Holiday Review #25: YOKOHAMA KAIDASHI KIKOU

I knew from the moment I started sorting out what manga to cover this month which series I would end it with.  It had to be the series that no one ever thought would be licensed, to the point that its unlicensability had become something of an inside joke among manga readers and reviewers.  It was too old, too odd, too obscure, and generally unmarketable to your average reader.

And yet here it is, less than a year after it was first announced, like a proper Christmas miracle.

YOKOHAMA KAIDASHI KIKOU, by Hotoshi Ashinano.  First published in 1994 and first published in North America in 2022.

PLOT:

Alpha the android runs her master's coffee shop while they're away.  There's not a huge demand for it in a world where most of Japan's major cities have been swallowed by the sea, but she does have a few neighbors who regularly pop for conversation and trade.  Sometimes Alpha ventures out on her trusty scooter to faraway towns, traversing the few paved roads that haven't broken down or turned into beachfront property, enjoying the sights and hoping to get a new message from her long-absent owner.

STORY:

First, let me get something completely pedantic off my chest: why didn't they translate the title?  Yes, "Yokohama Shopping Log" doesn't necessarily describe it any better (Alpha makes a trip there once in the first chapter), but surely it's more marketable to those who didn't read the scanlations than the same phrase in Japanese?  Who knows, maybe it's a licensing thing.

Whatever you want to call it, you could rightfully call this manga an ancestor to the genre we now know as 'iyashikei.'  Yeah, it's technically post-apocalyptic (and that climate-based apocalypse is still ongoing), but every character we meet takes it in stride and only the old folks can remember a time when things were different.  They also take the vastly different levels in technology in stride - yes, they live lives largely dictated by the seasons with a barter-based economy, but nobody blinks at androids that look and act human in almost every respect either.  The reader may occasionally feel a bit of unease at this disconnect and the occasional implication of bad things in the past, but by and large its gentle tone smooths the mood out like the sheet on a bed, leaving only a positive impression.

It's also something of a magical girlfriend story.  These sorts of manga were all the rage when YKK first debuted, but have since fallen out of favor.  Normally these kinds of stories had a milquetoast young man/potential love interest to serve as a reader stand-in (much like contemporaries like Oh My Goddess).  While there is a preteen boy to serve that role at times, most of the time Ashinano puts the reader themselves into that role.  Thus, you are the one who gazes on in admiration alongside the locals as Alpha makes coffee, gracefully dances while she's drunk, wistfully plays music under the moonlight, hangs out with fellow android/delivery woman Kokone, and so on.  At those times, it's easy to forget the sci-fi premise or the ecological disaster around it and just focus on enjoying those fleeting moments in time.

ART:

I definitely enjoyed the retro charms of the art.  Ashinino's younger characters have a wide-eyed cheerful charm to them, with only the little hashmarks on their cheekbones and the volume of their hair giving away their 90s origins.  Alpha and the other young women we see have rather graceful form and poses and fanservice (at least, by its modern understanding) is nonexistent.  Meanwhile, the older folk have faces like squashed vegetables with eyes permanently shut in a squint.  

Of course, a lot of the story's pleasant atmosphere comes from the care that Ashinano gives to the setting.  His vision of the Kanagawa prefecture of the future is one of contrasts, where rolling grasslands, quiet shorelines, and rustic farm stands are found alongside rusting road signs, empty highways and curving, abstract items of future tech.  All of it is rendered with warm linework that makes good use of hatching for natural textures.

RATING:

Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou is a manga that is somehow both timeless and very much of its time.  It is an odd, sleepy sort of thing, but it's comforting and welcoming at the same time.  If a story about a cute robot girl having a nice time with friends during the end of the world sounds like a good time, you will probably enjoy it as well.

This series is published by Seven Seas.  This series is complete in Japan with 14 volumes available.  1 3-in-1 omnibus has been released and is currently in print.

Today's the last day for our Holiday Review Giveaway! Let us know what your favorite manga of 2022 was and you might win a $25 RightStuf gift certificate!  Find out more at this link!  The contest ends at midnight Central Time!