Reviews

Many people run through the rushes and tandem of life, escaping into fantasies about how their lives ought to be. "I'll quit my shitty job", they'll say. "I'll start this or that project", they'll say. Whether they will or won't is irrelevant, but they most often don't; the tidings of time wearing any will and ambition they had left until they have come to tolerate living more than truly embrace it - life becomes but an alternative to death.

Yokohama Kaidashi Kaikou to me is a similar escape, both before and after this manga entered my life I had fantasized of a similar existence. A quiet life, outside of the grasp of urban grief and stress; interacting with a few good friends but mostly living for more abstract human needs - the arts, knowledge, simple joy of living. Seeing this fantasies expressed in some kind of real format is lovely to read, and the precious and dreamy background & character art compliment this concept incredibly well.

There isn't much of an overarching story, and the aspects of the manga compliment this well. Most of the "conflict" is just the main character Alpha - a robot - discovering more of her humanity by means of this life. This is perfectly complimented by her means of memory-keeping; the camera she receives early on and the random artifacts of the world she accrues over time. They provide a similar feeling of anthology in the characters that the reader too receives in this world - on the same wavelength so to speak.

I'm no expert in manga or anime, nor do I have the exact vocabulary I'd like to have to describe my affection towards these books, but Yokohama Kaidashi Kaikou manages to effect me very deeply through its expression of a positive kind of banality, of a fantastically sparse yet in-grasp life of simple spiritual pleasures.