One of Antique Bakery’s best characters is Ono, the pastry chef who refers to himself as a “gay demon.” He claims to have the ability to get any man, gay OR straight, to sleep with him (and, well, does). The exception to prove the rule is the owner of the bakery, Tachibana, who actually rejected Ono in high school.

Anyway, in the 2001 live-action drama based on the manga, titled Antique, Ono was made non-gay. And they also pulled most of Tachibana’s backstory, which provides a significant amount of the tension (Tachibana’s backstory leads to Tachibana’s high school problems which leads to his seriously mean rejection of Ono; his backstory also leads to his establishing the bakery, etc).

So! The news here is that, according to ANN, publisher Shinshoukan has assured fans that the Antique Bakery anime will retain Ono as a gay character (and, in fact, the only gay character, except a couple of his boyfriends who make appearances. THIS IS NOT A YAOI).

So yeah. Good news for fangirls: Ono stays gay! Bad news for narrow-minded fanboys who are too uncomfortable with their own sexuality to be okay with a gay character in their animu: Ono stays gay!

…Just sayin’.

According to anime!anime!, Fumi Yoshinaga’s shoujo (and just-barely-not-BL) masterpiece Antique Bakery, about a troupe of colorful characters who run a bakery, is being made into an anime. It’ll be 12 eps long and run this July.

I hope it’s well-done, and I hope people won’t be complete morons and assume it’s yaoi. It DOES have a gay character, and because Digital Manga Publishing released it in English it generally gets shelved with the yaoi, but there’s only hints at any actual couplings; it’s really just an excellent character study of its four main characters.

HEAR ME PEOPLE? It may still not be your kinda thing, but don’t write it off too fast!@#$

So that last article’s mention of Fumi Yoshinaga reminded me to do this…here’s the final list of the underrated manga articles I did for Fanboy.com. In no particular order:

• The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (I said MANGA)
• Yubisaki Milk Tea
• Lunar Legend Tsukihime
• Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service (I beat Shaenon to it!)
• Kodomo no Jikan (yes, really)
• Ouran High School Host Club (yes, really)
• Bokurano
• Antique Bakery
• Hajime no Ippo
• Gintama