What do you think?
Rate this book
ヨコハマ買い出し紀行 新装版 [Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou (Shinsouban)] #7-8
Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou: Deluxe Edition, Vol. 4
The air as thick as syrup, minutes melt away.
The world festival is over, and the sun is setting on the days of humanity. Alpha returns home to her quiet café, richer by a few treasured friends and memories. She wanders with Kokone and they surrender themselves to the syrupy air, letting their time melt and fuse into one. We hope you enjoy chapters 83-111 of this beloved manga classic available in English for the first time. Please come again!
The world festival is over, and the sun is setting on the days of humanity. Alpha returns home to her quiet café, richer by a few treasured friends and memories. She wanders with Kokone and they surrender themselves to the syrupy air, letting their time melt and fuse into one. We hope you enjoy chapters 83-111 of this beloved manga classic available in English for the first time. Please come again!
498 pages, Paperback
Published February 27, 2024
9 people are currently reading
83 people want to read
About the author
Hitoshi Ashinano
64 books66 followersHitoshi Ashinano (芦奈野 ひとし, Ashitano Hitoshi) is a Japanese manga artist.
Prior to his professional debut as a solo cartoonist, Ashinano worked as an assistant to manga artist Kousuke Fujishima, while also releasing some doujinshi (amateur manga) under the pen name 'suke'.
Ashinano's comics are known for their contemplative, laid-back, nostalgic feel. His first and best-known series is Yokohama Kaidashi Kikō, a slice-of-life manga set in a post-apocalyptic world. The manga was serialised in Kodansha's comics magazine 'Monthly Afternoon' from 1994 to 2006, won the 2007 'Seiun Award for Best Science Fiction Manga' and was adapted into an anime.
Prior to his professional debut as a solo cartoonist, Ashinano worked as an assistant to manga artist Kousuke Fujishima, while also releasing some doujinshi (amateur manga) under the pen name 'suke'.
Ashinano's comics are known for their contemplative, laid-back, nostalgic feel. His first and best-known series is Yokohama Kaidashi Kikō, a slice-of-life manga set in a post-apocalyptic world. The manga was serialised in Kodansha's comics magazine 'Monthly Afternoon' from 1994 to 2006, won the 2007 'Seiun Award for Best Science Fiction Manga' and was adapted into an anime.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews
July 21, 2025
Sink in and breathe deeply...the instant sensations I get just from looking at the art. There is a sense that time and space is expanded both in this world, and for the reader. The expanse is a very soft invitation to slow down. This is the experience of self-regulation in book-form. Like a manga meditation.
Listening to old records in a new light
Take the whimsical route
Becoming human...thinking about what makes me human....
I felt something in me...Some part of my body I'd never used...opening up.
The feeling of deliciousness raged within me
I must touch something in me that's different from people.
I bet I have a lot of weaknesses I don't even know about yet.
[stuck in the rain] I didn't really have to be here all day...But I found myself staying out here longer than I would when it was sunny.
Listening to old records in a new light
Take the whimsical route
Becoming human...thinking about what makes me human....
I felt something in me...Some part of my body I'd never used...opening up.
The feeling of deliciousness raged within me
I must touch something in me that's different from people.
I bet I have a lot of weaknesses I don't even know about yet.
[stuck in the rain] I didn't really have to be here all day...But I found myself staying out here longer than I would when it was sunny.
February 26, 2024
These books have a way of making me slow down and relax. Someday im going to re read them on a covered porch in the rain.
August 15, 2024
I really enjoy this series, it is like a modern tone poem as their world is slowly winding down. It has been a while since we actual saw ruins as part of the plot and in the background art. Alpha was told / asked to stay by her "owner" so I'm kind of angry that the other robot from the "big town" is uppity and rude that Alpha is not living to her potential. That bot is plotting something and I don't like it - it ruins the feel of this story / world. Do not like it at all.
I also have to point out the power and age dynamic is kind of creepy old man young girl thing not to mention the whole Alpha and the boy and how did he age but not the girl. Weird and creepy.
Not to mention I thought in her wanderings Alpha went past Mt Fuji?
I also have to point out the power and age dynamic is kind of creepy old man young girl thing not to mention the whole Alpha and the boy and how did he age but not the girl. Weird and creepy.
Not to mention I thought in her wanderings Alpha went past Mt Fuji?
April 19, 2024
love this series so much. this installment truly made me believe that the world around alpha was slowly but surely crumbling, whereas in other volumes it seemed more slice-of-life. the only thing i couldn’t get down with was the romantic age gap suggestions, but other than that i appreciate every volume.
March 13, 2024
Another installment of this odd, gentle, unsettling, slice-of-life type manga. I feel like as we go along in this series, the more the different chapters kind of "stray" from the main storyline of Alpha and the cafe with all these different storylines that sometimes don't intersect. Would love to see where the mushroom/lamp tree side plot goes.
(Also, kind of a creepy chapter with the guy who has the barracuda sort of propositioning a 14yo character to join him "when she's older" and it seems more like a "she also has a connection with this animal" thing, but super weird.)
(Also, kind of a creepy chapter with the guy who has the barracuda sort of propositioning a 14yo character to join him "when she's older" and it seems more like a "she also has a connection with this animal" thing, but super weird.)
July 12, 2025
Outstanding! It really makes you slow down in order to enjoy it. If I expect too much I’ll be disappointed, but when I don’t expect much it’s always delightful!
June 18, 2024
These books are so sweet and slow. They’re like a vacation from the world. I feel guilty for reading them sometimes - like I should be doing something of purpose. But I guess there’s purpose in meditating on life in a large scope by examining the impossibly simple events that make up my days.
Read
September 1, 2025i only have one left :(
November 30, 2024
☕ That's all.
April 15, 2024
Volume 5 comes out before my birthday. I can say I haven't felt this way about a slice of life manga since Azumanga Daioh which I read almost a decade ago. As simple as the book is, it's profoundly beautiful like a short poem. I was scared to read this volume because of the wait time until 5. But also because 5 is the last. One of my favorite mangas. I put this up with PunPun, Monster, etc.
August 7, 2025
Hyper-attentiveness seems like an obvious strength for a character like Alpha Hatsuseno. But living a long life, willfully detached from the frail, dried-out insecurities of the modern world, often juxtaposes Alpha's quest for peace and comfort against the raw, emotional isolation that invariably follows.
YOKOHAMA KAIDASHI KIKOU v4 is a gradual pivot. In the previous volume, Alpha acknowledged that a year away from home forced her to grow and mature in a way she had never before experienced. Can androids build character? But as Alpha gets to work rebuilding her café (i.e., at first with reclaimed wood, then with a plastic awning, then with an actual construction plan), the manga's other characters slowly (similarly) come into their own. Curiously, one never really knows how much time passes in this book. It's one of the author's greatest achievements: Time will slip through one's fingers, no matter how slow, treasured, or charitable one is with their allotment. The shorelines degrade from ever-rising waves; the stash of coffee beans runs low; snow falls in big, giant puffs; and Takahiro and Makki enter adolescence.
Matsuki ("Makki"), the little girl who follows around Takahiro, is now 13 years old. She has a taste for adventure, adores the natural world, doesn't mind back-talking the adults just a little, and possesses an intuition like few others. It's no mistake that the roving traveler (Ayase), whom Alpha comically remembers as "the fish guy," asks the little girl if she wants become his apprentice: traveling, exploring, learning to fish. Takahiro is about to go off on his own journey, so perhaps it's time Matsuki did, too.
Also, a new character joins the mix. Maruko, a colleague of Kokone (delivery robot lady), pays Alpha a visit to see what all the fuss is about. The challenge? Maruko is a staunch, hard worker. She always has a plan, always has a purpose, and steps over anyone who lacks the fortitude to keep up. She hates laziness. So, then, what happens when the stout-minded Maruko visits Alpha's awkwardly painted, three-unrelated-meal serving café out in the boonies? Through these characters' layered interactions, YOKOHAMA KAIDASHI KIKOU v4 offers more than one definition of emotional isolation.
The book's visuals deliver a similar shift in momentum. Backlighting, for example, plays an important role in focusing reader attention on moments of acute solitude or of a purposeful communing with preferred company, the self, or nature. For example, as Matsuki hand-carves a boomerang for Ayase's barracuda, she tires, falls asleep, and dreams of a future of her own making — the lighting pushes a snoozing Matsuki, in the dark, to the foreground, while her well-lit caretakers, in the background, worry in silence.
In another example, Alpha searches for a better source of freshwater for her coffee-making. Saltwater intrusion has affected the surrounding area, and her opportunities for recourse are dwindling. But as the young woman hunts through bluffs, valleys, and cliffsides for freshwater streams, a single panel trails Alpha (on her motorbike) as she jaunts through an overgrown forest tunnel — the lighting silhouettes slippery rock surfaces and towering trees, but highlights bristling tallgrasses and puffs of motorbike exhaust. Alpha's shunt for clean water continues.
YOKOHAMA KAIDASHI KIKOU v4 wields quiet, tentative moments like these to sharply visualize the hesitation lurking beneath the surface of characters whose future, whether near or distant, is ruptured with a single flake of uncertainty. Late in the volume, a pair of locals visit the café just before a torrential rainstorm hits. The world darkens. The couple could turn on the light, but the folks choose not to. They choose to sit in silence, in the darkness, under the roar of the rain on the rooftop, and Alpha quietly reminisces on the privilege she shoulders as one who lives in a home assembled from the enduring beams and boards of homes of generations past.
YOKOHAMA KAIDASHI KIKOU v4 is a gradual pivot. In the previous volume, Alpha acknowledged that a year away from home forced her to grow and mature in a way she had never before experienced. Can androids build character? But as Alpha gets to work rebuilding her café (i.e., at first with reclaimed wood, then with a plastic awning, then with an actual construction plan), the manga's other characters slowly (similarly) come into their own. Curiously, one never really knows how much time passes in this book. It's one of the author's greatest achievements: Time will slip through one's fingers, no matter how slow, treasured, or charitable one is with their allotment. The shorelines degrade from ever-rising waves; the stash of coffee beans runs low; snow falls in big, giant puffs; and Takahiro and Makki enter adolescence.
Matsuki ("Makki"), the little girl who follows around Takahiro, is now 13 years old. She has a taste for adventure, adores the natural world, doesn't mind back-talking the adults just a little, and possesses an intuition like few others. It's no mistake that the roving traveler (Ayase), whom Alpha comically remembers as "the fish guy," asks the little girl if she wants become his apprentice: traveling, exploring, learning to fish. Takahiro is about to go off on his own journey, so perhaps it's time Matsuki did, too.
Also, a new character joins the mix. Maruko, a colleague of Kokone (delivery robot lady), pays Alpha a visit to see what all the fuss is about. The challenge? Maruko is a staunch, hard worker. She always has a plan, always has a purpose, and steps over anyone who lacks the fortitude to keep up. She hates laziness. So, then, what happens when the stout-minded Maruko visits Alpha's awkwardly painted, three-unrelated-meal serving café out in the boonies? Through these characters' layered interactions, YOKOHAMA KAIDASHI KIKOU v4 offers more than one definition of emotional isolation.
The book's visuals deliver a similar shift in momentum. Backlighting, for example, plays an important role in focusing reader attention on moments of acute solitude or of a purposeful communing with preferred company, the self, or nature. For example, as Matsuki hand-carves a boomerang for Ayase's barracuda, she tires, falls asleep, and dreams of a future of her own making — the lighting pushes a snoozing Matsuki, in the dark, to the foreground, while her well-lit caretakers, in the background, worry in silence.
In another example, Alpha searches for a better source of freshwater for her coffee-making. Saltwater intrusion has affected the surrounding area, and her opportunities for recourse are dwindling. But as the young woman hunts through bluffs, valleys, and cliffsides for freshwater streams, a single panel trails Alpha (on her motorbike) as she jaunts through an overgrown forest tunnel — the lighting silhouettes slippery rock surfaces and towering trees, but highlights bristling tallgrasses and puffs of motorbike exhaust. Alpha's shunt for clean water continues.
YOKOHAMA KAIDASHI KIKOU v4 wields quiet, tentative moments like these to sharply visualize the hesitation lurking beneath the surface of characters whose future, whether near or distant, is ruptured with a single flake of uncertainty. Late in the volume, a pair of locals visit the café just before a torrential rainstorm hits. The world darkens. The couple could turn on the light, but the folks choose not to. They choose to sit in silence, in the darkness, under the roar of the rain on the rooftop, and Alpha quietly reminisces on the privilege she shoulders as one who lives in a home assembled from the enduring beams and boards of homes of generations past.
April 11, 2024
YKK has rapidly become one of my favorite stories ever, and some of the early chapters in this volume are just so transcendent and affirming of that for me. This series has given me so much comfort and safety in the past year, and I am really thankful for it. That being said, I am unsure how I feel about the second half. It introduces conflict and change in a series that has largely thrived off of stillness. It begins to reckon with the realities of the world it has created and you really _feel_ how humanity is dwindling. It's incredibly sad in tone, and I wonder where this is taking us. On some level, it feels a little disillusioning--and I think that's part of the point. It really highlights how the world is changing around Alpha and how she can't change with it, and it seems to be starting to get to her. I don't think it's an unreasonable path for the story to take, but I kind of mourn the good times, and I'm sad it's all ending. Sad for Alpha too--she's so sweet and has so much love for the world. I know it can't just last forever but it's hard not to feel a little heartbroken that volume 5 will be the last one.
August 31, 2024
As I make my way through these lovely omnibus editions, I let the art hypnotize me a bit and make me happy.
Together with the characters, I take pleasure in every little thing, listen to sounds of rain, watch the silhouettes of trees, feel memories flicker by. There is a happy bittersweetness to every slice-of-life chapter.
💕 Alpha has rebuilt her café (sort of, don’t lean on the walls). Kokone comes by, they go for a ride.
“The road blasted us with light and scent and patterns of color.”
💕 Alpha asks Tokahiro to come watch her pilot friend fly by. It was such a wonderful scene!
💕 Alpha grows a giant sunflower. It’s a bit creepy. Everyone in the neighbourhood comes to see it.
💕 Tokahiro decides to leave, to go abroad. He says goodbye to Alpha, says goodbye to Matsuki.
Etc… etc… etc…
As long as there is more, I’ll keep reading.
Together with the characters, I take pleasure in every little thing, listen to sounds of rain, watch the silhouettes of trees, feel memories flicker by. There is a happy bittersweetness to every slice-of-life chapter.
💕 Alpha has rebuilt her café (sort of, don’t lean on the walls). Kokone comes by, they go for a ride.
“The road blasted us with light and scent and patterns of color.”
💕 Alpha asks Tokahiro to come watch her pilot friend fly by. It was such a wonderful scene!
💕 Alpha grows a giant sunflower. It’s a bit creepy. Everyone in the neighbourhood comes to see it.
💕 Tokahiro decides to leave, to go abroad. He says goodbye to Alpha, says goodbye to Matsuki.
Etc… etc… etc…
As long as there is more, I’ll keep reading.
May 9, 2024
It struck me today that the central theme of this series appears to be the passage of time. In this format, across these many chapters, everything changes as much as they stay the same. Things decay, relationships change, but Alpha remains as she ever was. I love the subtle nods to the horrors of a world in decline, which are always outshined by the glory of existence. There is so much presence and tao on every page, it feels like a meditative experience to slow down and be here for a little while. This had quickly become one of my all time favorite reads, and something I'm eager to revisit when life feels like too much.
June 9, 2024
As usual, Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou breaks your heart with its melancholy, slow-paced depiction of humanity’s twilight. This volume in particular introduces the subtly hostile relationship between Alpha and Maruko, and also acts as the first overt discussion of the mysterious fungi that seems to be claiming parts of earth. The devil is in the details, or rather, the lack of them. While I think Volume 3 encompasses the strongest arc of the series (to this point), there’s a lot to love about the pacing of this volume in particular, and the ways it shows our ever maturing cast of human characters.
September 1, 2025
8.5/10
Usual greatness.
However, I need to vent about the low quality of this volume print. Seven Seas Books was already not doing a great job with this series, but in this volume the resolution of the images was significantly worst. They updated the coloured pages to glossy paper, but then they dropped the ball on the black and white ones, which is like 95% of the tome. I hope the last one is a bit more up to standard.
Usual greatness.
However, I need to vent about the low quality of this volume print. Seven Seas Books was already not doing a great job with this series, but in this volume the resolution of the images was significantly worst. They updated the coloured pages to glossy paper, but then they dropped the ball on the black and white ones, which is like 95% of the tome. I hope the last one is a bit more up to standard.
March 20, 2024
Love this series; cozy, melancholy, hopeful, drifting, relaxing, colorful... So many good things. I love how willing this is to tell just bits of stories, knowing that we can come back to them later, or maybe not - but this moment is all we have for now, and it's enough.
June 19, 2024
“You always sit with your customers like this?”
“Huh? Is it so weird? People do comment on it sometimes.”
Time is passing. The kids aren’t kids anymore. Overall, the tone is becoming more melancholic. I believe the next volume is the final one and that seems about right.
“Huh? Is it so weird? People do comment on it sometimes.”
Time is passing. The kids aren’t kids anymore. Overall, the tone is becoming more melancholic. I believe the next volume is the final one and that seems about right.
December 17, 2024
It's interesting getting to see some low stakes drama in this one. There's a sense of change among the world and characters. I'm especially curious about the fungus that seems to be mimicking human structures but I doubt it'll go into that.
February 29, 2024
Wonderful stories, as always. Now I'm seeing some changes to the story. Little things, but it's clear there will be some new directions, some changes, and more discoveries. I hope #5 is not far off.
March 13, 2024
I love this cozy, comfy apocalypse. There's a peace in it that manages to comfort me somehow.
April 5, 2024
This is the perfect series to read if you just need a break!!
May 12, 2024
oh to be a robot witnessing the passage of time and eroding of what we once knew into something more tender and raw
June 19, 2024
I wish it would go on forever...
June 27, 2024
Ayyuh
August 12, 2024
This might be new favorite series
April 29, 2025
Time marches on. Nothing ever really ends, it just changes. Sitting by the window enjoying a spring breeze and reading a book may be the most perfect thing in life
July 11, 2025
Another excellent tour, a volume of returns and reviling, and reimaginings. But plot wise it’s a slight step down from the earlier books.
February 26, 2024
so great!
There was so much I seem to have forgotten about these chapters, or maybe I missed them the first time I read this series. Either way it keeps things interesting. Love the story all over again though. It’s a beautiful world and a beautiful life in the twilight age.
There was so much I seem to have forgotten about these chapters, or maybe I missed them the first time I read this series. Either way it keeps things interesting. Love the story all over again though. It’s a beautiful world and a beautiful life in the twilight age.
May 8, 2024
Alpha is back, back again. I love to read this series. It can be read in one of two ways. You can read it as a relaxing series of fun, light-hearted stories. Or you can read it as herald of things to possibly come. Alpha is a robot, a late-early iteration of AI, but she's also naive. She's in a world that has clrealy been taken over by environmental change. There's always the undercurrent of previous disaster. But you don't have to read it that way if you choose not to. Which is why I like this. I can be moved to action, or soothed.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews