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Welcome to Café Alpha, have a seat and enjoy your stay.

The world is slowly sinking beneath the waves. Alpha walks the remaining roads with her eyes on the sea, but treasures every day with her neighbors. Time seems to be speeding up, sloughing away like cliffs into the ocean, but Alpha's heart still beats, excited for what tomorrow will bring. Welcome to the finale of this beloved manga classic, publishing chapters 112-140 in English for the first time.

492 pages, Paperback

Published August 6, 2024

14 people are currently reading
87 people want to read

About the author

Hitoshi Ashinano

64 books68 followers
Hitoshi 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.

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5 stars
178 (70%)
4 stars
61 (24%)
3 stars
14 (5%)
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1 (<1%)
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 42 reviews
Profile Image for Ronald.
1,463 reviews16 followers
August 17, 2024
This series was so good. I'm going to miss reading this story every few months.
Nothing like a nice quiet end of the world story. Like I keep saying the story & art feel like a tone poem. Enjoy.
Profile Image for Mary Harvey.
10 reviews2 followers
August 17, 2024
This entire series had such a huge impact on the type of stories I’d like to read. The pastoral post apocalyptic setting that evokes the sort of nostalgia I have for Harvest Moon a wonderful life strikes a chord. I love the subtle but evident queer love between Alpha and Kokone. I love the passage of time and the surreal/fantasy elements that begin taking over earth as humanity gets smaller and smaller. This series is a quiet salve.
Profile Image for Jaime Dear.
Author 2 books9 followers
February 16, 2025
Holy moly. Part of me had hoped for answers to many of the questions in this series...and I'm glad we didn't get them. That's not the point. It would have felt cheap. Instead, life and mystery goes on...
Profile Image for Baylor Heath.
280 reviews
December 30, 2024
“May the night of humankind be a time of utmost peace.”

I just read this final volume in one sitting. It was as delightful and melancholic as the rest of the series.

Like the meteor shower Alpha and Kokone watch, time seems to start slow and speed up exponentially. Months and then years are passing between chapters in this volume.

Relationships are finding their resolutions. The ocean continues to swallow up more of Yokohama.

*slight spoiler ahead*
Alpha, as spontaneous and adventurous as she is, feels compelled to run her cafe right into the twilight of the world. Cliffs nears the cafe are literally falling into the ocean. It’s only a matter of time before Cafe Alpha is swallowed up too and yet she remains. She sheds tears as she watches her friends grow and fade away, saying “[Time]. It’s so fast. It’s too fast.”

As I suspected, some plot lines are never resolved. We never see Director Alpha in the sky come down out of her ship. Kokone never quite gets to the bottom of discovering the robot’s origins.

But as I said, the relational matters, most important of all, find resolution. Takahiro and Makki seem to get married and have a daughter who also meets the Osprey. Alpha and Kokone seems to live together, riding out the end of the world together. It’s a hint that, yes, these two love one another romantically.

I could’ve easily read 5 more volumes of this cozy, slow moving series, and I would’ve loved to see some of the mysteries solved, but I’m pleased with this. Like the stand-in customer for the reader, I too shall return to Cafe Alpha and I expect to find myself welcome again.

“I think she’ll remember me even if is twenty years. It’s that kind of place.”

Profile Image for Emma.
41 reviews
Read
September 30, 2024
Hard to find words to express how moving this is. The final volume has such impressively beautiful pacing, what it chooses to tell vs show vs not show or tell at all is so intentional and loving to the characters. This is just a really really beautiful story to even try to tell, and that this series can actually express (and translate) this story and these ideas of transience, identity, memory, confidence, and love, makes it something really really special
29 reviews
April 15, 2024
fuck



there's a part of me that's worried that when I'm 60 I won't remember this book
Profile Image for Sergio.
368 reviews6 followers
December 8, 2024
I only just started really reading manga this year, but in that time I've already gone through a fair bit of cultural heavyweights, just some load-bearing works of the medium, yet this is the one I decided not to write a review for as I finished it last night and instead waited for a moment to be able to compose my thoughts. This is one I already knew halfway through I wanted on my shelves.

The word that comes to mind for YKK is "grounding". It feels, appropriately, like sitting down for a cup of coffee (or tea, I don't drink coffee), and having a slow, mellow conversation in which it's ok to just stop talking for a bit because look at the sky outside doesn't it look pretty? which is also appropriate because I'm pretty sure that's the plotline for several of its chapters. It's cozy, it's meditative, it's mysterious, it's funny and goddamn does it look pretty, and when it really tries it can be downright moving. It feels appropriate to have spent nearly a month getting through it in my evenings as the days started to slow down.

The plot and worldbuilding are both (very) sparse but the morsels we do get are delicious and, honestly, enough to figure things out, who needs exposition when you've read so much sci-fi all the blanks get filled in so easily. The cast is so good and we get so much out of the depictions of their day-to-day domesticity and interactions, their lingering looks and meaningful goodbyes after every time they cross each other and wonder when they'll get to meet again, content and satisfied nonetheless. There is a real pervasive feeling of acceptance in this, it's the final days of humanity after all, but one filled with making the best of circumstances and damn do these characters set an example for how I want to feel.

Absolute masterpiece, a must read for sci-fi fans, slice of life fans or just people who like books that feel like hugs.
Profile Image for Alex.
65 reviews
September 4, 2024
What do you say when you finish a work as momentous as this one? Genuinely at a loss, but I notice, though, that I do need to say something. It was beautiful. Reading this over the past year as the translations slowly trickled through has been such an important tether to the world for me, so grounding and rich and meaningful. Finishing it is--in the strongest sense of the word--bittersweet. It's just been indispensable, irreplaceable, and I am so thankful to have had it as a companion this past year. I could repeat myself forever here and just never get it fully across.
Profile Image for Nathaniel R..
195 reviews12 followers
March 16, 2025
The end. I have enjoyed this particular scifi series, enough to continue buying the omnibuses for some time now. Its nice and cozy, while we dive deep into the characters and their lives and their thoughts. While the fifth volume really does focus on the passage of time, I believe it misses displaying some key moments, and didn't develop on some of the topics I wish it had.

Still, highly recommend.
Profile Image for emily.
241 reviews8 followers
December 9, 2025
Review for the whole series!

This is a fantastic slice-of-life manga. These characters will stick with me for a long time.
Profile Image for Mike Reiff.
440 reviews1 follower
January 19, 2026
A fittingly quiet and elusive end to this unexpected epic at the end of the world.
Profile Image for Dan P.
533 reviews2 followers
June 6, 2025
It's been such a pleasure to read this quiet, contemplative series over the last few years. And now, finishing the final volume on the final day of my vacation by the sea, i can't help but feel quiet and contemplative myself. Every story changes us a little bit.
Profile Image for Ozan .
131 reviews47 followers
January 26, 2025
I love this manga. Sometimes I looked at the panels for a long time, I read the dialogues in those panels over and over again. I didn't want to lose that moment, I wanted it to be engraved in my memory, but unfortunately mother nature wasn't that kind to me when giving me a mind... It was a manga that made me wish I had a photographic memory...

I learned that there are other mangas like Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou out there. That it blongs to a manga genre called Iyashikei and i even read another manga in this genre and it is called Girls Last Tour. As far as i learned Iyashikei series are feel good manga series that has an overall melancholia on the plot and this is exacly what Yokohama Kaidashi Kioku was.

Girls Last Tour is another one of my all times favorite mangas, but it had a bad end, i understand a Iyashikei manga suppose to have melencolia over overall its plot, but a bad end gets into territoriy of feel bad...(HA HA) I am just saying though, acutally i love bad ends, but an Iyashikei supposed to be a feel good series with sweet sadness, you know melencolia, so i think Girls Last Tour kind of get out of Iyashikei territory with its bad end because it is not sweet sadness anymore, it didn't depress me or anything, i love bad a end anyway, but it can depress some other people.

I realised that i am a Iyashikei guy. I learned that March Comes in Like a Lion is also an Iyashikei manga (i am collecting it right now, but i haven't started to read it yet) I am just pulled to Iyashikei mangas... Even without knowing that they are Iyashikei, i go for Iyashikei mangas. (HA HA)
Profile Image for Ben Hewer-Darroch.
158 reviews1 follower
August 16, 2024
As a series, this is a beautiful piece of climate fiction. While some observe from afar, fearful of whats to come, others make coffee, go swimming, repair the shutters. Do you spend your limited time desperately trying to preserve what was, or enjoy life as it is, as it comes? You might argue that there is some naïveté here, but its comforting in its own way. The sea is inching higher every year but for now, at least, its gotten a little bit easier to walk to the beach.
Profile Image for Jovan.
142 reviews1 follower
August 7, 2024
as beautiful as the first time I read it

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.
Profile Image for Jon.
540 reviews36 followers
June 26, 2025
I don’t know how to sufficiently or accurately describe this series and how good it is. An absolute marvel.

The feelings leaving this world produced in me…my heart.

Put this wonder in every time capsule and archive, for future civilizations and beings to find and read. So they know that the age of humans wasn’t all bad.
Profile Image for Kayla.
380 reviews36 followers
December 17, 2024
We finally got to the reality of robots observing the passing of time. There are a lot of time jumps in this one, and we see how that's affecting Alpha. At the same time, the world is changing and remembering, which I found to be an interesting concept.
Profile Image for Mel (booksandsundry).
424 reviews
August 17, 2024
I’m so glad I finally got to finish this series. It’s such a peaceful read. I’m so happy I got the physical copies so I can return to it again and again.
Profile Image for lumbagofio.
64 reviews
June 12, 2024
Una historia sobre el paso del tiempo: lo que se mantiene, se gana o se pierde.

En un mundo donde el mar no deja de avanzar y fuerza cambios; la protagonista (una robot que lleva una cafetería) te obliga a pararte, observar el paisaje, compartir con otros y, en general, disfrutar del momento sin planear demasiado.

Al principio me sorprendió que la gente lo recomendase como un manga relajante ya que estaba viendo al tiempo/mar como el gran enemigo que se lleva todo por delante (majora's mask THE MOON! ITS FALLING!! moment) . Hasta que caí en que no había que derrotarlo sino hacer las paces con él.

Su worldbuilding es muy tenue y algunas dudas quedan sin resolver, principalmente al ya no estar presente quiénes podían dar respuesta, pero me encantaron los flashbacks y me resultó un universo muy interesante.

Tiene un ambiente nostálgico pero acogedor, un estilo de dibujo muy bonito y me ha parecido como un álbum de fotos, una vez lo has leído puedes abrir cualquier página y revivir los momentos.
Profile Image for Alexandra .
559 reviews121 followers
July 10, 2025
It’s quiet.

This particular manga journey is coming to an end… or is it really? Every chapter is a beautiful vignette, and the art transports me somewhere peaceful.

There are lots of conversations. People come, people leave. Children grow up, leave, and have children of their own. Alpha and her café are still there. The world is still winding down… is there hope, a creation of something new?

My favourite chapter was probably the one with Alpha and Kokone watching the meteor shower together. Breathtaking!

I am glad this manga has been here for me. Whenever I decide to reread it, it will be again.

”There are so many things I want to do here. I still haven’t seen the color on the underside of those leaves… or walked around the house counter-clockwise…”
Profile Image for Matthew.
912 reviews9 followers
Read
May 24, 2024
Overall series is a 3.5/5, but I don't want to individually rate these graphic novel collections.

This is a rather unique story approach, as it's a cozy...post-apocalyptic story. There's androids and humans living together, a cafe, and hints of a world left behind. My favorite parts of the story were the cozy vibes and the time skips, showing how the androids will eventually inherit the earth. I wish there was more information about what happened, but that just wasn't what this author was trying to tell. While I think this manga was overly hyped, it was a good read and an important piece of manga from the 90s.
Profile Image for yyyzzzaaa.
22 reviews
December 3, 2025
it’s been so long since I’ve finished a manga and im so happy to have stumbled upon this one. the pacing was just right and something I could keep up with and the art is so charming. usually I’ll find a couple of panels that I like to photocopy into my journal but almost every panel is perfect that I just can’t do that!

it warmed me to watch the passage of time and see Makki and Takahiro grow up. I wish we could have see Takahiro one last time before the series ended but that’s okay. Also Alpha’s positive look on life overall influences me to appreciate the small things, yknow?

This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Profile Image for Joseph.
70 reviews1 follower
August 24, 2025
What's important is the lives and the coffee. An example of something comics and manga etc excel at that other mediums can't do. The long page spreads of hills covered in thick grass and dynamic clouds that come with their own internal soundtrack.
Profile Image for jesse.
34 reviews1 follower
November 1, 2025
Quiet but pronounced, I really enjoyed this sweet series. Not so long or character driven, but a gentle walk through a world that isn’t too far out of our imagination. I’ll miss slowing down at Cafe Alpha :)
921 reviews4 followers
September 5, 2024
Sad to see it wrap up, but love how all the characters get more time in the spotlight, and how the story keeps going. Definitely a series to return to; it's classic for a reason.
76 reviews1 follower
November 6, 2024
I’m going to miss this series so much. Definitely want to return to it. What a wonderful conclusion.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 42 reviews

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