Poll: The Best of Fumi Yoshinaga
I love Fumi Yoshinaga for many reasons: her chatty scripts. Her fondness for men in eye patches. Her gratuitous references to Rousseau. Her tendency to recycle character designs. (I like to call them “The Fumi Yoshinaga Players.”) Her stubborn insistence on creating characters with real emotional lives and realistically handsome faces in a genre known primarily for its man-on-man action. Much as I admire her work, however, I’d be hard-pressed to choose a favorite title; if I had to choose — and death was not an option — I’d have to say that Flower of Life tops my list, followed closely by The Antique Bakery. I admit I was a little disappointed by Ooku: The Inner Chamber — not because it was awful (it wasn’t), but because it wasn’t as exuberant or bold as it might have been. Before you question my sanity or my reviewing credentials, tell me which Fumi Yoshinaga series you like best: did Ooku knock Antique Bakery off its pedestal, or do you prefer titles with less talk and more action?
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I put Antique Bakery first, but only because there’s only one volume of Ooku out so far. Four volumes of awesome beats one, especially when a lot of that one volume had to be taken up with setting up and explaining the alternate timeline. I really enjoyed the first volume of Ooku a LOT, and if it continues to be as good, or improves, I could easily see it nudging Antique Bakery out of the top spot for me.
I think a lot of folks feel the same way as you, Dani–they love Ooku, but felt odd about voting for such a new series. You can’t go wrong with Antique Bakery, though…
[...] in August, I asked readers to name their favorite Fumi Yoshinaga series. Not surprisingly, The Antique Bakery’s mixture of tasty food and hot guys proved immensely [...]