Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou

I\'ve been a long time fan of the manga so I decided to finally check out the anime as well. This OVA is not everyone\'s cup of tea, or should I say coffee?

After watching, I prefer the manga. This is probably due to the fact that it\'s in colour and to me, they\'re ill suited. Also the art in the OVA looks dated by now, yet the manga manages to avoid that.

It\'s not easy to rate, never mind describe the story, to give it justice. And perhaps that was the idea, to make you feel things rather than tell you a story? It is ... not unlike sitting and looking at a sunset or watching a field of grass swaying in the wind. The slow pace, simple story line and gentle music help reinforce a feeling of relaxation and watching the world go by. If you\'re a person who can\'t appreciate things like that, Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou may not be for you.

The protagonist is a green-haired, always-genial, and scarcely ingenuous gynoid-denominated Alpha who runs a coffee shop while waiting for her owner to return. She infrequently gets customers at the start of the OVA, but everyone who meets her relishes her due to her outgoing and cordial personality. She’s simply a nice person, without any malevolence at all.

As far as my enjoyment goes, there are a few ways to describe the atmosphere: serene, bittersweet, nostalgic, poetic, explorative, joyous, even inscrutable. There are only two major events and these are weather-cognate. The rest of the time it’s the minuscule moments that are in the spotlight, much ... homogeneous to a diary or an impressionistic painting. The inclusion of a camera, specially designed for robots, that avails Alpha to relive the moments she shoots, contributes to the immersion of the viewer in the mundane and underlines the feelings engendered from the passage of time.

The reputation is well-deserved and should be viewed if the time is available. I can recommend taking a cup of coffee and sit back and enjoy because this experience will be relaxing.

I've seen numerous 10/10 ratings for Yokohama Shopping Trip (or Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou), and almost never anything below 8/10. So I decided, since it's only two episodes long, it had to be worth a try.

It may well be the single most boring thing I have ever seen in my life. The main character spent a good fifteen minutes trying to take a photo but being unable to get the right shot. That's it. Later on, she looks at some lights under a lake. It's a pretty sight, no doubt, and there's nothing wrong with a scene of atmospheric tranquility, but it goes like this: lingering ... shot of lights, lingering shot of face, lingering shot of lights, lingering shot of face, lingering shot of lights, lingering shot of face, lingering shot of lights, lingering shot of face....in silence for at least five minutes. I can't see any way in which that's anything less than incredibly dull.

And the animation! I've seen reviews praising the way the animation brings the main character's personality out vividly - but it's a lie! The art isn't bad, but the animation is downright poor. Alpha (the main character) has two expressions: 'slack-jawed gawp', and 'suprise' - and it soon becomes obvious that 'surprise' is the same slack-jawed gawp but with pink cheeks. The only other recurring character is the old man down the road, and he has only one expression! His facial features never move more than a fraction of an inch!

The worst example of animation in this, though, was the scooter-sideways incident. There was a sustained shot of Alpha riding her scooter, 'filmed' from behind. This was fine on the straight stretch of road, but then she came to some kind of curve or bend - but it took me a moment to realise that's what it was meant to be, because what actually happens is she leans slightly and moves directly sideways. It's HIDEOUS.

I'm completely nonplussed by the seemingly universal love of this anime. It makes watching paint dry seem eventful; at least paint progresses from wet to dry. The technical ineptitude only serves to make the experience painful as well as boring, leaving me with a weird feeling of being sedated and then beaten with wads of damp tissue paper.