Sumire♡16-sai!!

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There really is no story, the art is nothing astounding, and the premise of the manga seems a little...creepy to say at the least. The execution however, is pure gold. From start to finish, I absolutely loved every moment. The ending catches you off guard since the series was abruptly cut short but the finale is absolutely stellar.

It pains me that I am a man of very little words but I really cannot recommend this enough. If you don't mind slice of life and love comedy, read this.

Right now.


No, really...


...
Now!

In a line: excellent story, characters, comedy, enjoyment and overall, good art and subpar character development.

Story: Excellent

I think this might be one of the weirdest but yet most normal stories I've ever seen. A puppet girl and later on a puppet guy doing normal stuff, making friends and doing normal people stuff. It reeks of sheer creativity and originality, yet comprises of ordinary stuff, and that creates a unique story.

In short, this is about a puppet's high school life, mainly her first year, who is controlled by an old man (all hail the old man!!).

Art: Good
Details are there, sometimes the funny aspects of the manga ... are also portrayed through the art. Nice art style, stable drawings (no issue of eyes too big/small or other features drawn wrongly).

Character: Excellent
Excellent cast. When the characters were introduced, their personalities and character traits were vividly shown and expressed, and were stable for most of the manga (one exception was the "bottom to top" chapter).

Character Development: Subpar
Unfortunately, to the end of the manga, if you ask me what have I known more about the MAIN characters (by this I exclude Sakura, the 2 teachers and Ageha) since they were introduced, I can largely tell you not much has changed. The manga seems to evolve more about events than the main characters' lives and the understanding of them.

Enjoyment: Excellent
One of the best unique comedy you can find in the market probably. The comedy style is excellent, with touching moments, and finally exciting scenes which are hardly predictable.

Overall: Must Read -
Excellent storyline and comedy about the slice-of-life etc. events of Sumire and the people around her.
Only downside is character development.

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.