so says the legendary patissier
Click to view1. If Antique Bakery the drama was the Kanda Eiji show, Antique Bakery the anime is the Tachibana Keisuke show. We start with Tachibana getting nightmares while listening to a broadcast of Mysterious Unsolved Case Files, and that continues to be a theme throughout the first episode, even though in the manga it took until the second volume for us to realize that he has a kidnapping past. So ditto to what I said about House of Five Leaves-- I really don't like things that start with a flashback sequence, and especially not with Antique, because Antique was very much a bait-and-switch-- we thought we were getting a light-hearted slice-of-life with cake romp, and instead we landed in Yoshinaga Fumi world.
(Also, I didn't realize, but Kei-kun --> K-kun. Very clever.)
2. Oh god the animation-- what the hell, why was no other studio willing to pick up Antique? The characters look like they're constantly flatly superimposed on rendered backgrounds, and the CG is slopped on. The only animation I like is the opening credits because the cutout idea is amazing, but the actual animation is painful to watch.
3. Not to mention, the use of the chibis? The show needs to make up its mind whether it wants to be dramatic or whimsical. It can't be both. You can't start us off with Tachibana having nightmares and drinking red wine while in silk pajamas, and then skip to a chibi sequence with Tachibana. Take the "interview" scene between Tachibana and Ono. Tachibana shouldn't have had a super-deformed face until after Ono confessed he was a "gay of demonic charm." And he shouldn't have had one at the bar at all, no matter what the master said. Overuse of SD faces ruins the effect.
4. ALSO, ONO WAS TAUGHT BY JEAN-BAPTISTE THAT THE THREE THINGS THAT DETERMINED THE SKILL OF A SHOP WAS THE ECLAIR, THE CROISSANT, AND THE APPLE PIE. >:E
5. No, but honestly, the animation level is so bad. The sparkling flower backgrounds, the way two characters always seem like paper puppets posed in and manipulated, the static backgrounds. I won't even get into the CG black feathers. Kyoto Animation would have done justice to the bar scene. Where did the other couples go after the introduction of Akitsu? And the awkwardness of having Ono sometimes talk to the master, sometimes talk to Tachibana, and then mysteriously make off with Akitsu to the bathroom was so stilted. In the manga, there was this implication that Ono was constantly being approached by others and having a conversation with Akitsu and was only occasionally dropping a line or two in the Master/Tachibana conversation, which adds to Tachibana's discomfort.
I did like that the studio remembered the bar was called Lolipop though. ♥ the little details. EVEN IF YOU DO IGNORE JEAN-BAPTISTE'S ADVICE.
6. I also find Eiji's introduction to be totally superfluous in this episode. I mean, do we really need to know in the first episode that there's a boxer with a detached retina? It's not like he even realizes the Antique is hiring in this episode, since chronologically, this is before Tachibana and Ono realize they can't hire a girl waitress. Would it really have killed the anime to wait until episode 2 to introduce Eiji? Eiji worked in the opening chapter of the manga only because 1) the first chapter featured the introduction of multiple recurring characters, and 2) it dropped us back? forward? in the timeline to where Eiji was hired.
This is also another one of those "don't be both dramatic and whimsical, pick one." The "You only have ramen shop connections" scene felt so dead to me in the anime, because we didn't really establish the drama of Eiji's situation in the first place. And! speaking of which! Knowing that Chikage is at Tachibana's place seems to throw off Chikage's Antique introduction, since it's no longer a surprise who he is.
7. I miss the mood of Tachibana's "coming out" scene. Because to me, that scene always spoke of, you know, Tachibana's unspoken regret that Ono was no longer in love with him, that he wasn't important enough in Ono's life as "first love" except to traumatize him permanently. (Yes, okay, this was the thesis of the one and only Antique Bakery fic I ever wanted to write, so excuse me if I sound like I'm ranting about something unimportant.) But in the anime, Ono doesn't jump immediately to the practical conclusion ("Well, it'll be fine if it's you; then I won't get fired!") and there's that additional Ak-kun sequence after the conversation where you realize Tachibana is just thinking of the whole thing as an extension of his abduction trauma. Whaaaaat. He had a lot more guilt about being a shithead in the manga; it wasn't all about the abduction, okay. It doesn't actually explain everything about him. Though I guess it makes a neat package for a 12-episode anime.
(7b. As someone who's read the extended dj, god, can I tell you I was a little ;__; over their handshake this time, because I was remembering Tachibana's "we're building a castle" speech, and I was remebering Ono's monologue during "Tachibana to i otoko", and all I could think was I WILL NEVER BE YOUR BOYFRIEND, BUT IT ALSO MEANS WE WILL NEVER BREAK UP. And then to have it all swallowed by Tachibana's abduction trauma, sighhhhhhhh. It's just not the same guys. Not at all. It's so difficult to try to analyze this series separate from the extended canon of the dj. I have to keep reminding myself that we don't yet know Tachibana's been trying to date all these women and failing because he's too nice, and we don't yet know that Ono is the kind to want to monopolize the people he loves, and we don't yet know that Ono himself doesn't realize he's not yet over Tachibana, so I really shouldn't think of him as that Ono. But I still do. :<)
8. If this sounds too much like THE MANGA WAS BETTER, it's because.... the manga was better.............. And when you're working with something as fabulous as Yoshinaga Fumi, it's truly disappointing when the adaptaion falls short. And falls so far short. What I wouldn't give for this to be a Manglobe, KyoAni, or J.C. Staff project. At least the Chemistry tracks for the OP and ED are fabulous.