I know it is near Yokohama, but can we pin down it's location more exactly? (If this has already been discussed elsewhere, please re-direct me)
The author drew into the story his idea of what real landscapes might look like after the imagined events in the story. I wonder if we can puzzle out the location of Cafe Alpha.
dDave posted some links to a site that showed some of the locations in the story:
http://ha.cafe-alpha.com/~r-ichiro/momiji.htm
http://www.alpha-net.ne.jp/users2/alpha7m2/gps.html
Unfortuantely, I can not read the text under the pictures.
- Loran Gayton
Thursday, January 22, 2004
There is a drawn map of the Japan that this story takes place in. I found it on the net but cannot recall just where I found it. Worse, I cannot make it fit Japan (today) either, I guess this map takes account of the flooding.
The map has the places pencilled in and Alpha is standing to the right; you will recognise it when you see it.
- C_P
Friday, January 23, 2004
As far as I can figure out, Cafe Alpha is on the southern side of that penninsula south of Yokohama. Fuji is visible from the cafe porch. The house side faces a small bay. There is a large body of water between the house and Fuji. You can see Kamakura from the house on a good day. When Alpha goes to Yokohama, she is definately approaching from the south.
There is a small headland on the south side of the penninsula that would fit these parameters.
- Loran Gayton
Friday, January 23, 2004
So far, all I found is:
http://www3.cnet-ta.ne.jp/c/cocone/koajilo_map.html
Unfortunately, I can not read it. The page has nice links to photos of places in the story, however.
Curiously, I can not find a good map of Japan on the web. I will have to visit a library, I guess, if I want to explore the world more.
- Loran Gayton
Friday, January 23, 2004
Here is another that links locations on a map to photos.
http://ha.cafe-alpha.com/~r-ichiro/ymap.htm#mmap
- Loran Gayton
Friday, January 23, 2004
Here is another:
http://ya.sakura.ne.jp/~maxi/shorin/alpha/spots/kurosaki.htm
This is a kind of treasure hunt for some fans.
- Loran Gayton
Friday, January 23, 2004
Found the fan map CP mentioned!
http://roshtaria.d2g.com/images/Anime/Yokohama/0107quiet_l.jpg
- Loran Gayton
Monday, January 26, 2004
Doumo Mina-san;
I found a really great atlas of japan that uses flash. I haven't figured out how to print, though...
http://www.jnto.go.jp/mapindex/E/
Using it and the perspective drawing map (with Alpha standing to the side), I made some guesses at where cafe alpha is, especially in relation to Taka Yama. My guess is that it is not far from Misaki High school on the western side of the peninsula, west of 134, not far from Ara-saki point. However, I find how 216 ends at a park (just south of there) very suggestive...
But, I have not been there (yet) so I don't know if it looks anything like the right area.
- Ian Darrow
Monday, January 26, 2004
This is the location mentioned above.
http://www.jnto.go.jp/MP/srv-bin/jntomap?DX=1393728108&DY=351017289&LANG=E&SCALE=25&SIZE=6&SCROLL=50&MX=0&MY=-1
you can also zoom out and around to see where it fits with rest of Japan
- ricardox
Friday, January 30, 2004
Loran,
Yes, that was indeed the right map, well done.
Occationally in the translations I see the word country used regarding different parts of Japan, is this right? Does it in Japanese say "kuni" rather than "ken"? If it does then it must mean Japan as a country has fragmented, an interesting thought.
Also I see Musashino mentioned a few times; isn't that today part of or next to Tokyo? It is indeed strange that Tokyo (or even Neo-Tokyo) is never mentioned.
- C_P
Friday, February 6, 2004
Howdy,
Ashinano does indeed use the term "kuni".
Modern Japan is broken into state-like units called prefectures, or "ken" in Japanese. Before that, the divisions were called "han".
As you mention, "kuni" means country, and using it to represent areas within Japan in a throwback to REALLY archaic Japanese. I am sure Ashinano is using this term to indicate that there is no longer a national government.
Best,
Dave
- dDave
Friday, February 6, 2004
I think Musashino is a district of Tokyo. There are several other place names used in the story that are suburbs or districts of the present day Tokyo metropolitan area. The fact that nobody mentions Tokyo is interesting. It must have been entirely flooded or flattened (or both).
It would be funny to find a group of mummified Gothic Lolitas clinging to the remains of the Harajuko Bridge.
I was wondering about how the characters never talk about what happened. Then it occurred to me that since it was the common experience of everyone in the story, there would be no need to bring the subject up. Furthermore, it is a painful memory. The disaster is now a distant memory and, like the weather, is something you can not do anything about. Grief has given way to nostalgia. The story is more concerned with the characters' reaction to their present circumstances than how they got there.
I wonder if the behavior of the author's elders influenced this story. Were the Japanese who survived WWII as reticent to discuss the past as the elders in YKK? Was the next generation either too polite or too focused on their activities to ask? Did the combination of guilt and grief discourage the survivors from reminding themselves of past events?
This realism in the story creates a curious tension. The characters never talk about it, but the readers want to hear about it. The author gets to tease the readers with hints, clues, and glimpses of the past. This is good because the main character is knows so little herself. The reader discovers this new world along with Alpha.
- Loran Gayton
Friday, February 6, 2004
Given the complacency we see among the people, could be consider that everyone sees an end to things? Are Sensei, Ojisan and the lady at the airport merely following through with the robots? Tending the chickens in the yard, as it were, after the henhouse, the farmhouse and the city beyond have all fallen?
As for the memories, perhaps they have been filed with everything that doesn't matter anymore. Yet, I wonder why Alpha doesn't have access to the history database which would catalogue the transition to her world, why Master has denied her the knowledge of what was his world.
- Steven Austin
Saturday, February 7, 2004
"Tending the chickens" is definately a possiblity. There was a good book written during the cold war called "On The Beach." In the story, the people of Australia were waiting for a huge cloud of radioactive fallout to drift over their continent. The entire northern hemishpere had already succumbed to the radioactive pollution. It was only a matter of time before everyone on the planet was dead. What did the people do while they waited for oblivion? They just went on with their lives as if nothing was wrong. What else could they do?
Another possibility is that most of the usual means of recording events (newspapers, websites, libraries, books) stopped cold during the catastrophe. If the Alpha series was a military project, it would have been a secret. As Kokone notes, there is a lot of data about the Alpha series, but no stories, no real history. Perhaps the history evaporated when the catastrophe rolled over the land.
That leaves the witnesses (Ojisan, Sensei, etc.) as the only real source of information. These people view the robots as children of their extended family. Just as a modern relative would not take a 7 year old on his knee and tell her the story of the Srebrenica massacre, they do not want to burden the robot children with the horrible memories of the past.
And, as you say, it is just irrelavant to their present and future.
I wonder if the facility caring for the A7M3 robots was destroyed in the catastrophe? Perhaps the A7M3 robots wandered in the about in the aftermath until they found ways of fitting in with the rebuilding of society. Perhaps "owner" went on a quest to find and re-unite the scattered robots.
- Loran Gayton
Monday, February 9, 2004
Howdy,
It's certainly true that the generation of Japan that went through the war did not tell their children much about their experiences. I have met several Japanese people who lived through the war and it's horrible aftermath (fully 25% of Japan's infrastructure was destroyed). They were focussed on surviving, and then rebuilding, and didn't have much time to dwell on the past. Once things had returned to a more prosperous state, memories of the war had receded somewhat in public memory, and private memories tended to just get shut away.
I wouldn't be surprised if a similar reaction has happened in the YKK world.
In any case, the end of the world doesn't seem to be imminent. Children dream of a future. If all was bleak, I can't imagine Ojisan would allow Takahiro to move away. If you are going to your end, wouldn't you want to be surrounded by family?
Best,
Dave
- dDave
Monday, February 9, 2004
Hello forum, my first post;-)
Thanks to Neil for his scanlations of this wonderful manga. I really hope it will come to Germany one day...
@C P
> It is indeed strange that Tokyo (or even Neo-Tokyo) is never mentioned.
Tokyo *gets* mentioned - sort of. On http://ykk.misago.org/Volume1/132 the train is named "Kyouhama line", which IMHO is an abbrev. of "Tokyo-Yokohama line", and on http://ykk.misago.org/Volume2/31, when Kotone gets back home to her 'country of Musashino', it is described as the former "Eastern Metropolis". This is actually Tokyo ("Eastern capital"), the name was given to it by Emperor Meiji in 1868, during the Meiji Restauration - it's previous name was Edo.
- Rainer Udelhoven
Wednesday, February 11, 2004
Regarding "Eastern Metropolis", I thought that was the Kanto area, "Eastern Capital" would be more accurate for Tokyo.
Today Tokyo and Yokohama make one urban mass and I guess it is sprawling further. Tsukuba, where I once worked, is at the north-eastern end of the Kanto plain, and around there cities are separated by forests and farmlands etc. Perhaps in the future it will all grow together into a Gibsonian sprawl...
Perhaps tangential (but who knows?): there are plans of moving the capital somewhere safer than Tokyo. Parameters are strict: a bit away from Tokyo but no more than about 60 km, near-ish to Nikko (apparently for some seremonial reasons involving the emperor), safe from tsunamis and safe from earthquakes and suitable for creating a new metropolis. This is a tall order, sure, but there is an area west of Tsukuba that seems to fit the bill. Moreover, a number of new transport plans outline new highways and rail lines to Tsukuba from Tokyo that rather than go in a straight line go via this empty area west of Tsukuba.
Then, regarding the hidden past: I think the characters, including robots, know more about what happened than we do; Kokone asks Sensei about a "phantom". Alpha, on the oither hand, seems not so interested in the distant past even though she is the fulcrum around which the story turns.
I agree the difference between what the characters know and what the readers know creates an unusual tension. It reminds me vaguely of Twin Peaks where I also had the feeling of characters knowing more and fearing even something of which the viewers did not know. Alltogether a refreshing change to most stories where the reader/viewer is omnipresent in the actions.
- C_P
Friday, February 13, 2004
@C-P
>Regarding "Eastern Metropolis", I thought that was the Kanto area, "Eastern Capital" would be more accurate for Tokyo.
Hm, Metropolis = "mother city" or capital according to my dictionary, nowadays mostly used to describe a cosmopolitan city. I haven't lived in Tokyo but IMHO it's pretty much a metrolopis today;-)
But let's take this with a grain of salt, since we're talking about translated stuff here - and I'm not a native English speaker, either.
The absence of any big ruins around Kotone's home or in Yokohama is faulty design in the comic IMHO, they can't have crumbled into nothingness or being covered by rising water in approx. 50-60 years (since Sensei's youth). But it's hard to say where exactly Kotone's Musashino is placed, it may haves moved like Yokohama - maybe to the empty place near Tokyo you mention?
- Rainer
Friday, February 13, 2004
I doubt the "faulty design" theory. I see nothing to suggest that Ashinano-san is leaving anything to chance in YKK.
Landmark Tower is certainly a large surviving "ruin," and there are the submerged districts, too.
It IS interesting that the submerged habitats seem to be intact, while the ones above the waterline have been reduced severly. Perhaps there is some scavaging going on on dry ground...but if you take down ten story office buildings, you would recycle them into something of roughly equivilent mass. Downtown Yokohama has many buildings that size. Where did the steel and concrete go?
- Steven Austin
Friday, February 13, 2004
>I doubt the "faulty design" theory.
You, too, wrote: "Where did the steel and concrete go?". Buildings with dozends or hundreds of meters height couldn't have submerged - there is simply not enough water on ol' Earth to manage that. Granted, a *real big* earthquake, combined with Mt. Fuji's explosion and the mother of all Tsunamis, would have created a mess, but still not vaporized the million of tons of building material the Tokyo area consists of.
I have similar concerns regarding Alpha - she is labeled as a robot and there are quite a few hints at her being at last partial mechanic (starting Kotone''s electric scooter gives here some "good vibes", the lightning flash only damages her skin but "doesn't reach her inner part", as sensei says, asf. Alpha's skin gets repaired in a two-layer process - obviously no human skin or she would have looked like Frankenstein's bride after the first layer;-)
OTOH she needs water and nutrition and seemingly bleeds, but even this could be symbolic - in a lot of mangas you'll see band aid immediately after the characters are hurt, IMHO no clear evidence here.
So she's not a cyborg and not a biologic created creature (pun;-), 'cause she doesnt age, but that's nothing new in manga - other heroines like Chi, Mahoro and Megatokyo's Ping spring to mind, who more or less defy a clear definition.
My point is, the author has deliberatly simplyfied his story to make it work (easier). Hey, nothing wrong with this - YKK shows us everyday situations in some kind of fairyland.
Maybe we could agree on a mild dosis of "artist's license";-?
- Rainer
Saturday, February 14, 2004
Maybe there are tall buildings still standing but Ashinano doesn't feel like drawing them. That's not just a flippant comment. Inside the front & back covers of the artbook there is a picture of the area the story takes place in. It shows a fair number of tall buildings still standing, both on land and, mostly, half submerged. There aren't any near where Kokone & Shiba live but there are several near Maruko, including what looks suspiciously like Tokyo Tower.
- Chris Davey
Sunday, February 22, 2004
About the lack of tall buldings standing in the water:
As a geologist, I can tell you that wave action is extremely destructive. It wouldn't take more than a few years for even the strongest buildings to be eroded at the water line and then, they simply crash down. So I am hardly surprised that there are no buildings sticking out of the water.
I am more bothered by the existance of lights under the water, but it is so charming and beautiful that I am ready to forgive Ashinano-sensei that little conceit.
ja,
- Ian Darrow
Sunday, February 22, 2004
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