Suiiki

Intro: 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, butthat 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

Suiiki presents classic Japanese themes and motifs such as confronting the past only to ultimately deciding to move on, choosing to dwell in the present and not the past, and the importance of a strong familial household in an effective and new way. The story while not starting with these themes, develops them over time as a result of the plot, and ending with a more unified family and bright future. A take on the story (not as much a synopsis) is that Chinami is confronted by her family past in the form of dreams that she enters, usually when she falls unconscious. In the dreamsshe is left to confront and interact with the family's proverbial dark horse (the thing not talked about but always present in peoples mind) Sumio, who serves largely as an anchor keeping the family tethered to the past and their old village (now at the bottom of a dam). Chinami finds peace and relief (from the heat wave) in the dream and from Sumio's company, and is ultimately has to choose whether to live in the dream past or live in the present, actual world. The art is constantly good, with lots of background artwork that makes every panel look lively and busy, but the characters (personalities) unfortunately don't have nearly as much character as the art. That said its understandable why the characters are moreover not particularly unique, its a drama, and they're meant to be normal people, and normal people are not heavily energetic and overly expressive; another reason probably being that the characters serve as a stand in for not just the family we see, but other family that lost their villages to other dams else ware. While the characters are not anything new, they are still interesting and endearing. I normally pace out my reading but with this I found myself binge reading it to completion, curious the whole time with questions like -"what is this dream, how real is the dream, when is the dream, what does the heat have to do with it, how will they get Sumio out of the dream etc." It has a beautiful mix of drama and supernatural that makes it an easy recommendation.

(READ THIS THING! IT'S GREAT AND UNDERRATED!!!) It's both comforting in it's depiction of the most idealistic town ever, which is ripe with lush thickets and serpentine waterfalls, but it's at the same time deeply sorrowful due to it's subject matter. Suiiki is a good ol' tear-jerker that pulls you in and makes you feel like you went through the wringer along with its characters. It'll punch you in the gut emotionally, but it'll make you go "oh, that's a beautiful panel," pretty often. The artwork and narrative evokes a magical realist vibe that's weighty with themes of the ethereal nature of things. "Nothingis permanent," is the resonating theme throughout it; nothing maybe except water, which is the thing that binds everything. It's only 12 chapters. Might as well give it a go.

Look around yourself. I hope you are not in an uncomfortable position. Take a note about everything around you, just for a minute. Now imagine what that place would've looked like many years ago. About the buildings, the people and the scenery. How different would the place you're right now be? How different were the people & their lives be?... How different are those people & their families are right now? "Suiiki" follows "Chinami" who lives in a city who are currently facing water shortage. Chinami's a member of a swimming club who one day faints out of heat exhaustion and wakes up in a mysteriousabandoned town where it never seems to stop raining. But there's something nostalgic about that town she couldn't quite remember. Coming from the same creator of Mushishi, Yuki Urushibara's artwork is as beautiful as one would expect it to be. A lot of care & focus was given to the environment & backgrounds. Whether it be a chill rain or the rural elements like trees & waterfalls, the art perfectly sets the mood and atmosphere. Within its 12 chapter runtime, the story tells the tale of a village via 3 female leads of the same family, "Chinami" our first introduction to the family and plays very prominent role in the plot; "Kazumi", Chinami's mom and "Kiyoko", Kazumi's mom. There are other family members and side characters too, but their relevance is more plot focussed. While Chinami plays a very important role in the plot, it was very vaguely explained through the story's logic but isn't too illogical to break from the immersion of the story. While reading chapter 1, I had this feeling that this is going to be Yuki Urushibara's vision on global warming & water shortage effects and while it is vastly different from that, it ended up being something more touching on a personal level. A few weeks ago, my friends and I went to our old school, which is now just a bunch of rubble & rocks waiting for someone to reconstruct a movie theater. As we cursed our school management for taking away our place of memories, we unintentionally took a nostalgia trip, having fun thinking about all the goofy & silly things we did while also feeling bitter thinking how all of this place is going to be changed in the upcoming years. As I took one last look before leaving that sad sight, I said to myself; "Well that's just life, I guess?". Things will change, for better or for worse; That's just life.