Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou: Deluxe Edition 5

I'm very please to own the complete series to one of my favorite manga. Like the rest of the volumes, it's beautifully printed.

Read a fan translation of this story long ago in 2006, just as Ashinano finished the series I think. Loved it then and I love re-reading it now. There are so many details I had forgotten about. It’s full of nostalgia for me. Looking forward to reading it again and again from now on.

This manga slowly shows how humanity accepts its decline stoically. From the perspective of android, Alpha, we see how world gracefully changes.

I'm not going to review all five volumes. Five is the end so I'll look at the series as a whole. Broadly speaking, this is the story of a humanoid robot (Alpha) living in some sort of post-apocalyptic world. The world itself isn't in any sort of panic or disaster; it's just slowly dying. Alpha runs a coffee shop out in the middle of nowhere where typically she is her own best (and only) customer for days on end. Sometimes she gets on her scooter to explore the world or to meet up with her best robot friend; sometimes the several humans living near here pop in for a visit. It is a very sweet and wistful story, exploring Alpha's reaction to facing humanity and the world around herself. The art work is excellent and the pace is slow but contemplative: Alpha spends a lot of time looking into the sunset and thinking as the humans around her age and she does not. Alpha is a genuinely endearing character and I enjoyed the trip through her life, but by the time they reached the end it was pretty clear that they didn't have a very good finish for the story, so after five volumes it felt a little incomplete, with a couple key questions unanswered. Still, I enjoyed reading it, and "made the cut" in terms of being kept on my shelves for possible rereading instead of being given away.