Yuu Asami

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3626038.html

This is manga written for a teenage girls' magazine, which is not a sub-genre that I am at all familiar with; Vermillion the robot is being taught how to be human by his creator's teenage daughter Sui, and Feelings ensue.

I had to get to grips with reading right to left, and with the very fluid approach to frames - the story sometimes flows all over the page; and there's a lot of incidental detail that is hinted at rather than shown or told. But these are five solid enough sf stories with a firmly shared setup; Sui and her father are enmeshed in a society where some have an irrational hatred of robots, some are jealously trying to move in on her father's trade secrets, and Sui herself is trying to be a normal teenager in 2021 with a beautiful boy robot waiting for her at home. (Her mother is not mentioned at any point.)

It did seem to me that Vermillion the robot is a perfect unthreatening boyfriend in that he is good company, helps out with the house work and not a sexual prospect in any way - in the very first story, he calls out a predatory professional contact of Sui's father's; there is genuine physical peril for the characters in most of the stories, which Vermillion is usually able to help them to escape from. I still hate cute anthropomorphic robots as a theme, but this was far enough off my usual beat to keep me interested. I don't think I will bother with any more, though, I don't think that there will be any development of the overall story arc; it's really a case of this month's perilous situation.… (meer)