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Short review: There is really not as much cosplay in this manga as the title suggest. It is rather a two short stories ecchi manga with lots of skin, but not nearly as much suspense or character development.

The story leaves much to be desired, both in length and depth.
The art itself is quite good ("standard digital" style).
The character development is quite poor - we got nothing about their backgrounds (we have a sex obsessed messy detective boss, we have his lovers and we have our protagonist, who is happy to wear skimpy "cosplays").
Enjoyment: While it was not all that horrible and I was able to ... finish this book, it turns out that it was not the kind of story I expected when I (blindly) bought it. I think the story could have been much more.

Overall I'd give this title a barely 5.

Intro
大発掘 (Daihakkutsu, published in Germany under the title "Existenzen und andere Abgründe" [Existences and other abyss]) is a collection of 13 older short stories by Yoshihiro Tatsumi. Tatsumi is considered to be the father of the "Gekiga" genre. Gekiga, a play on words, with Manga meaning "whimsical drawings" and Gekiga meaning "dramatic drawings".


Story
The 13 independent stories follow a typical short story pattern, where the reader follows a certain time frame of another person without prior knowledge about this person or their particular circumstances. Tatsumi does a great job in providing just enough to the to know everything he or she needs to know to follow ... the current story. Of course there could be more background information but that is a general characteristic of short stories.

The stories have a mature background (Gekiga) and let the reader observe Tatsumis characters, that are almost all placed on the bottom fringe of society in some way or another. I wouldn't go as far as to deem these characters 'broken' but if serious/mature/social drama material is your thing and you can deal with the incompleteness of short stories and do not necessarily need a happy ending, then you'll probably want to give this lecture a try.

I'll give Story a 9 (please keep the previous sentence in mind)


Art
The graphics feature an oldschool pre-digital look that reminded me of barefoot gen. They are not overly detailed, but focus on the main point. Were the panels memorable or breathtaking? Rather not, but then again, the story is no fairytale neither, so it is quite fitting for the story. All in all the graphics were pretty solid, sometimes you notice the hectic behind drawing the panels, but then again you'll also find the occasional beauty that stands out from the rest.

I've given this a rating of 6 ("slightly above average"), because the age of the graphics shows, as well as the pressure of producing enough panels in a certain time.


Character
Since these are short stories and this book has an observational perspective I don't want to judge about the characters and their development. When reading the book I never felt conflicted with the characters decisions, they all made sense in their specific situation.

Fun thing to do: Compare the appearance of the main protagonist to photos of Tatsumi and wonder if the characters share more similarities than just the looks.

I've given this category a 7, since it is a short story, which always leaves me wanting to know more about a characters background. But again this is a short story limitation.


Enjoyment
I really enjoyed the grounded maturity of this work that is in a crass contrast to the rest of the cheerful and fantastic manga/anime world. Tatsumis stories are the ones that happen in the real world (probably more often then you'd want). And I can see myself reading this work again in the future re-reflect my own viewpoints on the depicted situations. I give this category a 9, even though it is difficult to really "enjoy" suffering.

Post scriptum: Yoshihiro Tatsumi passed away in March 2015.

Phew, I find it quite difficult to review this series. I have read all 8 volumes that have been published in Germany.

I like scifi stories and was highly interested by the cover and the covertext. But after reading the first volume a pattern becomes apparent: The story is highly confusing and has a lot of missing links. At first I thought this might be a stylistic choice that is soon revealed, but it wasn't. After finishing the last volume the is still as confusing as it was in the beginning. The unnarrated jumps in scenes and times, together with a hectic pace make reading this ... manga quite frustrating and cannot be recommended by me.

The only positive aspect of this manga for me was the artstyle.

Intro:
Suiiki (Waters) is a drama that focuses on a girl named Chinami and her family’s heritage. Due to a heatwave in Japan she faints repeatedly and dreams about a mysterious Valley by a river. The story is two volumes short (~460 pages) and contains a minimal amount of supernatural elements, but so lightly that you can probably overlook it, if you're not into that.

Story:
The story is mainly told through the dream scenes and flashbacks, this might be confusing at times but seems to be necessary to let the story slowly unwrap itself to fit the big picture. Parts of the story were quite predictable, but ... that didn't take away the fun from reading it. I'm not too familiar with the supernatural genre, but I felt just a little bit cheated at the end, when everything came back together nicely. Therefore I'm giving story a 7.

Art:
Always depends on ones individual taste. The drawing is of a modern 2000-era quality and features characters with realistic proportions (and no fanservice). Urushibara seems to prefer two distinct types of panels: a) Environmental Panels, that are drawn with great care to details and look quite realistic and b) close-ups of a characters face where Urushibara tries to display a wide variety of emotions. The last point however lead to a certain repetition sometimes, where I asked myself whether she has simply copied/recropped a panel. This impression might be reinforced by the fact that the story focuses mainly around one family so the faces look somewhat familiar (e.g., grandma, mother, daughter). Besides that I couldn't find any obvious flaws (like different proportions, inconsistencies in character appearances, ...) in the art, it is pretty and consistent throughout the whole manga. Therefore I'm giving art a 9.

Character:
Due to the many close-up face panels the characters are nicely portrait, one can read their emotions from the faces. However the character study is limited to the main story, we only get to see the story relevant pieces, which leads to some plausible, but in my opinion somewhat flat, characters. The characters don't have to make moral decisions, in fact they don't have to make any real decisions, so I find it hard to identify with them. Therefore I'm giving them a 6 with a slight tendency to a 7. [On a scale of 1 (absolutely horrible) to 5 (average) to 10 absolutely outstanding]

Enjoyment:
I found much of the enjoyment in the different moods Urushibara was able to create. Mainly the mix of dry heat and cool misty and rainy water environments. Also I liked the relatively short and smooth story telling.
I'm giving it an 8.

Overall:
It is nothing too exciting, but also nothing too dramatic or too romantic. It's an easy and enjoyable read, with an somewhat happy ending. I imagine it to be a nice read for a (or maybe two) rainy afternoon(s), when you're wrapped up in a blanket.

The calculation of the above values ((6+7+8+9)/4 = 7.5, with a slightly upward tendency in the Character section => 8) comes to an 8, with which I can happily agree :-)

P.S.: This review was part of the 2014 MAL Secret Santa - Review Edition, more infos: http://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=1321323

Reviewer info: Mid-20 male, generally interested in more mature topics. Also I think that a score of 5 is not bad, but just the middle of a scale from 0 to 10. (Please keep that in mind, when reading this review.)

Intro:
Since I played the original LoZ:A link to the past on the SFC/SNES when I was much younger, I was pretty interested in reading this manga. I'm adding this piece of information, since I think it adds a great deal of enjoyment to this manga to have played the game, because this way the two stories click together like a jigsaw puzzle.

Story:
The manga of course ... follows a slightly different story than the game (because in the game you do a lot of fighting and puzzle solving which would be pretty boring drawn on paper), it adds new characters, alters a few storylines from the game and has a much steeper pace in the story telling*.
I gave story a 7 because, despite it's shortness (and thus lack of potential), because it was overall very convincing and fitting if you've played the game.

[MINISPOILER]*= (it took 20 pages to get all 3 amulets, about one chapter to rescue the seven princesses)[/MINISPOILER]


Art:
Difficult to rate, since it depends on one individual taste. The drawings itself a pretty solid and consistent post-2000-era digital drawings. The style aims a little bit in the kawaii direction, but is not cuteness overloaded. Most drawings feature a medium level of details, which is okay for this particular fantasy art style. A good 7.

Character:
As mentioned before, the manga itself is relatively short (4 chapters/180 pages) and thus doesn't leave much room for in depth character studies. Most characters don't need much explanation, because you already know them from other installations, but still, this is probably the weakest point of this manga. I sometimes had the feeling that they had a checklist of characters they had to include, even if it is just 2 pages. A tight 6.

Enjoyment:
As mentioned before I gained most of my enjoyment from revisiting a familiar story and learning some new backgrounds. Not that they'd really matter, but they are nice to know and make for a closer and warmer overall package. So a heavily personally biased 9.

Overall:
Nothing outstanding, but an enjoyable read, especially if you've played the games and want to refresh your memories.