Ashizuri Suizokukan · review
A set of stories with a weird fixation on fish, the sea, and the abstraction of the everyday world. Beautiful art that makes excellent use of contrast and white spaces, with the human characters drawn in a cutesy and really really simplified way, almost doodle-like, while the backgrounds have this eerie, realistic-but-out-of-this-world feeling to it, creepy and full with detail. When it comes to the abstraction, this is probably the best aspect of the artstyle, the mangaka really nails it when it comes to the deformation of the normal world into an alien space, and how the abstraction takes a role in the plot, itemsand secondary characters.
The stories this work presents are all really interesting and unique, a little girl that out of nowhere finds herself in strange places, almost like entering a different dimesion. This bizarre/weird aspect is what gives it it's uniqueness, presening interesting concepts and abstractions and letting the reader form their own opinion on what happened or what's the meaning. The dialogue is probably the 2nd best trait this manga has (1st being the art), said dialogue manages to portray the naiveness of a child so well that you don't really question the plot at all, it makes it have a nice flow that gives it a good pacing in which you get lost until you finish this short, 14 chapter manga.
Watashi, the main character (and honestly, the only real character this manga has) became one of my favourites instantly. A funny and lovable main character, acting bored or unsurprised when presented with bizarre scenarios and not really trying to find logic on what she's doing or what surrounds her. She just accepts it, and goes along with it.
I enjoyed this read thoroughly, and I hope you will too. Considering the amount of chapters, not reading this manga is kind of a waste. Definitely recommended.