Like a mighty phoenix I rise from the flames to bring you this review. Like a good neighbor Time Stop Samurai is here with a brand new review. When you think about overrated garbage what comes to your mind? Aria the Origination? Monogatari? Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso? When I see the phrase one title rises above the rest, Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou (YKK) or as its known in English Yokohama Shopping Log. YKK as I will be calling it, is an ephemeral slogfest that tries to be deep while being a thinly coated moe pandering slice of where nothing happens. This show panders to people who get off to girls doing nothing yet want to fit in with the “big boys” on anime discussion forums like 4chan. This manga if I can even call it that is about an automaton named Alpha who runs a café after her master left whom went on an odyssey. What is his raison d’etre? What happened to him? We never find out, this manga weaves many plot threads but fails to tie them into a coherent plot. It’s just a mess of meaningless and mundane drivel. Alpha is an android of sorts, however she doesn’t act any different from a human. The writing is lazy because rather than giving her a believable robotic personality the mangaka settled for something more simple. The manga also features little to no dialogue, most of the panels are just scenery shots which are inherently shallow. Like all the “slice of life” manga of its kind YKK lacks any tension or suspense, the exorbitant amount of banalities make it hard to get invested to the story. It’s superfluous yet also empty and meaningless, an empty shell, ruined potential.

Artistically YKK is a mess, the character proportions feature long grotesque limbs, reminiscent of those in CLMAP anime/manga. The paneling is awful and fails to give readers a good sense of location. The character designs are inappropriate, none of the cyborgs look robotic, it’s easy to mistake them for humans. The backgrounds of the manga are not good either, if you want real good backgrounds go read Asano Inio.

As I previously stated this manga is nothing more than thinly coated pandering, let me elaborate. YKK makes excuses for fan service by making it fit into the world. In order to exchange information the automatons must mouth kiss. This is nothing more than an excuse to increase sales and pander to otaku scum who lock themselves up in their mom’s basement and read 18+ doujins. Was there no other way for the robots to exchange information? And why must all but one be female? It’s very similar to a harem if you think about it.

But in the end, nothing really matters now otakus can read this pandering while thinking they are somehow smart. Contribute to society you degenerates, earn a Engineering degree and build bridges and robots instead of jerking off to them.