Manga for People Who Don't Like Manga: Antique Bakery

Welcome to the second edition of “Manga for People Who Don’t Like Manga.” Do big eyes make you look away in horror? Prefer superheroes to magical girls? Than this is the column for you.

A note about the list: this isn’t a top ten list where placement denotes quality. It’s really more decided by which manga I grab off the shelf that day. Today it happened to be Fumi Yoshinaga’s ‘Antique Bakery.’

I have a little confession to make about ‘Antique Bakery’: I hated it at first. Maybe it’s because I’m naturally weary of critics’ darlings, but while Antique Bakery was winning awards and love from the online world, I just wasn’t feeling it. I mean, it was a nice enough slice-of-life series, but I wasn’t motivated enough to pick-up volume two.

But then I saw it on sale at a local comic book store and I gave it a second chance. And somehow, something had changed (or maybe it was me). It just clicked in a way that hadn’t before.

Tachibana is a guy with too much money and too much time. On a whim he decides to open up a bakery (he knows next to nothing about cakes). He also decides he needs the best baker in Japan. The best baker in Japan turns out to be Yusuke Ono, a gay man who went to high school with Tachibana (Japan is a small place). Ono had had crush on Tachibana back in school, which Tachibana rudely rebuffed.

If you’re yaoi-sense are going off, calm down. Ono may be a gay character, but that doesn’t make this a boys-love manga. Their relationship is a professional one, though they do need to sort out personal feelings to make it work.

Eventually other characters make a place for themselves, such as boxer-turned-apprentice-baker Eiji and Tachibana’s ineffectual bodyguard, Chikage. Not to mention the regular patrons of the bakery.

I think that what did get me hooked on Antique Bakery had a lot to do with the second volume. It introduces Chikage, my favorite character, and also introduces a subplot that adds a tragic shine to Tachibana. (Minor Spoilers Ahead): When Tachibana was a child he was kidnapped. He doesn’t remember anything about the abduction, except that he was feed cake everyday (End of Minor Spoilers). After learning that, it puts Tachibana’s decision to open a bakery in a new light.

Fumi Yoshinaga uses very fine detail for things like cakes and other delicacies, but doesn’t use it so much for drawing backgrounds. Her character designs aren’t anything extravagant, but there’s a confident grace to them that sells each character.

The series is only four volumes long, but packs a lot of character development into each book. It also ends really well. Plotlines are resolved, but in a way that shows that closure comes in many different forms.

So, even if you don’t like manga, Antique Bakery is still a sweet and funny series to check out.