Pretty boys serve up a musical dramedy

The manga of Fumi Yoshinaga has been a guilty pleasure of mine since I worked for the company that publishes her work in the United States a few years ago. Like many female Japanese comic artists she is obsessed with pretty boys, which doesn’t do much for me but her characters are complex and inhabit gentle slice-of-life stories, crafted with the humor of a skilled and sympathetic observer of human drama.

Yoshinaga’s only real mainstream hit is “Antique Bakery,” about the son of a rich family who decides to open a Western-style cake shop, which is odd because he hates cake. A series of subplots introduces an ensemble of other characters most of them also beautiful men. (The original manga, along with my favorite Yoshinaga title, “Flower of Life,” is available from Seoul import stores such as whatthebook.com.)

The Korean film version is simply called “Antique,” and though it’s moved the story to Seoul and given all the characters Korean names, it’s ..... _{(article cut to save bandwidth)}

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credit: sChiZoO14 @asianfanatics