In the twilight of civilization mankind fades in a kindly and stoic way. The relationships are mainly of unselfish support and little communities behave like a family.
Between the evanishing communities there are a few androids so admirably humane that even a few moments of flaws like jealousy and bigness are portrayed but mainly the seeking for happiness and love. Some android characters clearly evolve into more beautiful and compassionate beings during the story, assimilating experiences relations and stories.
The landscape of the ending human remains are depicted of several beautiful ways in such an extent that the very nature try to mimic some human memories. At this point it’s important to praise Ashinano Hitoshi’s admirable and inspired artwork of simplicity, beauty and expressiveness.
The economics of the era seems a bit vague and implausible and one could only imagine that people rests on the remains of the past and some maintenance for more elaborated things like cameras, fuel and vehicles but clearly there’s not a strong effort for development of new designs or projects. The most advanced element on the series is an ancient ever flying stratospheric airplane the seems to just observe the ending from above but never interfering. For daily necessities people use to share goods or, in a lesser way, uses money that comes from an indefinite source. Alpha - the main character - for instance uses to go shopping and buy coffee beans but usually some of her customers are exempt from paying bills, to be fair you see the effects of lack of money too as Alpha wants to repair the shop but has no resources for it.
Over more than a decade kids grows and move away, eventually visiting the main line. Old friends disappear, probably passing away but you never knows. Androids in its turns stays young keeping memories, still loving, and waiting.
If humanity would disappear this way, we can only hope androids like these prevail as witness for the best part of being human and prevail as a beautiful society.
Afterwords:
First of all, english is not my first language, so please forgive me for some flaws. I’m not a regular reader of “mangas”, the earlier one was probably “Lone Wolf and Cub” that I read as far as 30 years ago when at college, and the next one will be “Girl’s Last Tour - Shōjo Shūmatsu Ryokō” by influence of YKK.
I seldom review movies or books except when they causes a strong effect on me and It’s the case with this series. I couldn’t restrict YKK as just at comics genre but it’s in fact a brilliant piece of literature, one of most positive and graceful portraits of humanity and empathy. Days after finish this series I confess still affected by this piece of art.
To Ashinano Hitoshi-san, thank you very much for this opportunity.