Doll 4 (English)

This shojo manga (Japanese female-oriented graphic novel), the first in a series, is a collection of six short stories about androids, referred to here as "dolls," which are capable of both domestic work and sexual services. Whether the doll is intended to be the perfect lover, or substitute for the owner's ill wife, or serve as the focus for the owner's mental illness, the central question in each story is this: can an artificial approximation of a human fulfill a person's emotional needs? In each case, the answer depends not on the android, but on the needy human. As is appropriate for a character-driven book, the black-and-white art focuses tightly on characters, not settings. Most of the dolls are female; they are extremely pretty and dress in elaborately frilly clothing, and are difficult to distinguish from the humans, particularly the women, who are also very pretty and wear lots of frills--but then, that similarity is the point of the book. This book is a special edition of the manga; rather than the usual paperback, it's a hardcover with a jacket and a full-color frontispiece. minimize