising boxer, the woman is pregnant with his child. She wants him to give up boxing in order to provide for the baby, and he is faced with a decision whether to box or to give up on his girlfriend. In the end, he decides that he will do whatever they both think is best for the family, and she decides that she will let him continue to box because it's the one thing that he loves to do.

Another character is a young woman who comes to Antique Bakery and stares at the goods, but never orders anything. Tachibana mistakenly supposes that she is a model trying to make it big in Tokyo. The truth is, the young woman has been dieting all her college life ever since she fell in love with a classmate who never returned her feelings. Trapped in a vicious cycle of dieting, she comes to Antique bakery and salivates over the display goods, only to run out of the bakery each time in desperation when her desire to eat overcomes her. One day she faints in the store, and upon restoring her back to her normal self do the workers at Antique find out her "secret." She overcomes her anorexia and indulges herself in cake, and becomes a regular at Antique.

The final of Antique's mainstay customers is a young, awkward, socially-challenged man who comes to the Bakery to look at the pretty girls, because his household only includes his bitter mother and his nagging granny. He becomes smitten with the previously-anorexic young woman and spends most of his time trying to work up his courage to tell her that he likes her. In the end of series, he manages to confess a number of times, but the screen goes to black and we are treated to a series of subtitles bemoaning the frustration that we will never be able to see what her true reaction is. (This is one of the more surreal moments in the drama)

Our gang has its own share of problems and convoluted pasts.

It is revealed that Eiji is an orphan, and his only father figure is the coach who works at the boxing gym. He also turns out to be very good with woman, having won many girlfriends in the past with a simple line-- "you should be my woman." Eiji's development is clear as the series progresses-- he goes from a brash and often hot-headed fighter to a calmer, more restrained personality, learning patience as well as he learns the craft of cake-making.

Chikage, or "Kage," as he is called by the cast, begins his role in the series by literally "shadowing" Tachibana (orders from Tachibana's family for Kage to take care of Tachibana) and staking himself in his car outside the Bakery with his windows rolled up. He later works as a waiter in the restaurant. Kage calls Tachibana "my lord," in reference to the fact that they grew up together as children and often enacted period pieces together. Kage is also revealed to be the father of a tall young girl whom he fathered with a woman who had proposed to *him.* (They divorced soon after as the mother thought that Kage was "too soft.") Kage runs into emotional trouble when his daughter tells him that she will have to move away to Hungary to study at music school with her mother and stepfather, but that she wants to stay with Kage. Kage tells her to take advantage of this opportunity and encourages her to go, despite the great pain it causes him. This is where the series diverges from the manga; in the manga, his daughter stays on with him, while in the series, she flies away to Hungary.

Tachibana's story remains consistent to the manga; he is the son of a rich family and was kidnapped when he was very young. The only thing he remembers about his stay with the kidnapper is the fact that the kidnapper brought him cakes every day to eat. Though he is handsome and funny and witty, he never seems to be able to keep a girlfriend, as demonstrated by his long line of breakups in the past.

Ono's story differs quite drastically from the manga. When Ono was very young, he nearly died from a bike accident in the street if his brother had not been there to push him out of the way of the car. However, Ono's older brother lost the use of his legs as a result of saving Ono. Ono's psychological distance is exacerbated by a troubled romantic past as well. A rather pretty young woman comes from time to time to see if Ono is around (but he never is). It turns out that in his past, he had dated this young woman who had broken his heart. The young woman, at the time, had been dating Ono's older brother who was a professor at the university. The one semester the professor went away to research abroad, the young woman had become lonely and had found a new boyfriend for herself in Ono, whom she met on the subway. When Ono's older brother came back from his research abroad, the young woman dated the both of them, but neither one of them knew about the other. The day the professor decided to introduce the young woman to his younger brother was the day the young woman's duplicitousness was exposed; Ono never could love or trust anyone again after he found out that his girlfriend had been dating his brother all along.

The series progresses, little by little, with each of the character's aforementioned "secrets" becoming more exposed as the drama plays out. In the main story, Momoko plays a key role; she does not inform any of the Antique workers of her intent to interview Eiji about his vocational change, but chooses instead to eavesdrop and observe from the side. When her editors finally publish her story, certain changes have been made to make it sound like Eiji has, in effect, given up on himself and has resigned his former glorious boxing career to the menial job of being a waiter and a cook at some unacclaimed bakery. When Eiji reads this he becomes quite incensed, but cools down shortly after Momoko reveals that it was her who wrote the article and that she had never intended for it to come out the way it did.

In the series, Momoko also develops a massive crush on Ono, who seems to have a problem with "dealing with women." Toward the end of the series, she asks him out on a "practice" date (after hearing about his troubled romantic past, she volunteers to become a sort of "practice girlfriend" so that he can venture out into the dating world again.

When Christmas rolls around, everybody is in good cheer; many of the customers' troubles have resolved, and the bakery is well on its way to being a reputable establishment. However, the group must inevitably split up and head their individual ways. Kage receives another marriage offer from an aggressive female candidate, and being the 'yes' man that he is, obligingly goes along with her. Ono recommends that Eiji attend a Paris culinary arts school to train his immense potential, and after lengthy debate, Eiji agrees. Ono leaves as well, citing his reasons to sexual harassment. Ono's beautiful eyes and piercing gaze had enraptured more than one male co-worker at all the previous establishments he worked at, leading to many unwanted advances (Ono could not understand why this was so, his intentions were always innocent). Ono denies being gay, and tells the audience that he took on the job at Antique because he heard that the boss only had eyes for women.

Yet in a strange "flashback" scene during Ono's soliloquy, Tachibana arrives in the kitchen with a great flourish and a huge bouquet of roses, sweeping Ono up into a fierce and passionate embrace, much to Ono's surprise; Ono cites his reason for leaving as one in order to avoid conflict and confusion with Tachibana, yet another male coworker who has fallen in love with Ono.

Some time passes. At the end of the series, the characters reunite on Christmas Eve. Kage comes back to "Italian Antique," the newly remodeled "Antique," his wife having divorced him... again. Tachibana is also single, as the girl he had been dating also left him. Ono is still unattached and ambiguously homosexual (or not), and Eiji has just won the silver medal for dessert-making at his culinary arts school (clarification needed). The four of them gather in celebration of Momoko's new book, "Antique," which chronicles their individual lives and the experiences all of them have shared while working at the bakery.