Caretakers in ‘Dolls'
offer commentary
on affection

In a tangled world of emotional maneuverings, many of us long for a more simple and direct approach to life and love.

But love is never easy. Even something that promises to be so needs maintenance and will often become that which we tried to avoid. Yet it is from that mix of simplicity and complexity that we derive our greatest benefit.

Yumiko Kawahara's manga "Dolls," published stateside by Viz, is a collection of stories with a slight sci-fi twist that introduces plant dolls -- living dolls that look and move exactly like young girls but are cared for like pets.

The strange mix is explained in the first story. Each doll has her own personality and likes, and is often even more finicky than a real child. Their main food is warm milk, fed three times daily, plus a sugar cookie once a week. Special fertilizers help maintain their health and shine.

Plant dolls come in several varieties. Among them are potpourri dolls, which ingest scent balls to maintain their fragrance, and rare singing dolls, whose heavenly voices mesmerize all who hear them.

Plant dolls are fascinating yet disconcerting creatures. They are not mere playthings that are rooted to one spot, accepting whatever happens. Instead, they are sentient, mobile, intelligent, vocal, can act and react and, most important, give and require affection.

Each doll, in fact, chooses her owner. Dolls sit in the shop almost unmoving until some person strikes a chord with it. Usually, once a doll awakens to a particular person and accepts him or her, then it will not acknowledge anyone else. If something happens to its owner, a doll will usually wilt away.

The dolls are like children, but even more so in that, cared for correctly, they could keep their innocence indefinitely. But they are not completely immune to the harshness of life. They can cry, but even this sadness has a silver lining -- the tears of those that have been raised with the utmost love turn into jewels known as "Tears of Heaven."

With the dolls' ability and potential for growth and interaction, "Dolls" is not simply about adults trying to recapture their childhood with expensive toys. It is about the relationships between owner and plant doll, about give-and-take, about people who believe that a plant doll will somehow fulfill whatever void they have in their lives. Sometimes that expectation is borne out. Sometimes it doesn't.

And as in dealings with humans, so, too, must the owners live with the consequences of their actions.

The first story, "Milk at Mealtimes," tells of a young man who is smooth-talked into buying a top-of-the-line doll. Its lavish beginnings means that the man, who makes only a modest salary and lives in mediocre surroundings, must spend more and more to re-create the luxury in which the doll was originally raised.

One day, he accidentally finds that the doll is partial to brandy. He hesitantly puts a single drop in her milk, and she gives a smile so brilliant in its delight that the man is encouraged to pour more and more brandy into the milk, just so he can see the smile that sustains his days.

But there is a good reason for the dolls' diet of milk and cookies, and the man's willful breaking of this rule soon turns his short-term happiness into a lifetime of drudgery.

YET AMONG the vaguely disturbing tales are stories of how dolls have helped bring joy to a lonely or troubled person. In "The Role of an Angel," a popular but somewhat arrogant model is suddenly faced with divorce after her husband reveals his affair with her best friend.

As she's walking home one night not long after the couple's separation, an elaborately dressed mannequin in a store window catches her eye. She's startled (to say the least) when it moves -- it's actually a plant doll.

Inside the store, she and the proprietor fall into conversation, and she tells him about her failed marriage. The doll in the window takes a fancy to her, and with her recent troubles in mind, she feels honored that the doll has chosen her and is relaxed by the girl's smile.

It is in caring for the doll that the woman is able to share more of herself, developing her inner rather than outer beauty, and in a way also makes her more humble.

Perhaps the most interesting character in the series is the unnamed proprietor of the plant doll shop. Aside from being the usual suave salesman using smooth tactics to persuade people to buy his expensive products and their equally expensive accessories, he also acts as a guide, not only on how to care for plant dolls, but also how these strange creatures affect their owners.

While his advice and insights are mainly about the dolls, his conversations with customers also include subtle reflections on people and relationships.

He is a genteel yet almost tragic character, doing what he does more out of love than money, being just a caretaker in the background while his dolls await a true owner who will give them the love they need to flourish. As he tells a child who enters his shop, he is simply the one who provides food in the interim.

And yet, he is truly concerned about his wares, admonishing when necessary and discouraging customers who want to buy a doll merely to own such an exotic item. He allows the dolls to exercise their strange personalities and will usually refuse to sell to a customer whom the doll does not fancy.

THIS POLICY also works the other way, as shown in the story "Snow White," when one doll suddenly awakens to a destitute man who happens to stumble into the shop in a drunken stupor. The proprietor, knowing of his customer's financial straits, hints to the man that the doll could be stolen and even gives him the means to do so, along with the necessary milk and clothing to care for it.

Later, when the man's debts finally catch up to him and police return the doll to the shop, the proprietor glosses over the means by which the man had acquired such an expensive item.

Plant dolls started long ago as a hobby for the nobility, hence the exorbitant prices that cause even the wealthy to think twice about buying one. As such, most of the stories focus on the upper class, but in such a human way that readers can identify with the emotions rather than feeling unaffected. The delicately drawn art adds to the atmosphere of elegance, providing a fantasy setting in which readers can lose themselves, but this fragile veneer gives even more power to the lessons learned.

One telling aspect of "Dolls" is that most of the people are not named. The reader goes through each story knowing the faces and situations but often never knowing a single name. In this way the stories are made more general and somehow more personal, as if they could possibly have come from your own life rather than an episode belonging solely to another time and place.

After all, "Dolls" is all about finding happiness -- something that all of us strive to do.