I read the manga about 5 years ago and found it delightful in the beginning and deeply moving later. I was glad to see the many details of the traditional life of ordinary Japanese people in the period leading up to and encompassing WWII, and I loved little Suzu and her artistic development and sensibility. The art is memorably sweet and evocative of the fragility of young girlhood, and the main character is one of the most lovable I've experienced in manga simply because she is so honest, simple, and unaffected. The manga's depiction of the way of life of ordinary Japanese people in the periodprior to WWII is fascinating. Ditto is the growing sense that the manga conveys, as it develops, that Japan, at the stage of industrial development it had reached then, had "bitten off more than it could chew" in entering a war with the USA. All this is depicted simply by the contrast between the people's simple manner of living pre-war, and the deep privation they had to endure to support their faltering war machine in the end.

Be prepared for heartbreak in the last third of the story.