Mushimanga

Mangaka: Aoike Yasuko
Genre: Shoujo
Length: See below
Scanlated by: The Pink Panzer

I feel like a twit, recommending this classic series that everyone has heard of, but I'd like to introduce you to this new scanlation group. They focus on classic shoujo, shounen-ai, and yaoi. Here's their summary:

What happens when a gay art thief and a conservative NATO officer cross paths? Disaster, of course. Dorian is an aristocrat, a thief and a hedonist; Klaus is a duty-driven espionage agent with no patience for fools. Follow them as they chase each other across the globe -- from Britain to Baghdad, from Alaska to Alexandria, from Moscow to Madrid. Spectacular locations and non-stop adventures await!

Yes, well, basically. What they fail to mention in that paragraph is that they're peddling pure crack.

The Pink Panzer says that they're scanlating Eroica because, although the series is licensed, the publisher is releasing volumes at a glacial pace. It will probably be years before the volumes they're scanlating are officially avaiable in English. They picked up with story sixteen, which is somewhere around volume twenty. They do provide links to the earlier anonymous scanlations for those who don't want to miss out on Dorian stealing the pope.

Sample Pages
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You can download their scans and the earlier scans by joining their community and accessing their members-only downloads page.

Mangaka: Yoshinaga Fumi
Genre: Shounen-ai, Comedy
Length: 4 volumes (complete)
Published by: Digital Manga Publishing

Ono has come a long way since the agonizing day in high school when he confessed his love to handsome Tachibana. Now, some 14 years later Ono, a world-class pastry chef and gay playboy has it all. No man can resist Ono's charms (or his cooking skills!) but he has just found a new position under a man named Tachibana. Can this be the only man who resisted his charms, and if so, will the man who once snubbed the "magically gay" Ono get his just desserts? And how in the heck did a former middleweight boxing champion wind up as Ono's cake boy? (DMP)

I don't like that summary. It completely misses the point, but then, it's ad-copy, and obviously attempting to appeal to the shounen-ai and yaoi audience. But this isn't a romance at all. Don't let them fool you!

Antique Bakery is about the lives of the employees of a pastry shop and its customers. The employees form an odd, dysfunctional little family, although they would probably hate to be described that way. The customers, as well--when the story peeks into their lives, they're not just foils for the main characters, but developed characters themselves.

The main failing of this series is that there's no coherent narrative. It's more like a series of short stories about these characters than it is a complete story in itself. This makes the ending unsatisfying, because it's not really an ending at all... it just sort of stops. I didn't even know that it was complete until I couldn't find volume 5 anywhere!

Update: Antique Bakery is a hugely successful manga. Since I originally wrote this rec, there has been an anime version (horrible), a j-drama version (horrible), and a k-drama version (not perfect but pretty cute). The k-drama version has been fansubbed and is available on jdramas.

Sample pages
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