Yoshinaga Fumi - Antique Bakery, vol. 01-04 (Eng. trans.)

[oyceter]

People have been reccing this to me for just about forever, seeing as how it's manga about tasty pastries! Unsurprisingly, I adored the first two volumes.

I'm a little less fond of the latter half of the series, but that's more because it goes more into the personal lives of characters I don't care that much about, and it features some BL tropes that I'm not particularly fond of.

Tachibana is a rich playboy who decides to open a French-style pastry shop called Antique Bakery. He ends up hiring master patisserie Ono, who despite his prodigious talent is unemployed because he is "a gay of demonic charm" and ends up getting into troublesome romantic entanglements anywhere he works. The shop soon acquires ex-boxer Kanda, now apprentice patisseries, and Tachibana's servent/childhood friend Chikage, who is generally useless but very cute.

I love all the characters except Tachibana, which is a little unfortunate, as the last volume is all about his angst. I just don't seem to have that much sympathy for scruffy, rich playboy womanizers with angst any more.

On the other hand, I adore the other characters, and oh! The pastry porn! There's not much of a plot in the first two volumes; instead, we get looks into the lives of various Antique Bakery customers and glimpses of the day-to-day behind running the store. I loved these parts so much. They're small and quiet, and I loved that Yoshinaga included women as well.

Later on, the series gets a little too melodramatic for me, particularly when it comes to Tachibana's angsty past and Ono's angsty past love affairs.

I'm not particulary enamored of Yoshinaga's art or paneling; the paneling in particular gets very crowded by word balloons. On the other hand, I will forgive that, as the word balloons contain words like these:

This rhubarbe fraise is a tarte made of rhubarbs stewed into a sugary-sweet compote, then topped with a fluffy, sour strawberry mousse, and is a seasonal cake offered for a limited time only.

One of our recent best-selling items is the chiboust chocolat framboise -- a chocolate chiboust placed atop a layer of raspberry-flavored custard cream on a crumbly chocolate tarte shell.

And over here we have a new item today -- the pave' au caramel. A caramel-butter mousse has been paired with a biscuit base loaded with chocolate, and is a divinely rich dessert perfect for anyone who loves cakes!

Yum!

Comments

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I did like Tachibana's angsty backstory, but then I'm a sucker for that; but I also really liked the unexpected way it resolved, both the startling final scene and the point that the effects of trauma don't vanish in a neat and tidy manner even if you do manage to come to terms with what happened.

The BL trope-ness of Ono's story did bug me. But I loved that he had gay friends and went to gay bars and wasn't all, "I am not gay! I merely love other men!"

I ended up liking all four men quite a bit, and also many of the supporting cast: not immediately, but they grew on me.

But yeah, the best part was definitely the pastries. YUM.

[almeda.livejournal.com]

BL trope?

[oyceter]

Boys' love trope?

In Japan, shounen ai's actually referred to as BL but got retranslated into "shounen ai" over here (ditto with ladies' comics and josei).

[oyceter]

I loved Ono being gay! I loved how he's this unassuming, bespectacled guy in the kitchen and then goes home, mousses his hair and throws on a leather jacket!

I think one of my favorite moments of the manga was the preparation of the eclair Christmas tree thing and the spun sugar on top. Mmmmmm!

[nojojojo.livejournal.com]

::joyness:: I love Yoshinaga Fumi. I would have her babies. AB isn't my favorite of hers -- that's still Ichigenme -- but it's a close second. The pastry porn is only part of it, though reading those volumes have ruined my diet more than once. And scratch-n-sniff covers! ::glee:: My only complaint is that the story feels incomplete to me, because I did want to see Tachibana get some closure... but then that's what I like about Fumi; her endings are never predictable.

I like her art. It's unvaried -- she pretty much draws the same stock four styles of characters in every book -- but it's nice to look at once you get past that, and for me, it's the plots that keep me reading. If I have to make a choice between plot and aesthetics, I'll usually lean slightly towards plot.

Another recommend, if you liked AB -- though no pastry porn, and the characterization isn't quite as strong: Flower of Life. It's more shoujo than anything else, though really quite unclassifiable beyond that. But silly as all hell, because it kind of skewers the usual shoujo high school romance tropes.

[oyceter]

I've actually been avoiding Yoshinaga for a bit because several people told me that she often had a lot of rape or scenes very close to non-con, which I tend to dislike (ergo my dislike of the French pastry chef bit).

But yeah, rilina has been reccing Flower of Life as well, and I think I need to pick that up some time, just for the skewering of tropes. And I want her female shogun one translated!!

[ladyjax.livejournal.com]

"a gay of demonic charm"

See, those pastry chefs are a shady lot!

[jinian.livejournal.com]

I managed to find book 1 used, but now I have to WAIT until I have money again before I can order the rest! Woe!

[oyceter]

Woe!! I had to wait forever b/c my library had vols. 2-4, but not 1!

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Oy, talk about food porn...I had to go grab dinner after reading that. ;)

I just don't seem to have that much sympathy for scruffy, rich playboy womanizers with angst any more.

Well, yes, we all know that scruffy, poor, scarred, halfbreed playboy womanizers with angst are far, far more appealing.

(Especially when there are NO WEEPY UKES in sight.)

[oyceter]

Well, yes, we all know that scruffy, poor, scarred, halfbreed playboy womanizers with angst are far, far more appealing.

It is so true!

[marfisa.livejournal.com]

For a minute I thought you were talking about the half his-world's-version-of-Native-American wandering detective/fixer (sort of) Jaeger from Carla Speed McNeil's "Finder" graphic novels.* That description actually fits him to a T, except that he doesn't have any obvious physical scars. He does have a sort of aboriginal barcode-type tattoo around his wrist identifying him as a "finder" (the term his mother's Ascian/pseudo-Native American people use for what he does) around his wrist, but he keeps having to have it re-inked, because he has a sort of low-key heightened healing factor that treats the tattoo as an injury and keeps absorbing it.

*Some installments of "Finder" are also now available online. I think the url for the website is www.iightspeed.com. If it isn't, you can probably find it by googling "Carla Speed McNeil."

[estara.livejournal.com]

Maybe you'll enjoy Flower of Life more then, but it doesn't have the food fetish included.

off-topic, but I came across it just now: I found a Register.uk article on class and racism in Second Life which I believe ties in with a lot of things you guys have written about in that IBAR week. Had you read it already? http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/01/30/lily_white_and_not_loving_it/
For me it also puts Will Shetterley's opinion that class is more disadvantagous than race down.

[oyceter]

Oh, I hadn't seen that article, thanks!

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

I found this through the POC book comm. I read Antique Bakery years ago, so it's kind of fuzzy in my mind now, but I remember loving it because it wasn't BL/yaoi/whatever. It wasn't even a romance. It was a story with a queer main character, which is really, sadly rare.

And I do love her scribbly drawing style.

[oyceter]

I really do love it because it isn't your usual BL/yaoi. I mean, she does throw in some fairly standard BL/yaoi tropes here and there (particularly the French pastry chef), but in general, I love that it's just about pastries and the shop.