My Cultural Diet

There are moments when Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou’s story is so slight, I had trouble remembering why I was still reading it. And then I’d turn the page and see one of Hitoshi Ashinano’s simply-yet-gorgeously rendered landscapes, or a cute little character moment, or a hint at a bigger, stranger world, and I’d get sucked right back in. Make no mistake, Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou is very slight, its chapters essentially a collection of slice-of-life vignettes centered around an android named Alpha who’s trying to maintain a small rural coffee shop in her owner’s absence. Oh, and the world is slowly dying due to environmental collapse. Which means that technically, you could file Ashinano’s manga under “post-apocalyptic sci-fi,” but it’s far too gentle and unassuming for that, suffused with the soft, rueful melancholy that’s typified by the Japanese concept of mono no aware. I’m not necessarily in a rush to read the series’ other volumes, but I am glad I got to hang out with Alpha and her friends for as long as I did.

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