Suzunari!

	Original run	2006-2007
	Volumes	2
	Read	2/2,official Finnish translation
	Publisher	Punainen Jättiläinen
	Author	Shoko Iwami
	Review date	April 8, 2012

(click pictures to enlargen them)

Suzunari! (from now on without the exclamation mark to avoid confusion) is a four-panel strip comic about Kaede, an average high school girl, and a mysterious cat girl Suzu who randomly appears in her home and who looks almost identical to Kaede (not counting the cat ears and... the chest department). Suzu is totally in love with Kaede, constantly wanting to kiss her, sleep in her bed, marry her etc. To Kaede's dismay her parents instantly love Suzu and adopt her as their second daughter. There isn't much to call a story, it's just high schoolers doing random stuff together and Kaede learning to appreciate Suzu's constant advance attempts.

Suzunari is a comedy series, but unfortunately it's not very funny. The joke format is very repetitive, it feels like all the strips are just *quirky character X does something weird* -> *Kaede is annoyed*. I hear it's traditional Japanese humour, but it didn't work on me since none of the strips made me even giggle.

A large portion of the jokes are about the fact that Suzu has boobs while Kaede has not. Let's do a countdown... I could find over 20 jokes where the punchline is the identical "Suzu has big boobs!" or "Kaede is jealous about Suzu's boobs!". Ahahahaha, that is just HILARIOUS every time! No need for any witty or creative jokes, just BOOBS, that is guaranteered quality! Or not. There were plenty of jokes involving panties as well.

Save for the main characters, the cast in Suzunari consists of one-joke characters. Kaede's friend is into occulism, their teacher loves gambling, the class president is a moe fan and Kaede's parents concentrate on pairing Suzu and Kaede (ummm...). And that is all their contribution to the story, no exceptions. Actually the main characters don't have that much depth either; all Suzu does is showing her love to Kaede, and Kaede's panel time mostly consists of just reacting to other characters' oddities. There was some kind of a back story for the main characters that explained how they first met and at the end there was some kind of attempt at a touching sob story about how their relationship changes, but since I couldn't be less interested in the characters it failed to move me in any way.

Then there's the yuri vibe side of the series. Practically the only things Suzu does are trying to kiss Kaede, wanting to sleep in her bed, rejoicing when she gets to hold Kaede's hand, declaring she'll want to be Kaede's bride, being upset if she has to be separate from Kaede... You get the idea. Those who like fluffy shoujo-ai stories can probably enjoy Suzunari, but I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone else.

The dress-uppability was negligible. The outfits were simple everyday stuff and nothing drew my attention. Suzunari belongs to the "not that interesting outfits but provides enough material that it's possible to make a dress up if I really really like the series" category, along with stuff like Usagi Drop and ARIA. Suzunari doesn't, however, fill the "really really like the series" criterion...

	Best	Worst
Chapter	Ummmmm	The one where they spend the entire chapter buying brassiere for Suzu
Character	None of the characters was particularly interesting	Suzu, easily
Pairing	Uh....	Suzu/Kaede. Not that there was much competition though.
Cover	Not much to choose from here... Let's say I like #2 more.
Outfit	None of the outfits are particularly interesting
Final judgement 1/3 Mostly just boring and forgettable instead of horribly bad.