Paperweight Eye

When I began reading this manga, it had already finished, so when I saw it only had 11 chapters I expected a fairly light read. This expectation was turned on its head completely. Right from the get-go the author begins to tackle heavy themes like childhood trauma and later on what it means to be human. There are stories that can pull off such strong themes in a short time, but this was sadly not one of them. For the majority of the time the story felt rushed and the last 3 chapters just jumped from twist to convoluted twist, ending up only confusing itself.3/10 Story The art however is gorgeous, for the most part. In many places it reminds me of the style of CLAMP, with a shoujo-manga style which lends itself well to this story. The main dolls in particular show great detail in their design. I sing such high praise, but having looked at some of the artist’s other work, it definitely seems rushed on many pages, which is unfortunate. 8/10 Art The characters are well defined for the amount of development they get, but they nonetheless lack any depth. This in itself is not a problem for the dolls as a stylistic choice, but the human characters needed more fleshing out. The protagonist begins quite strong, but as the pages go by she begins to fall apart, changing her entire mindset at the drop of a hat. In my opinion this is mainly an issue with the overall length of the manga. 3/10 Characters I can’t say this manga is my usual reading material, but I was venturing into unknown literary territory on purpose. This did bring my personal enjoyment of it down a bit. The concepts in Paperweight Eye were interesting, but lacked the time to be explored to their full potential. This in particular severely hampered my enjoyment. 4/10 Enjoyment I honestly can’t recommend this manga to very many people, since I feel it’s a rather incomplete work. The strongest point is the art, but for that there are plenty of manga that do it just as well while combined with a stronger story and characters. 4/10 Overall