Manga Review: Antique Bakery

[Floating_Sakura]

Title: Antique Bakery
Author: Fumi Yoshinaga
Published: four volumes, DMP, 2005-6, USD12.95 each
Genre: Shoujo
Serialized in: Wings
Reviewed by: anitra

Antique Bakery begins as the lighthearted exploration of the convergence of various people's lives at the bakery "Antique." Tachibana, who once cruelly rejected Ono's confession of love, ends up hiring him as the chef of the bakery many years later. Ito runs into Urushihara, a junior-high-school acquaintance, and takes her to Antique to get reacquainted. Akutagawa and his wife run into each other at Antique. After a while, the story starts delving deeper into the characters, their histories, and their various "superpowers" (Ono's "demonic charm," Kanda's ability to beat up anyone and his bottomless appetite for sweets, and so on), focusing mainly on the employees of Antique, but never neglecting the peripheral characters.

The English adaptation is good overall. It suffers in the first volume from DMP's early overuse of emphasis, but this is corrected in the latter three volumes. The difficulty of conveying Japanese levels of formality in English also causes problems occasionally, particularly when contrasting Tachibana's family with other characters. Besides this, however, the translation is sensitive, doesn't draw attention to itself, and is a pleasure to read. The volumes are typical of DMP -- they are in large format, of mass-market-type paper cut somewhat raggedly, and with a glossy dust jacket. As a special bonus, the dust jackets for this series all have scratch-and-sniff dessert pictures, and volumes 3 and 4 are, to my great astonishment and delight, not perfect-bound but sewn.

One of the wonderful things about Antique Bakery is its sense of balance. The first few chapters are light and engaging, depending on humor and bustle to attract attention; the story begins to explore serious subjects only after the characterization is established, and, as serious as the subjects that it treats are (childhood trauma, the course of human relationships, and so on), it never loses the sense of lighthearted meandering that made it interesting in the first place. Similarly, it fully embraces the possibilities inherent in fantasy with its fabulous characters -- four beautiful men, each with his own impossible "superpower" (Yoshinaga never calls them that, but I think "demonic charm" qualifies as a superpower), serving delicate desserts on priceless antique platters. Despite their unlikely abilities, they manage to have very real, complex psyches. For example, Tachibana's childhood trauma, his various attempts to cope with it, and their manifestations in his interactions with others all ring true as the kind of psychological layers that people -- not just elite ex-businessmen running trippy dessert shops -- put on their pain.

The story as a whole has shape and direction: it develops itself as a connected whole from the very beginning, and maintains its identity while always avoiding simplified romantic conclusions. Tachibana's high-school rejection of Ono serves as a unifying motif, impressively avoiding being a cliché by its gradual illumination as an interaction between people. The probing of the characters -- central as well as peripheral -- to increase depth and maturity draws the story through time and to its logical conclusion.

Antique Bakery is a character piece. I forgot most of the plot about five minutes after I read it, but I know the characters as if they are my friends. It is a funny story, and that is what the plot is for, but what makes it profound and compelling is its depth of character. This has been one of DMP's most successful titles, and its popularity is the most deserved of popular works I have read.

Reviewed by: anitra
Proofed by: wintry
Edited by: Marlex