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Description
[From MangaProject]:
This is the story of Alpha Hasseno, an Alpha 7 M2 series robot. Left by her owner, she appears and acts fully human while running a small coffee shop named Cafe Alpha. It is a light-hearted story about the people Alpha comes into contact with behind the backdrop of a futuristic country-side in Japan. As we meet Alpha, she makes a shopping trip to Yokohama.
The prologue chapter of Yokohama Kaidashi Kikō won Afternoon magazine's Four Seasons Award for debut works, and series won the 2007 Seiun Award for Best Manga.
Well this is probably the ultimate slice of life manga out there but except that there isn't much to it. If you are into this kind of genre you won't find many better mangas.
but very good. It's.. a happy story, more bittersweet, but when it ended I think I mourned for the dying world a bit. So many unanswered questions (the mushrooms are positively creepy), but I suppose that's just the way it works. .. I think I want to cry.
Really, this manga is so incredibly soft and slow-moving! It's like reading the diary of a young woman who lives one of the sweetest, most extraordinarily ordinary lives you could imagine. It's one of the best slice-of-life I've read, and lends substance to the fact that there are so many better ways to put a message across than with promiscuity and violence.
The world is post-apocalyptic, but there is no doubt that in the case of YKK, 'apocalypse' has actually being a good thing and not a bad one as depicted in every other manga that deals with this theme. It seems to have made the world such a nice place. Even though the ending hints that another apocalypse (and this time, I believe, a more fatal one) is already in the making, I could not be depressed at all; because, as new things are created, old things must die and give way to them...This applies to all living creatures as well as to entire planets...so why try (and fail), to fight it - when you can use that energy to spend your final years in peace and happiness?
The art is kind of rough, but I find that this unrefined art style suits slice-of-life stories very well.
There is simply no reason to dislike this manga - unless you're the type who wants to see violent murders and passionate romance every single moment of the story.
It doesn't progress and isn't even close to insightful. Theres no romance no action just a lot of plot points that give the illusion of development. Theres no comedy either or characters the audience can identify with. The artwork is decent but that's about it. This manga is worthless.
^ the above is the word that seems to best describe this series. It is simply impossible to get worked up while reading this.
It reads like the diary of an exceptionally sweet and gentle young lady, full of emotion, insight, empathy, and wonder. We the readers are able to grasp at an easygoing, simple life, in which we take our time to appreciate the details. This may be the most realistic work of sci-fi I have ever read.
The attention to minor details is one of the things I really enjoyed about this series, from the very beginning. The mangaka's ability to ingrain such detail into the scenery with such a simplistic style of artwork, is simply astounding. The mangak seems to mimic Tolstoy's style of painting a picture that allows one to see the whole picture quite easily through the minute details.
One thing I must say is that I get bored easily, and the pace of this series was just too slow for me to handle. Nothing ever really 'happens', but are our lives really that eventful? I suppose that's the point, to an extent, and I've redefined my scope of 'slice of life' using this series as a baseline. Boring? Mebbe. Relaxing? Quite, if you're not too impatient.
If you decide to start reading this, don't rush through the read. This series is not meant to be read in a hurry; its Sunday afternoon reading material. A slow, leisurely pace is what you want here, one that matches the lifestyle of the characters in the series.
Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou is one of the best mangas I ever read. How can a story can be so simple and yet so enchanting? In essence this is a manga about the passing time of life and the small yet precious moments that fill it. I was hooked since the beginning by two or three chapters I found on the Web long time ago and awaited anxiously for each chapter release over the years and even purchased the original Japanese print. Ashinano Hitoshi's work is a visual poem replete of beauty and sensibility!
What would you think if you heard the word 'Post-Apocalypse'? meteor shower?, nuclear wasteland?, hurricanes?, new york covered with snow?, suicide virus?, machine army?(with sunglasses), zombie army?, or 4th Bush administration?
it's obviously different take on what Al Gore said. The place where the characters live was a big city once, but the big city part is drowned, maybe because Gore landed a jet in the arctic, melted its ice.
the story is about a humanoid robot left alone in a cafe by her owner, facing day-to-day life in almost deserted post-apocalyptic village, making friends, learning a thing or two; don't expect any romance(there's hints tho) or action here.
nothing sad here, but i almost cry when it's ends, and i never cry to mangas before, even sad one, maybe because you grew love with every characters, even to those who just passed briefly every scenes, making it very hard to say farewell to them, and prove the power of character development over cheesy sad lines.
but the ending is frigginly amazing; times passed, the earth, once a festive of humanity, plagued by greed and lust for power, grew quieter each seconds passed, with less and less people around. maybe if post-apocalyptic future is this beautiful, i don't mind living in one.
the art isn't very good, but in a strange way, frigginly beautiful, helped by the narrative, poetic approach of the story, i can almost feel the winds blowing, the smell of the grasses in the morning, the cold, freezing temperature in winter nights, or the hot and sweaty days in summer...
i also see it as criticism on how we face Global Warming. the characters in this manga, which is the possible reflection on how might our descendants live, just live their day-to-day life without pointlessly whining that someday, earth will kill them all. Gore said they would be blaming us for this, would they?
and the night of humanity, may it be a peaceful age.
I don't see any reasons for anyone not liking this. If you are looking for action, drama, heavy romance and shit you should look somewhere else though. This is the perfect slice of life story.
Lovely stories, accompanied by beautiful backgrounds... Alpha is the reflection of the human kind, their memory, and that their being will not be forgotten...
Very peaceful pacing. As others said, no action, no crazy fights, nothing over the top, just quite. It was both relaxing and heart thumping with it's beauty and peaceful melancholy... Nobody in the story complains about the world. They live in happiness, acceptance and in peace.
It might seem boring to people. But it is a slice of life manga after all. Alpha is a simple, yet amazing character. As said in the manga "she doesn't know how special she is"... Probably one of my favorite characters of all time. A being that sees the beauty in everything, and makes every scene so breathtaking...
I think, this is one of those things that you must read.
Seems kinda superfluous adding another 'zomg this is awesome' comment to the list...but honestly, YKK really is THAT good. All the 10/10 is there for a reason....this is a masterpiece. If you haven't read this, you are doing yourself a serious disservice. I've been reading since I was 4 and this is easily one of the best works I've ever come across in 30 years.
Incidentally, tracking down the releases may need a little search-fu. It is worth every moment spent doing so.
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