To serve man.
Creative Staff
Story/Art: sumiya
What They Say:
For what purpose was she given a body? Only this doll knows…
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Originally serialized in Comic Kairakuten from the September 2020 installment, Automatic Doll is a twenty-four-page story from creator sumiya, who has about two dozen other works on the service. While I’ve been mixed on their storytelling there’s definitely a lot to love in terms of design and action. They haven’t had anything new on the service since June so I was curious to see what was next, especially as it had a tag I hadn’t seen before with kuudere. That basically means someone that’s cold, which given that we’re talking about a doll/maid/automaton kind of possibility, it certainly makes sense but doesn’t exactly light the interest on fire.
The premise is one that we’ve seen before in a general sense with a lot of older hentai – especially on the anime side – where we get a world where lifelike automatons exist. Shuuichi’s our leading man here where he had gotten one a couple of years ago as a present from his parents which was named Chrona. Chrona’s been a good friend to him and served him well as she learned who he was, his responses, his needs, and so forth as a growing young man. But she’s also somewhat limited and has that blank face kind of thing while at the same time doing her best to learn to give him the new things he needs. You can see where this is going easily but we get a lot of pages showing the dynamic between the two and how he’s truly caring of her, not just looking to exercise his more adult side with her. And that helps to form a good bond with the reader.
For Chrona, she’s able to slowly piece things together while doing research on his browsing habits, something that kind of freaks him out, and it’s amusing to see how she basically upgraded parts of her body and her programming in order to serve him in this respect. Of course, she basically just takes him on the morning of his birthday, which throws him off completely, because it’s both a shock and there’s not foreplay of sorts to set the stage for it all. But the two do find a decent balance as it goes along but I was amused that both of them liked her turning her sensitivity levels up. She’s not hugely more expressive at that point but the calm cool exterior isn’t always there and we get a bit more emotion and intensity out of her as she finds this new way to please him. It’s fairly standard material in this regard but Sumiya’s artwork really does all the hard work here with the design for Chrona just being gorgeous and incredibly detailed.
In Summary
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this story in the general sense though it’s one that felt incredibly familiar, reminding me of a lot of low-budget hentai anime produced twenty or so years ago. Sumiya’s artwork is what really saves it as well as spending the time to create and showcase the bond between Shuuichi and Chrona. The character designs are good and the settings work well enough, though those are kept minimal as quickly as possible, but the real and normal focus is on Chrona herself. Sumiya handles the kuudere aspects of this pretty well and it sets the tone that you expect going into it just from the title, as well as the upgrade that comes along the way as it retains aspects of what she was like before. It’s a fun little diversion but leaves me wishing for something a little meatier from Sumiya.
Content Grade: B
Art Grade: A-
Text/Translation Grade: B+
Age Rating: 18+
Released By: FAKKU
Release Date: September 2020
MSRP: FAKKU Subscription
