Indian Summer (ComicsOne)

(ComicsOne, 2004)
™ and © 2004 Takehito Mizuki

Takaya wants an android girl he can endlessly play dress–up with, but purchases Yui, a robot maid, instead. Her programmed pride is insulted when he refuses to let her cook and clean and, instead, wants to bathe and have her try on the cute little outfits he whips up. The title, I suppose, is a reference to their burgeoning, weird “relationship.” Takaya loves Yui but only because she’s so stereotypically cute. And, while Yui wants nothing to do with his sick games, neither does she want him playing with other “dolls.” “Innocently perverse” is the only way to describe the sexual subtext of this creepy entry in an exceedingly creepy genre: the robot maid saga.

Awkwardly written and drawn with shopworn situations and threadbare “types” instead of characters, it’s utterly juvenile in conception and execution. This is pretty obviously an example of doujinshi: amateur Japanese comics—basically, a fanzine that’s somehow received American publication. “Robot subservient humor at its best,” brays the back–cover copy; somehow, I’ve never found subservience funny.

— S.A. Bennett

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