Yokohama, Japan

Yokohama, Japan; 1990s

Chinatown Blues, Motomachi-chukagai 元町中華街

Jumy-M Marine Tower at Night / 知的な夜を探しに行こう

'24.1.26 大さん橋付近、赤レンガ倉庫、馬車道にて

横浜出張最終日、仕事が終わって晩飯の家系ラーメン食べた後に少し歩きました。せっかくの横浜、海も眺めておこうと港の方角へ。

大さん橋は冷たく強い海風が吹きわたっていて、立っていると体がよろめくほどでした。･･ こりゃたまらんと赤レンガ倉庫を経由して宿のある馬車道に戻ります。

My page spread for the bsd women zine, @yokohama-ladies-night !! Our beloved Guild girlies are having a tea party in Anne’s room :)))

Leftover sales for the zine are now open, available on our BigCartel !!

Watching Bungou Stray Dogs and seeing the wild shit that happens in Yokohama every single day made me realise that it's the Gotham of the BSD verse. Imagine being late to work cos a dragon attacked your city or missing your train cos a building got blown up by a Victorian looking dude who's apparently mafia or your fucking math teacher being declared a terrorist on national television along with the craziest and most attractive group of people you've ever seen, one of whom you're certain is the farmboy who you swear you've seen carry an entire cow over his head once.

So yeah, Gotham = Yokohama

Just less Goth and more Homo.

夕方になると秋が深まりつつあるのを感じます。

スマホでパチリと1枚。

2022年6月

横浜線の車庫

The Void Part of my Dream World Photography Series

2022

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Yokohama, Japan

Yokohama Chinatown

Paperwork, Nogecho 野毛町

Animation Night 163 - Yokohama Kaidishi Kikou

Good evening everyone! It's time at last for Animation Night. And what do we have this week... did you guess an OVA from the 1990s? That's always a safe bet with me and sure enough that's what we have tonight: ヨコハマ買い出し紀行 Yokohama Kaidishi Kikou, or in English, Yokohama Shopping Log.

I'm going to keep my writeup tonight brief, because I am fully kvin's homework on this one and I think rather than paraphrase what he wrote, lemme link the article. Here is an introduction to the series...

Nearly 3 decades after it was first published, Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou remains the poster child of mono no aware works in otaku media. Vaguely set after a catastrophe that collapsed both the planet’s ecology and human civilization as we knew it, an event that the series has no intention to explain, YKK stars android Alpha as she runs the desolate café that her long-gone master entrusted her with. Her episodic adventures are all about the appreciation of the moment, often with an emphasis on the evocative environments she casually comes across; after all, author Hitoshi Ashinano was inspired to pen this work by his fondness of taking a stroll or riding a motorcycle without a specific goal. Despite being an ode to spontaneity, YKK is also a thoroughly focused work—and the recipient of that focus is the passage of time, as well as how different beings process the ephemerality of things.

The manga is beautiful, and highly influential in establishing a certain genre of gentle post-apocalyptic works like Girl's Last Tour. But tonight we're here to see the OVAs, each of them just an hour, pulling out a selection of favourite episodes from the manga.

These two adaptations, despite coming just a few years apart, come at a point of major historical change: the first part is in the cel era, the second in digital.

For the first, we have director Takashi Anno, veteran of The Hakkenden (AN122) and magical girl anime such as Magical Emi. His characteristic direction style puts a huge emphasis on setting and atmosphere, lingering on quiet moments - something he truly ironed out in Semishigure, which returns to the protagonist of Magical Emi years after the events of the story. Which made him a perfect fit for Yokohama. kVin is full of praise for the colour design, the strength of the layouts, and especially the soundtrack.

The second OVA Quiet Country Café dir. Tomomi Mochizuki takes a radically different approach, skipping forward in the manga and introducing a boldly experimental style:

Though its color design can’t match the exquisite work of the preceding series, it makes up for it with the radically distinct art direction by the late legend Shichiro Kobayashi—best known for the likes of Utena, Gamba, Ashita no Joe 2, Castle of Cagliostro, Beautiful Dreamers, Windy Tales, and unarguably being one of the most important figures in the history of stylized Japanese animation. In contrast to the grounded scenery of the first OVA, Kobayashi’s evokes reality with stark forms, implications of movement, and downright expressionistic paintings. Compared to the gentle embrace of the first series, his work feels like it’s demanding your attention in a more proactive way.

kVin describes the second episode's direction as characterised by more active and layered camerawork and a more 'involved' score - he's particularly taken with the sequence where Alpha returns to her café after the devastating storm that sets the OVA going. He compares it to Mochizuki's direction of the Ghibli film Ocean Waves.

So two approaches to the same material, two different vibes, but it sounds like both should be very strong. Tonight the plan is simple enough: we'll watch both OVAs back to back! (Apologies for the late start, as mentioned I've been having tech problems.)

AN 163 will be going live shortly at twitch.tv/canmom. Both OVAs are pretty short so we'll be watching from about 11pm to 1am UK time. love to see you there nya~

09.08.2023 | Yokohama, Japan