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3.98 AVERAGE
3.98 AVERAGE
More serious in tone than the earlier volumes, with the bakery involved in a police investigation, but still retains the trademark humor and bantering, and Kanda gets more attention than in previous volumes.
Not much to say about this series. I wanted to like it a lot, and I liked it enough to read through all four volumes, but... eh. I'm not much of a manga reader--I love comics but manga somehow short-circuits my brain--and there were a bunch of elements that just didn't make sense to me. That could be in part because it skipped all over the place, time-wise, but still.
Good enough, I guess.
Good enough, I guess.
I liked that there was some actual plot in this one and backstory stuff for the characters, but it continues to be frustratingly confusing about who is doing what and why. Characters seem to come and go full of portent but nothing happens. Just when it gets to the interesting part, it seems to just end or skip forward to the aftermath. Perhaps I'm just missing something...? I still love the descriptions of the desserts though!
What else can I say about this series? It's old and everyone knows about it: it won the Kodansha Award in 2002 for shoujo manga (yes, it's a shoujo manga and not a BL), and Fumi Yoshinaga is a multi-award winning mangaka. This manga series has had a Korean movie and a Japanese TV drama based on it (the Korean version is better, as they rewrote a lot of things about Ono in the TV drama).
So: it's good and anyone who wants to read a gentle story about (to paraphrase Tachibana) 'how sweets and pastries play a role in our lives' should give it a try. The characters we meet are not always nice and some of them (especially in the final volume) are downright nasty, but there's always this gentleness that permeates this manga: I'm not sure if it's the way they talk (very polite for the most part) or the way the expressions are drawn (Fumi Yoshinaga has very delicate line work), but it's just so gentle you know? And almost nostalgic. I haven't read all of her work, but I can say that while they're mostly grounded in reality (e.g. Ono's relationship with his family after he came out, very similar to [b: What did you eat yesterday?|18339951|What Did You Eat Yesterday?, Volume 1|Fumi Yoshinaga|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1395779183l/18339951._SX50_.jpg|3674605] ) there's also a feeling of 'this is what the world should be like, and how we can be kinder people' in the ones that I've read and love.
This and Ono Natsume's [b: Gente|4314229|Gente tóxica|Bernardo Stamateas|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328815170l/4314229._SY75_.jpg|4362010] are my go-to manga series when I want something soothing actually.
So: it's good and anyone who wants to read a gentle story about (to paraphrase Tachibana) 'how sweets and pastries play a role in our lives' should give it a try. The characters we meet are not always nice and some of them (especially in the final volume) are downright nasty, but there's always this gentleness that permeates this manga: I'm not sure if it's the way they talk (very polite for the most part) or the way the expressions are drawn (Fumi Yoshinaga has very delicate line work), but it's just so gentle you know? And almost nostalgic. I haven't read all of her work, but I can say that while they're mostly grounded in reality (e.g. Ono's relationship with his family after he came out, very similar to [b: What did you eat yesterday?|18339951|What Did You Eat Yesterday?, Volume 1|Fumi Yoshinaga|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1395779183l/18339951._SX50_.jpg|3674605] ) there's also a feeling of 'this is what the world should be like, and how we can be kinder people' in the ones that I've read and love.
This and Ono Natsume's [b: Gente|4314229|Gente tóxica|Bernardo Stamateas|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328815170l/4314229._SY75_.jpg|4362010] are my go-to manga series when I want something soothing actually.