Antique Bakery

Picked up DMP's Antique Bakery on a whim - the art looked cute, and hey, who doesn't like cake? I'll admit, the all-guy cast on the cover and the semi-suggestive back copy ("delicious boy-to-boy affections"?) probably had a lot to do with my buying it as well.

The story's action focuses around the eponymous bakery/cafe and its staff:

Tachibana: the ill-tempered owner and sole waiter of the establishment. The son of a banking magnate, he used his parents' money to open a pastry shop despite his dislike of sweets.

Yuusuke: mild-mannered girl-phobic pastry chef by day, better known on the gay club circuit as 'Yuey', a diabolically seductive player by night.

Eiji: forced to retire from boxing because of an injury, this scrapper finds fulfillment as an apprentice pastry chef to 'Master' Yuusuke.

Surprisingly, the first installment of the series has very little yaoi content - there's a high-school confession of love that's quickly and cruelly squelched, and a chapter that focuses on a night on the town with Yuey. But otherwise, it's a nice ensemble piece that establishes the characters, including the clientele, and how their lives intertwine.

Volume Two, however, ups the ante with the introduction of Chikage, Tachibana's sweet but bumbling guardian. The boss man's 'shadow' is just Yuusuke's type - and whatever Yuey wants, Yuey gets, even if it's at his coworkers' expense. Hearts are broken, revelations are made and Santa hand-delivers bûche de noël in time for Christmas.

It's a conceit that's often used, where a setting is the catalyst or crossroads where story threads meet, but it's one that I like unabashedly. Also, staying true to my gourmand roots, I love food-oriented stories. Tampopo, Babette's Feast, Like Water for Chocolate - I loves my food porn. That's why I really loved the attention to detail the author paid to the process of making pastries, the description of flavor and texture. It seems like she spent time really researching her subject matter.

Fumi Yoshinaga's artistic style is very simplistic. There are a lot of talking head panels with empty backgrounds and her proportions seem a little wonky at times. But I like how clean and minimal her lines are; and since this is a character driven piece, I can forgive the lack of detail in setting. The pastries and serving pieces, however, are rendered in near-fetish detail. Had me hankering for overly-fussy baked goods in the worst way.

As a writer, Ms. Yoshinaga cleverly pulls the bait-and-switch on her readers, leading them down a road with an assumed destination, then crossing three lanes of traffic, cutting off a bus full of nuns to take an exit they didn't see coming.

A word of warning to yaoi fans - don't go into this book expecting a triple-x throwdown in every chapter. While the book does have suggestive moments and sequences of surprising sensuality (Yuusuke's transformation into Yuey is breathtaking at times - as is his raindance seduction of Chikage), it's mostly handled off-panel. All of the action rates PG-13, at best.

If you're looking for a light, fun read, this book will not disappoint. You, too, will believe in the healing power of pastry.

P.S. A note to the publisher: if you're going to promote a book as yaoi, you might want to rethink using a gimmick like a scratch-and-sniff cover. Kept thinking to myself "Smells like teen assplay" before I actually scratched and sniffed - faux strawberry/chocolate for Vols. 1 & 2 respectively.