Author / Artist:
Fumi Yoshinaga
Publisher:
Digital Manga Publishing
Ono has come a long way since the agonizing day in high school when he confessed his love to handsome Tachibana. Now, some 14 years later Ono, a world-class pastry chef and outed playboy has it all. No man can resist Ono's charms (or his cooking skills!) but he has just found a new position under a man named Tachibana. Can this be the only man who resisted his charms, and if so, will the man who once snubbed the "magically gay" Ono get his just desserts? And how in the heck did a former middleweight boxing champion wind up as Ono's cake boy? Digital Manga happily serves up the opening volume of Antique Bakery.
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Thu, 01/07/2010 - 22:23 — Anonymous
Pull Quote:
Here, Fumi Yoshinaga, take my money! Please! You can have it all if you keep producing manga as consistently good as every single page of all the volumes I’ve read from you so far! I actually had my doubts at the beginning of this one. I liked the focus on the bakery at first, but the story jumped around so much at the beginning it was hard for me to place the characters and link them to the brief glimses of the past I got. It was a really unique technique though, and I admired it.
Mon, 11/09/2009 - 11:20 — Anonymous
Pull Quote:
Welcome to the Antique Bakery, where passions are high, the kitchen is cooking, and Tachibana just cannot stand the heat. And it's his own damn kitchen.
Sun, 11/08/2009 - 22:44 — Anonymous
Pull Quote:
Like the best of their desserts, this story is subtle, requiring attention to the connections, which must be appreciated over time and with a certain delicacy of taste. With the four books done, I’ll miss the bakery and its inhabitants.
Thu, 11/12/2009 - 09:45 — swanjun
Pull Quote:
I love each of these characters, but more than that I love how skillfully and carefully Yoshinaga develops them. Instead of dumping all of the above information on us at once, we receive it in bits and pieces, with later revelations causing the significance of earlier moments to suddenly become clear. The best example of this is probably Ono’s confession to Tachibana. The first scene in the series, it remains an important moment hanging between them, and it’s not until the end of volume four that we truly understand what experiences and thoughts made Tachibana react so cruelly.
Thu, 01/07/2010 - 22:21 — Anonymous
Pull Quote:
Fumi Yoshinaga is one of the current Queens of Manga, since she’s so damn good at making comics that it’s almost unfair to all the other mangaka out there. Antique Bakery, the story of four men making decadent cakes and dealing with life’s crap in a homoerotically charged bakery, was her first work published in English, and it’s still considered one of her best and most accessible works almost ten years after its original publication in Japan.
Thu, 01/07/2010 - 22:24 — Anonymous
Pull Quote:
But the focus is on the delicious deserts served at the hot bakery that opened up in place of an old antique store, and the eccentric staff that works there. Actually, there's quite a bit of focus on the customers as well, from old high school friends who are beginning to rekindle a friendship, to middle-aged men sneaking away from their families to taste test pastries.
