Yokohama Kaidashi Kiko
Yokohama Kaidashi Kikō ( Japanese ヨ コ ハ マ 買 い 出 し 紀行 , translated as "Yokohama shopping diary") is a completed manga series by the Japanese illustrator Hitoshi Ashinano . It has over 2,000 pages and was first published in 1994. The manga, which can be assigned to the genre of his own and has also been implemented as an anime , is about the everyday life of a robot woman with a human appearance who runs a small café on the coast of the Miura Peninsula .
action
Alpha Hatsuseno (初 瀬 野 ア ル フ ァHatsuseno Arufa ) lives in a relatively near future Japan that apparently no longer has any real industry. Because of a natural disaster, there seem to be fewer people; in general, humanity seems to be disappearing. The sea level has risen sharply in a short time, which is why the coasts of some cities such as Yokohama are flooded. Street lamps protrude from the water and shape the landscape. In addition, all sorts of strange but not threatening things are going on: Building-like structures grow out of the earth and glowing plants take the place of street lamps, mushrooms take on the appearance of people and experience divine worship.
Robots are pretty common. Alpha, who has to go to the next larger city of Yokohama to go shopping, belongs to the Alpha 7, M2 robot class and the owner of a café, who has not lived with her for a long time. She therefore runs Café Alpha , a small establishment on land where nobody comes by - mostly travelers who are delighted by Alpha's hospitality.
There is a gas station near the café that an old man, known by everyone as Ojisan (お じ さ ん), runs with his nine-year-old grandson Takahiro (タ カ ヒ ロ). Alpha, who delights friends with dancing and her Gekkin , is friends with the two of them and visits them occasionally to refuel their scooter or to hang out with them. In addition, an undressed, presumably supernatural being lives near Alpha's café in the form of a young woman with huge canine teeth, who only shows herself to children, including Takahiro, and who shies away from adults. It is called Misago (ミ サ ゴ).
One day Alpha receives a visit from another robot woman, Kokone Takatsu (鷹 津 コ コ ネTakatsu Kokone ). This works as a messenger for letters and parcels and delivers a camera and a message to Alpha on behalf of the owner. For the encrypted transmission of the message from Mr. Hatsuseno, Alpha's owner, Kokones must kiss Alpha. Kokone and Alpha become good friends and meet several times after their first meeting to talk or have a coffee.
Other characters include Makki, who is friends with Takahiro and is jealous of the robot woman because of the friendship between him and Alpha, and Sensei (子 海 石先生Koumiishi-sensei ), an old classmate of Ojisan, who was instrumental in building the Alpha Involved in a robot series and owned an alpha robot. The hiker Ayase (ア ヤ セ) comes to the area of Café Alphas and the gas station several times and develops sympathy for Alpha and her neighbors. He meets many different people on his travels; among other things, the water gods, human-like mushrooms. When a typhoon destroys their café, Alpha also goes on a tour of Japan. After a few encounters, new experiences and photographs, she returns and reopens her café.
Takahiro is growing up and, at fifteen, goes west to study and move away. Later he and Makki have a child, Saetta (サ エ ッ タ). While Takahiro and Makki have grown up talking and dreaming of other areas, other countries and cities, Alpha has not changed and continues to stick with their café. The last scene shows how Alpha gets coffee again in Yokohama, the city has now become a lot emptier, the initially young shopkeeper is now an old man, so many decades must have passed, Cocoons and Alpha now live together.
Publications
Yokohama Kaidashi Kikō was published in Japan from April 1994 to February 2006 in individual chapters in the monthly manga magazine Afternoon , in which Mohiro Kitoh's Naru Taru and Kosuke Fujishima's Oh! My Goddess have been released. A six-page epilogue entitled Touge also appeared in the July 2006 issue of Afternoon . The Kodansha publishing house also summarized these 140 individual chapters in 14 edited volumes. Between October 2009 and July 2010 a new edition was published in 10 anthologies, which, in contrast to the first edition, also contains the epilogue Togue .
The manga was also released in Taiwan, South Korea (as Café Alpha ), and Hong Kong. Yokohama Kaidashi Kikō has not yet appeared outside of Asia .
In September 1997 the Kodansha publishing house brought out a postcard book on the Manga series, in March 2003 the 143-page artbook Yokohama Kaidashi Kikō - Ashinano Hitoshi Gashū (ヨ コ ハ マ 買 い 出 し 紀行 ・ 芦 奈 野 ひ と し 画集) was published.
Film adaptations
There are two different anime versions of the manga series. The first appeared in Japan in May and December 1998 in the form of a two-part original video animation on VHS and laser disc , but is now also available on DVD . The animation studio Asiadō , which was also responsible for the Spirit of Wonder anime, among other things , produced the two episodes directed by Takashi Anno . The music was written by the Japanese guitar duo GONTITI ( ゴ ン チ チ ). The first OVA tells the first encounter between Alpha and Cocoons.
In December 2002 and May 2003, the second original video animation Yokohama Kaidashi Kikō - Quiet Country Cafe ( ヨ コ ハ マ 買 い 出 し 紀行 -Quiet Country Cafe-) was released on VHS and DVD. Asiadō took over the production together with Sony Music Entertainment Japan . The director was Tomomi Mochizuki . As in the first OVA, Hekiru Shiina Alpha and Akiko Nakagawa spoke cocoons. Ojisan and Takahiro, on the other hand, were voiced by other voice actors. The second OVA, which also has two episodes of about half an hour each, is about the destruction of the café by a typhoon and Alpha's subsequent journey through Japan.
Awards
Hitoshi Ashinano won the 1994 Afternoon Shiki Prize with the 20-page prologue by Yokohama Kaidashi Kiko , an award given by Afternoon magazine for young artists. In the same year, Yoshitoshi ABe and Tsutomu Nihei were also honored. The prologue, which appeared in Afternoon in April 1994 , was Ashinano's first publication as a professional draftsman.
In 2000, the manga was nominated in the general category for the Kōdansha Manga Prize , but Takehiko Inoues Vagabond had to admit defeat. In 2007, Yokohama Kaidashi Kikō won the Seiun Prize , the most important Japanese science fiction literary award, in the manga category .
Web links
- List of all volumes in Kodansha (Japanese)
- Sony Music Official Website for the Anime ( April 19, 2014 Memento on the Internet Archive ) (Japanese)
- Anime News Network about the manga