Anime: Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou

It's hard to be any kind of objective when reviewing Yokohama shopping diary. There's no central plot. Even the subplots are disjointed, focused more on mood than story. There is also only 1 serious character to speak of, so more than in any other anime, your enjoyment of Yokohama shopping diary will have to depend on whether the moods and themes strike you.[br][br]The 2 episode OVA is presented not so much like a slice of life, but more like a memoir or diary. Its narration is imposing, explaining all the emotions and details of Alpha, the main character. Watching Yokohama Shopping Diary feels like you're reading her innermost thoughts.[br][br]Shopping Diary is an oddly arranged set of mini-stories that focus on different experiences in Alpha's life. It's basically a collection of stories that don't stretch beyond the simple routines of everyday life, but were for one reason or another impactful to Alpha. From experiences like completely wasting away a day, making new acquaintances, and simply appreciating scenery, these stories highlight such intricate yet mundane emotions that everyone has experienced with a level of focus that no other anime has done before.[br][br]The one thing that all the little story segments have in common is loneliness. Throughout most of the OVA, Alpha will be alone, reflecting on her thoughts and emotions as a lonely person might. She also becomes hypersensitive to nostalgia, words of affection, and scenic beauty as a lonely person might. The loneliness expressed in Shopping Diary is not a depressing, hopeless kind that's often present in Makoto Shinkai's work. The whole anime is surrounded by melancholy. Alpha sees an unspeakably beautiful world, and she's often moved to tears by it, but the viewer constantly gets the sense that there's something missing.[br][br]This shopping diary is best enjoyed when you are feeling a little lonely yourself. If Alpha's forceful narration fails to hit you emotionally, then Yokohama Shopping Diary has nothing else left. The stories are disjointedly forced into two 30 minute episodes, and not inherently dramatic. Alpha is the only character that gets a decent amount of focus, and the animation isn't especially gorgeous either. If you're familiar with the melancholy loneliness that surrounds Alpha and you're a patient viewer, there really is nothing like Yokohama Shopping Diary. I find it difficult to recommend this OVA to most people though.

It's impossible for me to give this OVA a fair review. The reason for this is that I read the manga first and thus tend to compare... So, unfair review coming up. Sorry for the inconvenience.


Animation & Art:

The art sticks closely to the manga mostly. That's good - that's about the only thing they didn't alter, the way people and the world looks like. The animation is well done for the time, although some sequences get repeated a lot, especially the weatherfish-thingy. They also wasted 2 minutes of precious time for some kind of music video in the middle of each episode, with really weird/abstract art, which looks crappy. Don't have a clue why they did this.

Another complaint is that the characters are sometimes too far away, they tried to show too much landscape at the same time. For example, when the delivery girl gets a map out of her rucksack, it looks like she's taking a dump in the woods instead. This is a case where High-Definition-Anime would come in handy, but well, we don't have that yet. ;)

Sound

Music
Except for Intro, Outro, and the 2 minutes music video in the middle, there is no music in this anime. That was a good decision IMO, because I didn't like the songs that well anyway. And the silence really suits this anime.

Actors
I like the voices very much... I bet they were really hard to choose. It fits the characters perfectly. Only complaint here is that the main voice is too loud.

Sound effects
Nothing out of the ordinary here.

Story & Character

The most important thing to know about this OVA is the genre. It's a very rare genre, so AniDB doesn't even have a category for it. It's life-slice. Nothing in particular happens, you just see how the main character lives day per day. Something like Big Brother, but without the kinky stuff.

They didn't catch it. It's sad, but they really didn't. In the manga, there is so much going on (although nothing really happens). In the OVA, nothing happens and nothing's going on.

Characters aren't introduced properly. A key character is left out in the first episode and suddenly is refered to in the second episode and turns up for 2-3 scenes for no reason.

There isn't a single customer. Why not? She rarely has any customers in the manga too, but she does have them. In the OVA, they preferred to waste half an episode on showing how she bakes her coffee beans. And did I mention the music videos?

There is no action at all. The manga has so much action. It has cool fights, monsters, nudity, perverts, ... well, of course not really. There's so much going on in the manga, yet nothing really happens. In the OVA, there's really nothing, nothing at all. It's peaceful, but too.

Value & Enjoyment

I hardly enjoyed watching the anime. The reason for that is: I read the manga first. They had to cut too much for this 2 episode OVA, they left characters and situations out, introductions are missing, the athmosphere is totally different. All of the depth showed in the manga is missing in the OVA. I have to add that the YKK manga is currently my #1 favourite, and I've read quite a lot. So I'm a little nitpicky here.

Instead of a 2 episode OVA, they should've done a 13 episode series. Maybe then they'd be somewhat closer to the manga, without having to cut out that much stuff, but I guess they don't have the budget for 13 episodes in which nothing happens.

Recommendation

If you intend to both watch the OVA and read the manga, watch the OVA first, otherwise you might be as disappointed as I was...

Read the manga no matter what. :)

Animation

Especially considering the OVA’s age, the anime is surprisingly good. Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou manages to support excellent detail that can be compared to some of the more realistic animes that Ghibli has made. This detail, combined with very nice touches here and there, makes the anime nice to look at (albeit not eye-popping).

Sound

The soundtrack contains a few decent songs and reasonable voice acting, but nothing really stood out as noticeably good.

Characters

As is to be expected from an anime of this length, the characters aren’t very developed. A lot is left open as to the characters’ back-stories, motives, or origins, and this probably hurts the anime more than anything else. When I found myself spending incredibly long, drawn out times with characters that I didn’t really even know, I often found it hard to stay interested in what was going on (or rather, what wasn’t going on).

Overall

Once again, I have almost no idea what score to give this anime. While with more commercial animes I can easily compare the shows to similar works, with such an incredibly unique anime this is pretty much impossible.

To call Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou “slice-of-life” is quite the understatement, for this anime is not merely a “slice” of life; it’s the entire goddamn pie. Never before have I seen an anime that so single-mindedly focused on realism. The anime has no conflict whatsoever, but instead relies entirely on the general mood of the show to entertain the audience.

What, exactly, is the mood of the show? Good question. Some may make the case that the anime is cheerful, but this, in my opinion, is not entirely true. While watching the show, I was also struck by an overwhelming feeling of isolation, a separation from all that mattered. Ironically enough, the main character seems trapped among a prison of open fields. Although she can see miles in every direction, she will never wander farther than a few miles away from the Cafe she owns.

This correlated scarily well with my own life experience. As a student attending a college in the middle of Kansas (arguably the most boring state in the U.S.A), I could easily identify with the main character’s eerily peaceful lifestyle. While the calm, stress-free environment is enjoyable, at the same time there is always a frightfully forlorn undertone that runs through the day. One gets the feeling that he or she is separated from reality, in a pocket of the world that no one will ever remember.

Probably the most interesting question that came up in my head as I was watching the show was whether the main character was actually happy. She certainly appears to be, but as she obsesses over trivial issues like making coffee and taking photographs, a subtle undercurrent of yearning seems to permeate her entire being – a yearning to be something more, to have a place in the world, to see what is beyond the seemingly endless countryside.

However, despite what I’ve said, Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou never quite manages to be wholly entertaining. The anime is undeniably quite relaxing, but it also happens to be frightfully dull at times. In the end, I’m going to recommend this (this anime has certainly piqued my interest enough to watch the second OVA), but with a strong warning: if you heavily value storyline, dynamic characters, or any sort of action whatsoever, then this anime is probably not for you.

Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou is probably the only anime which is capable of capturing the beauty of a daily life and the surroundings we don't notice anymore.

Although the animation looks a bit older, it still has the beautiful scenes you will be attracted to. Showing numerous scenes of surroundings, it makes you realize how beautiful the world can be. After watching the great scenes of this anime, you cannot look outside without feeling the same peace as this anime tries to give to you.

The voices are nice and peaceful, and they always give you a feeling as if you've heard them before. Also, the music is that peaceful that you almost feel like dreaming, dreaming about nostalgic memories.

Taking place in a future post-apocalyptic world, nothing of that all is to be noticed in this anime.
The story isn't really a story. After all, 'Kaidashi Kikou' means 'Shopping Diary', and that's exactly what this anime does; it tells the story about Alpha and what she does in her daily life. It doesn't really have a story, it's just a telling of what she does and what kind of things she encounters during her days. Does that make this anime boring? Hardly. Because the atmosphere is very peaceful and beautiful, making you dream away with pure peace and nostalgia. After all, this is what people mean with 'impression anime'. It's all about the atmosphere, and the positive feeling this anime emits as like a bright light. So why did I give such a high mark to the story? Because the slow telling fits this anime, making the telling as a story for the anime.

Because the flow of this anime is very slow, there doesn't really happen anything and it has only 2 episodes, you can hardly talk about character development. Still, the character development which happens is that of the viewer. After watching this anime you'll look so much different at life that I think I can add that to this section.
Also, Alpha is so very kawaii that it is impossible not to like her. All the other characters fit the series very well. Although none of them really change, they just feel like they belong in this series, as if they're old friends you've finally been able to see again.

For an anime where nothing happens, is this worth rewatching? Definitely. Whenever you feel down, whenever you feel like looking at something beautiful, this will always cheer you up. The enormeous feeling of positivity will definitely give you that warm, fuzzy feeling inside.
You don't watch this anime because of the story, you watch this anime because it is art. And because it is just perfect.

One scene might be very much reminded, and that's when Alpha gets visited by Kokone. The naivity and cheerfullness of Alpha is really touching, especially when Kokone mentions the direct data-transfer.