Tachibana, the man who doesn't age
OKAY. I've been rereading the Antique Bakery series, and suddenly I realized something.
The timeline doesn't work out.
Here are all the time cues we get by volume.
Volume One:
-- 14 years ago from present day, Tachibana and Ono are graduating high school
-- 13 years ago from present day, Urushihara and Ito are freshmen in junior high
-- "This was 13 years ago. And now 8 years from this point..." i.e. 5 years ago from present day, Eiji realizes he has to quit boxing because of detached retinas
-- 2 years later.. present day: Urushihara and Ito meet again, Ito discovers Antique for the first time, Antique is already a half-cafe, Eiji lives in the apartment upstairs.
ALREADY FROM THIS, there is a basic arithmetic PLOTHOLE the size of THREE MISSING YEARS. How can 5 years ago have a "two years later" addendum that suddenly makes it present day? Unless "And now 8 years from this point" means something else entirely, like Ito and Urushihara graduate junior high (3 years, right?), which happens 10 years from present day, which means that 8 years later plus two years later would give us present day, assuming that present day is Tachibana and Ono as 31 (more on this later). But that's not where the time problem ends!
Still Volume One:
-- 22 years before present day, the Akutagawas get married (which means that the kidnapping case was 22 years ago, which means that Tachibana is indeed 31)
-- Eiji (still in his active boxing years) passes by the store as it has just opened; Tachibana has just given up on finding a cute girl shop assistant
Volume Two:
-- Chikage shows up in July
-- by New Year's, Tachibana is 32. Chikage, we find out, is two years older than Tachibana and Ono, and thus is 34. (Eiji is 21.)
-- present day (which, keep in mind, is now almost a year later than the present day in V. 1) is 23 years after the kidnapping
Volume Three:
-- it is early summer when the volume starts
-- Jean Baptiste Hevens is in Japan from July 27th to August 10th
-- Ono is 22 when he goes to Paris (Jean-Baptiste is 25, which means he is 35 in present day)
-- Tachibana is 31 when he quits his job at the company because of a failed marriage proposal; the next day, he finds the closed antique store
--Deko is in fourth grade
Volume Four:
-- Tachibana was 9 when he was kidnapped
-- In 1973, Tachibana was 5 years old (present day, then, is at least 2001, if not 2002, the year Antique Bakery was published)
-- Ono claims that not much time has passed since they opened the store
Does anyone else see the problem? The problem is that Tachibana was 31 when he started the store, but only 32 in volume three. If Eiji quit boxing "two years" before Ito finds the Antique, and yet Eiji is "in his active boxing years" when he finds Antique during its opening week or so, Tachibana should be at least 33 by the time the events of Volume 2 happen. Yet he's only 31 by the time he hires Eiji, and 32 by New Year's.
Of course, all of this is solved by the fact that, well, this is a mangaka writing things as they sort of appear in her head, and who cares if Tachibana is older or younger for a few years? But it does kind of kill my dreams of trying to figure out by their ages in the manga exactly how long Tachibana and Ono worked without Eiji.
(If it helps, in "Tachibana to iu otoko", I think Deko is in sixth grade, which means by then two more years pass after the events of Volume Three. I guess this makes sense since there's definitely at least one winter and then Tanabata. Which means, what, Tachibana is 35? 36? Chikage is 37? 38? Poor Tachibana, still playing the field for a wife...! And yet darling Eiji at 23? 24? has Constance.)
The timeline doesn't work out.
Here are all the time cues we get by volume.
Volume One:
-- 14 years ago from present day, Tachibana and Ono are graduating high school
-- 13 years ago from present day, Urushihara and Ito are freshmen in junior high
-- "This was 13 years ago. And now 8 years from this point..." i.e. 5 years ago from present day, Eiji realizes he has to quit boxing because of detached retinas
-- 2 years later.. present day: Urushihara and Ito meet again, Ito discovers Antique for the first time, Antique is already a half-cafe, Eiji lives in the apartment upstairs.
ALREADY FROM THIS, there is a basic arithmetic PLOTHOLE the size of THREE MISSING YEARS. How can 5 years ago have a "two years later" addendum that suddenly makes it present day? Unless "And now 8 years from this point" means something else entirely, like Ito and Urushihara graduate junior high (3 years, right?), which happens 10 years from present day, which means that 8 years later plus two years later would give us present day, assuming that present day is Tachibana and Ono as 31 (more on this later). But that's not where the time problem ends!
Still Volume One:
-- 22 years before present day, the Akutagawas get married (which means that the kidnapping case was 22 years ago, which means that Tachibana is indeed 31)
-- Eiji (still in his active boxing years) passes by the store as it has just opened; Tachibana has just given up on finding a cute girl shop assistant
Volume Two:
-- Chikage shows up in July
-- by New Year's, Tachibana is 32. Chikage, we find out, is two years older than Tachibana and Ono, and thus is 34. (Eiji is 21.)
-- present day (which, keep in mind, is now almost a year later than the present day in V. 1) is 23 years after the kidnapping
Volume Three:
-- it is early summer when the volume starts
-- Jean Baptiste Hevens is in Japan from July 27th to August 10th
-- Ono is 22 when he goes to Paris (Jean-Baptiste is 25, which means he is 35 in present day)
-- Tachibana is 31 when he quits his job at the company because of a failed marriage proposal; the next day, he finds the closed antique store
--Deko is in fourth grade
Volume Four:
-- Tachibana was 9 when he was kidnapped
-- In 1973, Tachibana was 5 years old (present day, then, is at least 2001, if not 2002, the year Antique Bakery was published)
-- Ono claims that not much time has passed since they opened the store
Does anyone else see the problem? The problem is that Tachibana was 31 when he started the store, but only 32 in volume three. If Eiji quit boxing "two years" before Ito finds the Antique, and yet Eiji is "in his active boxing years" when he finds Antique during its opening week or so, Tachibana should be at least 33 by the time the events of Volume 2 happen. Yet he's only 31 by the time he hires Eiji, and 32 by New Year's.
Of course, all of this is solved by the fact that, well, this is a mangaka writing things as they sort of appear in her head, and who cares if Tachibana is older or younger for a few years? But it does kind of kill my dreams of trying to figure out by their ages in the manga exactly how long Tachibana and Ono worked without Eiji.
(If it helps, in "Tachibana to iu otoko", I think Deko is in sixth grade, which means by then two more years pass after the events of Volume Three. I guess this makes sense since there's definitely at least one winter and then Tanabata. Which means, what, Tachibana is 35? 36? Chikage is 37? 38? Poor Tachibana, still playing the field for a wife...! And yet darling Eiji at 23? 24? has Constance.)