Suiiki (Waters) is a drama that focuses on a girl named Chinami and her family’s heritage. Due to a heatwave in Japan she faints repeatedly and dreams about a mysterious Valley by a river. The story is two volumes short (~460 pages) and contains a minimal amount of supernatural elements, but so lightly that you can probably overlook it, if you're not into that.
Story:
The story is mainly told through the dream scenes and flashbacks, this might be confusing at times but seems to be necessary to let the story slowly unwrap itself to fit the big picture. Parts of the story were quite predictable, but that didn't take away the fun from reading it. I'm not too familiar with the supernatural genre, but I felt just a little bit cheated at the end, when everything came back together nicely. Therefore I'm giving story a 7.
Art:
Always depends on ones individual taste. The drawing is of a modern 2000-era quality and features characters with realistic proportions (and no fanservice). Urushibara seems to prefer two distinct types of panels: a) Environmental Panels, that are drawn with great care to details and look quite realistic and b) close-ups of a characters face where Urushibara tries to display a wide variety of emotions. The last point however lead to a certain repetition sometimes, where I asked myself whether she has simply copied/recropped a panel. This impression might be reinforced by the fact that the story focuses mainly around one family so the faces look somewhat familiar (e.g., grandma, mother, daughter). Besides that I couldn't find any obvious flaws (like different proportions, inconsistencies in character appearances, ...) in the art, it is pretty and consistent throughout the whole manga. Therefore I'm giving art a 9.
Character:
Due to the many close-up face panels the characters are nicely portrait, one can read their emotions from the faces. However the character study is limited to the main story, we only get to see the story relevant pieces, which leads to some plausible, but in my opinion somewhat flat, characters. The characters don't have to make moral decisions, in fact they don't have to make any real decisions, so I find it hard to identify with them. Therefore I'm giving them a 6 with a slight tendency to a 7. [On a scale of 1 (absolutely horrible) to 5 (average) to 10 absolutely outstanding]
Enjoyment:
I found much of the enjoyment in the different moods Urushibara was able to create. Mainly the mix of dry heat and cool misty and rainy water environments. Also I liked the relatively short and smooth story telling.
I'm giving it an 8.
Overall:
It is nothing too exciting, but also nothing too dramatic or too romantic. It's an easy and enjoyable read, with an somewhat happy ending. I imagine it to be a nice read for a (or maybe two) rainy afternoon(s), when you're wrapped up in a blanket.
The calculation of the above values ((6+7+8+9)/4 = 7.5, with a slightly upward tendency in the Character section => 8) comes to an 8, with which I can happily agree :-)
P.S.: This review was part of the 2014 MAL Secret Santa - Review Edition, more infos: http://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=1321323
