Doll (Tokyopop)

    (Tokyopop, 2004-2005)
™ and © 2001 Mitsukazu Mihara
Graphic novel, Reads right to left

This volume contains two things that you don’t see every day in one package: a hardcover manga and a collection of short stories. This anthology features that manga staple the android girl, but, happily, the creator avoids such soggy genre clichés as “the super–powered defender in love with its creator” and “machine seeks its soul.”

Instead, there’s more of a “soft” science–fiction take on the subject, showing readers through mostly small, personal details—in place of a boring narration—just how these automata insinuate themselves into the lives of their humans. Luckily, the “dolls” inside are a lot more utilitarian than the weird Gothic creature on the striking cover who doesn’t look so much lifeless as undead.

The art manages to be attractive and disturbing at the same time, a quality of calculated unease long a hallmark of Mitsuazu Mihara’s work, which brings an added extra touch of poignancy to stories in which the line between human and inhuman has become blurred.

— S.A. Bennett
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