Antique Bakery Volume 2 Review

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Antique Bakery Volume 2 ReviewThe first volume of ANTIQUE BAKERY introduced us to the locale itself - a French-style patisserie set up in a former antique shop - and some of its customers. In this second helping author/artist Fumi Yoshinaga concentrates on the bakery's staff, three of whom we've already met: the owner, Tachibana, raffish son of a wealthy family; Ono, pastry chef and "gay of demonic charm"; and Kanda, the ex-boxer with a passion for sweets. (The opening story includes a notably unglamorous view of Kanda's past life in a biker gang). The trio becomes a quartet with the entrance of Chikage Kobayakawa, a combination bodyguard/servant dispatched by Tachibana's family. Although Chikage comes on like a modern ninja - impeccable suit, impenetrable dark glasses - he's so physically and socially awkward that it's Tachibana who winds up as an exasperated life-coach-cum-nanny. Ono, however, gets caught in a trap of his own making when he sets out to seduce the handsome lummox and then realises, almost too late, how easy it can be to hurt someone who's truly innocent and sincere.
The next episode is pure comedy with a trimming of culinary expertise, as the bakery gears up for a busy Christmas season: Tachibana realises that his idea of making deliveries dressed up as Santa may be counter-productive, while back at the shop the others cope with a stream of customers - including a group of chattering, brainless "kogals" - and discuss how make the perfect buche de Noel. However, the volume ends on a darker note as Tachibana discloses just why his family are so anxious about him... A little four-page "extra" illustrates personality through food preference, from Tachibana's exaggeratedly masculine taste for beer and spicy food to Kanda's lunch of butter-cake, gulped down between practice sessions at the gym.
It's a little unfortunate that Amazon chooses to describe this title as "yaoi", since readers looking for explicit man-on-man action are going to be disappointed. ANTIQUE BAKERY, rather, is character-driven comedy, with touches of bitter-sweet melancholy and a basic psychological realism that skew it toward the adult market (as does Yoshinaga's art, which tends to concentrate on figures with minimal background detail: shoujo manga cliches such as floating stars or flowers are used strictly for humorous effect). On the technical side, DMP has done a fine job of printing and presentation, and Sachiko Sato's translation makes the dialogue a pleasure to read. One tiny gripe: it would be nice if DMP invested in a Del Rey-style notes section somewhere in the book, since some references aren't entirely clear by themselves. For example, a panel of Chikage sneezing on p.41 doesn't mean a lot unless the reader is aware of the Japanese superstition that you sneeze when other people are talking about you. Again, when Kanda spoils his first attempt at a buche de Noel and assumes that he should "go into the mountains and make hundreds of buches de Noel until I've unlocked its secrets", Yoshinaga is poking fun at the genre of strenuous work-as-character-building-activity manga described by Frederick Schodt in his MANGA! MANGA!, but a casual reader mightn't get the joke. (Ono supplies a refreshing dose of common sense: "That would just be a waste of ingredients... I'll just explain now"). However, this would simply be the cherry on the cake - so to speak - for one of the most satisfying titles available today.Antique Bakery Volume 2 Overview

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