Not unlike the next person, I got into this series for the vibes™. And it’s hard not to, you can take any frame from the first OVA series and if it doesn’t entice your curiosity in any way I don’t know what will.
The beautiful simple cel animation, the pretty color combinations, the amazing backgrounds which take a big portion of its run time, to help sell that vibe, the soundtrack that allows silence with a summer soundscape to take most of it, with the very occasional break into music and the mid-roll bossa nova/chorinho inspired song bringing a sense of familiarity and closeness with summer to my brazilian brain that no other series managed to…
The second OVA series, Quiet Country Cafe, while losing quite a bit of the visual appeal of the original due to the switch to digital animation, and really turning me off with the presence of awful male gaze scenes, still managed to please my brazilian ears with the bigger presence of chorinho in the soundtrack enough to improve the experience, and the story intrigued me in adapting a more depressing section of the manga. But it's one that couldn’t be really resolved within the limited runtime of 2 30 minute episodes, it also made me feel like there was a lot of missing build up in there.
Months later, browsing my reading list for japanese manga in Natively (great website for japanese learners who want to immerse in literature), I remember I had put the manga in the list of the ones i planned to read, and seeing it that it was around the level of other mangas I had just finished reading, I went immediately into it.
The immediate impression I had was “wow do people undersell this manga for the OVA”, I still think it’s a great adaptation but I don’t think anything captures the vibes of the story better than the original material. Beautiful backgrounds covered in monologues happening as the characters go to their daily lives, be it about the things they’re doing at the moment or reflections about current or past events that when, beautifully composed with the panels within the pages and throughout each chapter.
It knows what it’s doing and how to best take advantage of the medium to create that mood, that will be constant throughout the whole series despite the change in tone as it progresses, and that’s it’s main strength.
Quiet Country Cafe got me intrigued with how the story changed its tone in its depressing moments, but still managed to keep that relaxing calm mood throughout, and that is even more evident in the manga’s depiction of the same events and more. In not changing the mood it doesn’t try to reinforce a feeling on the reader, allowing the story events and conversations by themselves convey the emotions and trusting that the reader to feel them. And it makes everything feel so much more natural!
Let me exemplify it with how it portrays parting, a running theme throughout it: as in real life, parting, be it physically or in any abstract sense, is an inevitability to life. And it can be a soul crushing thing to go through, especially with loved ones. So the story chooses to construct the characters, the relationship they have, hint at the possibility of the parting (be it what it is), then gradually building it up, culminating into a heart-to-heart scene between the characters that evidence their meaning to each other if it wasn’t obvious before, and then jumping to a point after the parting, in which the characters reflects upon it in a calm bittersweet manner.
It doesn’t need to show the parting itself, or the intense emotions the character felt at the time and the immediate days after. It trusts that the reader will fill in the blanks, because they’ve grown an attachment to these characters just as much as the characters themselves. The reader doesn’t need to see the melancholy, because they already feel it.
I don’t think “subtle” is a good word to describe this storytelling, because I feel the word carries a “possibly being misunderstood or overlooked” nuance that's not something I think would happen with anyone reading it. But there’s definitely a lot of subtlety in it: a notable example is how it depicts the passage of time at some points, as in it doesn’t tell that time has passed most times, but if you pay attention to the environment and characters you might notice it before the story evidences it.
This is a level of author trust in their own storytelling that I don’t think I’ve seen in any other manga. It works very well and makes it feel all the more relatable and impactful. The length of the manga is perfect and even more if you take your time to read it instead of binging. It allows everything to sink in just at the right speed so the important moments feel impactful.
God I didn't even talk about the whole beautifully colored pages uh oh I gotta finish it, if I don't stop talking about it now I'll get into spoilers and I'd rather have you experience the story yourself!
Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou has got to be one of the best manga I’ve ever read, and I can't recommend it enough.
