Reviews
I don't read manga as a rule but there's something so pure and wonderful about this. Basically it's the quiet and calm adventures of a robot who runs a coffee shop after the world's ecology has collapsed. Mankind is in decline, the sea levels have risen, temperatures have gone up, etc. But people are still around, they're still living their now very simple lives and it's so sad, so lovely. mono no aware (sadness for the transience of things). That's a thing I learned today. I feel it constantly - but this manga makes me feel better about it.
It's the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine).
Volume 10 of Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou is quite a mishmash of chapters, many of them shorter than before. Throughout, Alpha works on rebuilding the cafe part of her house. She also grows an immense sunflower, another sign of the weird changes to vegetation, and experiences snow for the first time. There's a cute call back when Takehiro warms her up in his coat like she did all the way back in volume 1 or 2. Cute, simple, daily life stuff. Not as many mysteries, but also a sense of time passing that adds a touch of sadness.
Volume 11 is filled with more slice of life, but with the bittersweet movement of change. Takahiro has grown up and past what he can achieve in the little area by the sea, so he is preparing to leave. There are some emotional scenes between him and Alpha, as well as with Matsuki. Maruko visits again, and she and Alpha seem to sort out some of their weird hostility. But things in this volume feel tenser. Alpha says at one point "All I am really good at doing is waiting". It's a thoughtful statement and one that feels a little sad. Poor Alpha, watching the world go by.
And another gentle, quiet volume about the end of the world is complete. Once again, readers get to see Alpha living a life filled with friends, but also solitude. My favourite chapter was seeing her go out with her camera and end up not taking any photos in fear of running out of film. It was a very apt way of showing the world's decline and people's choices to be careful about how they used their objects and time. We are also introduced to a new robot character: Kokone!
Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where everyone is actually pretty decent. In contrast to all the stories about survival of the fittest, this is a world that survives on community and kindness. The protagonist is a realistic robot running a cafe in the middle of no where, waiting for her owner to come back from where ever he/she has wandered off to. She has a few neighbours. She gets a couple customers a week at the cafe. It's a quiet, slow, often quite plotless slice-0f-life story. In this volume, we see Alpha, our protagonist, drive into a village for coffee beans, watch the sun rise on New Years, and get injured in a lightening accident. Given the age of this book, the art is dated and sometimes weak. But there's an endearing quality to it that invokes a lot of nostalgia for me, and I really quite enjoy the scope that the artist manages to convey. There are simply not a lot of people in this universe. The landscapes are big and full of plant life, but humans are rare. It's a bit unnerving, but peaceful. The environment is harsh, but not so much that our characters can't survive and thrive in their own way. So if you want to see a gentler post-apocalyptic story that's just about people's daily lives, Yokohama Kaidashi Kikuo is for you :)
