Customer Reviews

Antique Bakery, Vol. 1 (v. 1)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Many reviewers below seem to be suffering under the misconception that this is a yaoi manga. It is not. What it is, is a delightfull comedy/slice of life josei (adult woman) manga about 3 guys who run a bakery. Not plot driven (at least for vol. 1) it is rather a collection of viginettes about the 3 main characters and the people who visit the shop. The atmosphere is quirky and relaxed, the servings are bite-sized, elegant and delicious. Oh, i'm sorry, was I talking about the manga or the bakery? :) The pastries in the manga really do look and sound delicious - I read it while on a diet, and I was salivating all the way through.
This is good stuff people - don't pass it up. Manga with adult sensibilities is rare in this teenage manga glutted times, especially a feel-good one like this. Buy it, curl up in your favorite chair, and enjoy.

I bought this un-previewed on the basis of good reviews, art samples, and its being a Kodansha award winner. However, I will say the reason I bought it un-looked-at is because a certain major chain bookstore *wrapped it in plastic.* There's no nudity! There are two panels where 2 men are having sex, but you can only tell it because of the position of their heads and shoulders. There is also one gay kiss. Now, just browsing in the bookstore, I can pick up numerous manga with naked breasts, in fact I'd say over 60% of those available, and I can pick up Chobits, where the main character and his friends press robot women in the genital area to turn them on. Am I supposed to be too warped by this to be able to see two men kiss? Come on, people! While I would be happy with a *little* less exploitation of naked ladies, enough with the censorship already.

Anyway, I didn't buy it for the sex. Which is completely irrelevant because this is an incredibly funny character piece. Three men work together in a bakery, one of them gay, and they're a great ensemble, with dialogue worthy of Homicide: Life on the Streets (tv series). (Although there's no crime in Antique Bakery.) The description of the bakery products is absolutely luscious too, I was hungry the entire time I read this. I want to taste those caramelised pears!! And the artist obviously *loves* to draw art nouveau dishware and furniture. I was mooning over a Mucha goblet in an art book I just got, and was very surprised to see it suddenly show up in the manga I was reading. (Man, I want one of those too!!) Anyway, I think there'll be a plot in volume 2, but until then just enjoy the characters reacting to each other!

One last note: At first I didn't like how Ono responded to Tachibana so mildly. His explanation seemed believable, but only just, and kind of lame. I thought he was one of those incredibly innocent, kind creatures you only find in Japanese manga/anime, like Tohru-kun in Fruit's Basket, and I wished he'd be a little more of a gay radical. But he does get his own back, really, he's like the quiet version of Brian Kinney from Queer as Folk! It's so hilarious to see that in manga.. By the end I see him as being extremely self-possessed, and disciplined (even if he indulges himself with wild flings whenever he wants to), and observing the world, feeling above the people who feel the need to be crude. And who doesn't? Why do we laugh at Tachibana all the time? Because he never gets the women he wants and doesn't understand the art of pastry. We don't really notice it, but if you're keeping Machiavellian realpolitik score, he's a pathetic figure. Apart from being rich, but then I'm sure Ono and Eiji-san have good salaries too (I hope)...

Anyway, great manga, don't buy it for cliche sex, buy it for the writing & the art! (Although a *little* more of Ono's sex life wouldn't hurt either...he's hot...)

Okay, yes, I picked this up because I thought it would be shounen-ai/yaoi. But I was completely not disappointed (as others seem to be) that it was not really shounen-ai/yaoi at all. Yes, there is a gay character. But that's not the focus of the manga. He just happens to be gay. (He's also freaking hilarious, especially when he turns on the charm and I love him.) The writing is great (three men running a bakery and their lives) and it's sort of refreshing to be reading about older men (late 20s and early 30s) than teen angst. Highly recommended.

My eyes nearly fell out of my face when I saw the low rating that Antique Bakery received thus far. Then I realized that it was due to all the reviewers who believed this was a yaoi manga.
I think it's kind of awful to be reviewing a book based on such a silly error; sure, probably disappointing to have found the book wasn't in the genre you thought it was, but after realizing it wasn't yaoi after all, the review still should have been based on content, not a site's inability to label. Sad, but whatever.
Antique Bakery is a wonderful manga with interesting characters and set up. Kanda's reactions are priceless, and I love Ono and Tachibana with a passion. JSDAfdfjsl. Really recommended.

so okay, it's not really yaoi or shounen-ai, at least in this volume. what the manga does have is a gay guy, chef-trainee and their irreverent owner/maitre'd and one witty and exquisite writing.

that said, while the first volume mostly dishes (har har) what seems to be episodic slice-of-life scenarios, this first volume actually lays down the groundwork for the plot that will tie all of the books in this series together. i have read scanlations of this manga up til the second volume, and believe me, from what i 've gathered in the coming volumes there is more to this manga than just stand-alone chapters.

what i love about this mangaka is her complex characterization, and how she makes her characters all feel like people you would meet in real life. her writing is sharp and witty; she even pokes at the often overly-dramatic plotlines that pervades the manga industry (refer to tachibana's deduction about the relationship of their two women diners. hilarious!) and manages to make this an enjoyable read.

all three main characters are brought alive through their distinct personalities and also by their personal experiences. although one tend to dismiss tachibana (the owner) as a useless rich boy, one has to admit that out of the three, he remains the most mysterious. we know nothing of his past other than his rather remarkable intelligence and wealth, and his real motivation behind opening the bakery despite the fact that he was previously successful in his old job. then there's the burning question behind his nightly drinking binges and his apparent loneliness.

yoshinaga-sensei's art is very distinct, even bordering on the category of "acquired taste". i admit it is quite jarring after seeing so many slyph-like bishounen in most yaoi-flavored manga, but i found that her artwork grows on me. in fact, i now think that it is one of the more beautiful artwork i've seen. what i do like is that her characters' physical appearances corresponds to their ages, so there's no mistaking an 18 year-old as a 10 year-old here. their facial expressions are especially excellent; she is able to convey an emotion with just a simple glance or a quirk of eyebrow. the research she did on the pastries and also antique tableware in this manga is remarkable and exquisite. she does not shy away from drawing painstaking and intricate patterns on the china (they are apparently based on actual pieces) and the pastries look delicious enough to eat. i can't help but drool every time i read this manga! her attention to detail isn't quite showcased in this series, but if you ever have the chance to see her french-revolution manga, "gerard et jacques" you would understand what i mean.

dmp did a wonderful job in the translation for this volume, and their scratch and sniff dust cover is ingenous! although there is hardly any sex in this volume, this manga is worth picking up due to its entertaining storyline, mature themes and gorgeous art. definitely a keeper.

Like others, I was surprised to see this so widely labeled as yaoi, but at the same time I can understand it. Publishers are under pressure to label things clearly so nobody will be accidently surprised by "mature" content, and this series does loosely sit in several different genres. The stories here are probably best classifed as slice-of-life - sometimes a bit silly, but reflecting with a more mature attitude towards life's choices. For those looking for guy on guy action, probably this will be a disapointment; the only real reason that it's listed yaoi is that one of the main characters is so openly and unabashedly gay. Nothing too titillating here.
Except, of course, the cakes.
That's another genre this series touches on - the concept series. A good half of the focus lies with the confections the bakery produces, and the process of making them. Several of the stories also have an underlying theme of the love of sweets. Honestly, I was going to give this 3 stars. The pace is so sedated that it makes the story relaxed, but at the same time you only really can say you see the story moving if you look at the series as a whole. The individual volumes are pretty relaxing and set on the day-to-day running of the bakery. But the pictures and descriptions of the food here justified bumping it up to 4 stars. You can easily leave one of these feeling hungry.
The sedate pace shouldn't put readers off, because the story actually develops over the 4 volumes. Things that seemed unimportant earlier reappear to be part of a larger picture later. Given time, the backstory brushes much more serious subjects. The story, in a way, builds like a layer cake - each piece is individually light and flavorful, but they go together to make a larger product with more substance. Others have already stated that this is an award winner, but its popularity also inspired a live-action drama called simply "Antique." This series comes highly recommended, and really, at 4 volumes this light and delicious story isn't really a buying gamble.

Though Yoshinaga Fumi is a great yaoi mangaka, this is not a yaoi manga. Knowing this, you will be able to enjoy a very funny story about three colourful characters working in a bakery.

Tachibana, the owner, handsome but neglected, chose to run a bakery not because he likes sweets, but in order to be surrounded by female customers...
He is the only one who ever resisted the demonic charm of Ono, the pastry chef, who is able to make any man he likes fall in love with him.
Kanda, the young apprentice, is a former boxer and is very sensible to the art of baking - which you understand by seeing him adopting very theatrical poses whenever he eats one of Ono's pastries ^^.

A fourth character appears in the second volume who will put in jeopardy the fragile peace of the shop.

For the rest, it consists in revealing fragments of the past of each main character by confronting them to the various customers and their own stories.
Their personnalities are quite rich as always in Yoshinaga's work, and you always end up being surprised.

As for the art, even if it is a bit awkward, I really love it, it always contributes a lot to the sweetness of Yoshinaga's mangas.


Try to discover the author with this manga, and hope for her yaoi series (Gérard and Jacques, Solfège...) to be published too! They really distinguish themselves from all the other yaoi mangas I have read.

I first bought this manga on the basis of four reasons. One, I was really hoping for a yaoi manga. Two, the art was really easy on my poor eyes. Three, it was shrink wrapped and so I HAD to know what was in it. And, four, it had a strawberry scented cover!

For reason number one, I was a little sad that it wasn't yaoi, but I was happy at how funny this story is! The only think I like more than yaoi is comedy, and this definatly warmed my heart to read. So, if you like a little innuendo and a funny characters, this is the one for you!

One to reason number two. The art is really nice, at least for me anyway. Unlike most manga, the pages aren't so cluttered and the cover doesn't have bright colors on it, so it made me calm to look at the cover rather than pass out from a migrain. Also, since it's from DMP, it's also larger than regular "standard" sized manga...so I wasn't afraid of breaking the spine of the book like certain other manga (i.e. Mixx's Sailor Moon)

Now...reason 3. I'm actually NOT quite so sure why this was shrinkwrapped. There was one kiss ( m-f) and about two panels of hinted homosexual sex. And, that was about it. I mean, there was more hinting in Gravitation than in this thing. I think the reasons that it got shrink wrapped was 1) to make sure people didn't scratch-n-sniff the cover too much and 2) to make sure people didn't read it and start drooling on the pages. Seriously...after reading this manga, I wanted cake. Really bad.

Ok. Reason 4. Come on, it's got a friggin scratch-n-sniff cover! How could you NOT like that! Not to mention it's a dust jacket so you can take it off, which is kind of nice when you take it with you and you don't want to loose the cover, so you leave it at home. And, it smells of yummy strawberries and everyone knows that girls love men and strawberries, well, most anyway.

I love this manga beyond humanly belief and I simply can't wait until the next volume!

I just bought the first volume of this series and I do not agree with everyone about it being a Yaoi manga. Only one of the 3 main characters is gay not all of them. I loved reading about all the yummy desserts in this manga (this manga made my mouth water because of all the detailed descriptions and pictures of desserts, lol) To me, this is a refreshing manga about real life situations. I love Tachibana : )

Tachibana thinks all sweets taste like sugar. For someone who doesn't have a sweet tooth, he's picked an ironic career by opening up his own bakery.

Antique Bakery is one of Digital Manga's most popular series and one of the more well known manga titles out there. It's won the Kodansha Manga Award and has been made into an anime now available in America through Right Stuf. The story follows the lives of several men who work in a bakery, and each man has his own very distinct personality.

The manga skips around in time a bit, which can be a little disconcerting, but this eventually smooths out. The opening scene has Tachibana as a high school student thoroughly rejecting his schoolmate Ono with a homophobic slur. After that we move on to the boxer Eiji, who is no longer able to box, even though that's really what he wants to do. Eventually Tachibana, Ono, and Eiji will all end up working at the Antique Bakery.

While the beginning skips around and shows us various things, the manga gets stronger toward the end, when it concentrate on Tachibana and Ono, who are now both working at the bakery. Tachibana still remembers rejecting Ono after Ono said he loved him, and now Tachibana feels guilty for his behavior back then. Ono, ironically, recalls that a boy once rejected him, but doesn't realize that it's his boss. Antique Bakery has a light shonen-ai air to it, meaning it teases and alludes more than it shows.

The artwork can look sparse. The characters always look fine, but oftentimes there is no background, only blankness. That's an art style, so it's not a bad thing, but I will say I like seeing more detailed backgrounds. Characters sometimes get squarish faces, yet mostly they're more realistic-looking (in terms of manga being realistic-looking, that is). There are some really detailed descriptions of the food being served at the bakery, which can make it hard to read without getting hungry. Tachibana seems to be the only one immune to the great cakes Ono creates.

The beginning of Antique Bakery does feel a little shaky with so much going on and the time skips, but if readers stick with it, they'll see why it's become such a popular series. This is a series driven by the characters, and what happens earlier on does come back later. For instance, there's talk about kidnapping in here, which might seem really incidental at first, but is actually important to the story.

Reviewed by Danica Davidson