Almost a Review: Antique Bakery

This is a manga, but I'm still counting it as a book for the purposes of a count of everything I'm reading in AUC 2762 (CE 2008). Written and illustrated by Fumi Yoshinaga it a light creation about three men working in a bakery. Which, of course, isn't usual since gender roles are very defined and the serving person at a bakery is almost always a female. And they all have an interesting background or past. The chef, who is a gay rake, his apprentice who is a former boxer, and the owner/server, who is a young rich man out to make money. And avoid a job where he has to be clean shaved.

Don't worry about it being too torrid, if Chef Ono were having straight sex the scenes might be rated PG-13, no bits or even clothes off. Out of 191 pages there were two with sex or male-male kissing happening on them. So this wouldn't really be called Yaoi, it is more a compilation of stories about particular social situations found in Japan that happen to intersect in a pastry shop.

I found it interesting to figure out how these three very different men came to be working together and the little side stories that come in for cake and tea. I recommend it to people who like light romance and/or slice of life stories and can stand the right to left page layout of Japanese manga.

Book 5