Four strangers open a bakery together and accidentally solve a murder. The show treats its gay characters like actual people with jobs and damage, not archetypes waiting for a love confession. Fourteen years after a high school rejection, Ono finally finds the one man who didn't want him, and realizes that might have been the point all along. The animation stumbles and the tone lurches between cozy and dark, but the characters are lived-in enough that you stop noticing. This is what happens when you give a BL premise to people who actually care about baking and boxing and whether a man's heart can heal.
Keiichirou Tachibana leaves his job as his company's top salesman to open a cake shop called Antique. The pastry chef he hires is Yusuke Ono, a gifted patissier and gay playboy whom Tachibana harshly rejected when Ono confessed to him in high school some fourteen years earlier. Tachibana is relieved when Ono seems not to remember him, but Ono soon starts making advances toward his new boss. Joining them is Eiji Kanda, a former boxing champion looking for a new career after an injury ended his fighting days early. The new bakery looks set to thrive, though pieces of each man's past keep threatening to disrupt their quiet routine, in a comedic slice of life story built around cake and the people who make it.
Streaming Antique Bakery legally, as of the last catalog refresh. Availability changes by region.
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