Sumire♡16-sai!!

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Sumire is a sixteen year old girl who goes to high school. She always puts others before herself and keeps her cheer no matter what. There's one other thing, though - she's actually a ventriloquist puppet handled by a much older man (implied to be somewhere in his fourties by his appearance). Not once, however, does she - or he - break character, despite getting called out, bullied, beaten up etc. - it's always Sumire at her sixteen year old self.

I admit it's been one of the most emotionally touching things I've ever read. It pulls on the secret strings in your heart that you ... may have never known existed. It's completely unrealistic, on the one hand - on the other, the character chemistry that it pulls off manages to strike as something that goes beyond realism: a poetry of the mind.

Sumire 16 Sai!! is an amazing manga that I think everyone should try.

Story 10/10: Sumire is about an old man who is a ventriloquist; he attendees high school by using a life size doll called Sumire and changes peoples lives for the better wherever he goes. It is a very light hearted story filled with laughs.

Art: 7/10: The art in itself is not very special or outstanding in anyway but it is in no way bad I'd say that art is about average.

Characters 9/10: The charters themselves stay very much the same throughout the entire manga after they have been helped out by the old ... man but every few chapters there is a new character who is introduced who the old man helps out to become a better person.

Enjoyment 10/10: Every chapter of this manga kept me entertained and I never once lost interested or thought that it was stupid (of course I thought it was ridicules but I mean come on who wouldn't? its about an old guy who goes to high school with a doll). Many times I found myself laughing so hard that it hurt....happy I wasn't drinking anything that would've sucked....

Overall 10/10: I loved everything about this manga and I hope that you will try it you wont regret it for a second.

I liked this manga. It has an amazing premise and a lot of heart, and I had great laughs at seeing all of the shenanigans with Sumire and her friends. The different expressions of Sumire are especially fun to see; sometimes she appears very clearly as a doll, but sometimes she appears almost like a normal girl through the eyes of the people she inspires. Both can be hilarious.

The premise alone is enough for me to recommend anyone to read at least a couple of chapters, but I think the manga ends up relying on its premise too much to really sell a whole 50-chapter ... read, and I felt my interest peak around chapter 20 before slowly waning. It definitely gets a little repetitive after a while since every chapter basically involves either: Sumire helping out some character's problem, or Sumire finding herself in trouble because of her being a puppet and she and her friends have to deal with it somehow. The lack of variety in its structure would be forgivable, but ...

The characters besides Sumire and few others eventually stop seeming like real characters. Over the course of the manga, some of the characters that Sumire helps end up becoming her friends and make up the supporting cast, but after their initial chapters, they kind of blend into the background as Sumire hogs the spotlight from chapter to chapter. Sumire gets three friends to her clique, but only one of them really shows any character and relevance over the series. I was disappointed in how little I knew about those characters by the end since they ended up becoming little more than walking tsukkomi. The two underdeveloped friends even share textboxes a lot of the time.

Sometimes the supporting cast would get a chapter dedicated to developing them, but they feel shoehorned and sudden. A character might suddenly get a love interest when there was no indication of such in any prior chapter, and then once the chapter ends, the development that happened is never brought up as Sumire takes the spotlight again. There are times when I learn something interesting about the supporting cast during those Sumire dominated chapters, and those moments are great, but there aren't many and a good portion of the supporting cast doesn't really get any.

I could say the same about the setting. We don't get to see the characters much outside of school, but even within the school, the manga doesn't really explore much outside Sumire's class. For as much of an influence Sumire has over the characters she interacts with, the class and her school don't really seem to change much other than there being rumors of some old guy acting as a student. There's a chapter where Sumire runs for student president, but after the arc there is no change to the school or mention if anyone won the election. I get that it wasn't supposed to be relevant, but it's kind of sad to think that pretty much the only thing relevant in this world is Sumire and like two other characters.

That kept the manga from really feeling like a fulfilling work to me, but the power of its premise is great enough for me to have stuck with it to the end with decent enjoyment and some interest in reading the sequel.

And the ending was nice, too.