Of Swords and Parasols

This is one of those series that tends to get a lot of “if you don’t like *insert genre/trope/etc. thing is an example of* you might still like this” recs. In this case, yaoi. But then, despite often being billed as yaoi and released by a publisher that primarily licenses yaoi titles, this isn’t actually yaoi, but is a josei title where one of the four leads is gay, and another possibly (probably) bisexual.

Tachibana is the scion of a rich family who decides to leave the family business and open a cake shop in what used to be an antique store. With his family’s money, he’s able to hire Ono, a “legendary cake master” who also attended Tachibana’s high school, and confessed his love for Tachibana, only to be rejected. Ono’s cakes are exquisite, but he comes with complications that make hiring a staff difficult. For one thing, he’s scared of women, and his general reaction to them seems to be either to lose the ability to speak, to run away crying, or some combination. Obviously, a female employee is out of the question. For another, in the years since being rejected, Ono has become “a gay of demonic charm.” Despite his mousy appearance, just exposure to him tends to make men of any sexuality fall in love with him, and fights have broken out at his former jobs.

Eventually, they’re able to find Kanda, a former boxer with a sweet tooth who isn’t Ono’s type at all, and is too busy trying to learn to bake as well as Ono to even notice the demonic charm. Later, they’re joined by Tachibana’s hopelessly helpless butler, Chikage, who was raised by Tachibana’s family. Chikage is very much Ono’s type, but is also so simple and puppylike that just thinking about it tends to make Ono have spasms of guilt.

The food pr0n is amazing, and Tachibana’s descriptions of the various cakes offered by the shop are both detailed and somehow hilarious. Like many manga series revolving around a shop, the series starts off mostly focusing on the stories of the various customers, and then shifts to being more about the people who run the shop. Normally, I’m ready for the anthology section to take a back seat to the main story, but here, I wanted it to last longer.

I’m amused by both Tachibana and Ono, but I’ve long since lost almost any interest in both rich angsty playboys and men who no one can resist, resulting in an endless stream of lovers. I find the childish-but somehow apparently the most grownup and self-aware of the lot-Kanda and the puppyish Chikage much more endearing, but they’re given much less attention.

Overall, it’s very funny and charming, though I suspect that Yoshinaga Fumi’s kinks are a little closer to my squicks, based on the huge-if acknowledged-power imbalance in Ono and Chikage’s relationship, and with what seems to be her approach to Tachibana’s family and past.