How an Android in Yokohama Taught Me to Be Human

For the past couple of years, I've been captivated by a genre of literary fiction I find hard to describe. It's some gestalt of cottage core, peaceful fantasy, and slice-of-life with low-stakes drama. There's been a lot of work produced in these genres lately: Travis Baldree's Legends and Lattes series and the sleeper hit Frieren: Beyond Journey's End are among these. I'm going to insert Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou here as well, even though it's a far-future science fiction manga, and even though the manga was originally published in 1994, because of how well it fits our cultural milieu.   

Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou by Hitoshi Ashinano. Kodansha, Seven Seas Entertainment.

As far as I gather from the first 30 chapters, the world of Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou (YKK) suffered from catastrophes that left humanity quite scarce. The land is a mess of abandoned asphalt and overgrown grasslands. Here is where we find Alpha, an android who runs a cafe which sees very little foot traffic. She has close relationships with a handful of townsfolk, and makes conversation with the random customers who happen by. Alpha's creator makes the occasional appearance, but the larger story behind the existence of robots in general isn't important.

Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou by Hitoshi Ashinano. Kodansha, Seven Seas Entertainment.

YKK is a manga where things just...happen. While this sounds like any slice-of-life story, there's a lack of urgency here that I find notable. Alpha doesn't have an overarching dream or mandate I can think of save for running the cafe. When she goes out to buy coffee beans, there's no indication that the cafe will lose business or Alpha will go hungry if things slow down. No one is ever in danger. People receive mail. Everything is great. Out of context, YKK sounds dreadfully boring---and lovely. 

Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou by Hitoshi Ashinano. Kodansha, Seven Seas Entertainment.

Legends and Lattes, Frieren, and Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou are romantic visions of a world where employment isn't as important as adventuring. Meeting new faces and doing the most good for the most people is what matters. Time is precious, but instead of monetizing every second we have, it makes more sense to slow down and appreciate what's in front of us. (These sound like platitudes from the mind of whoever invented "Live, Laugh, Love.") In modern parlance, "Go touch grass."      

We live in a post-industrial age where increased wealth and technology do not always bring us joy. Late stage capitalism seems the law of the land. Climate change is real (even if people debate its causes). Obnoxious AI-powered technologies are advertised everywhere I look. We suffer the pains of minimum wage work with shrinking hopes for health insurance, salary, or retirement funds. People are dating less, marrying less often, and aren't reproducing at population replacement rates. Do our cozy stories have a cure for these woes? Can we live, laugh, and love as if nothing were wrong in the world?

In a week's time, I'm going to become a father. My job will be to show my daughter that despite the economic, political, and social upheavals that plague this era, life is very much worth living. She can be an adventurer if she wants to. She can turn off her phone (or subdermal implant or neural chip) if she wants to. She can solve people's problems for magic spells, run a bookshop, or open a cafe if she wants to. Orcs, elves, and androids do it all the time. 

Stargazing with Insomniacs After School

My father once purchased a telescope through a mail-order catalogue. I assume he bought it because I loved astronomy as a child. We only used it once to stare at a full moon from the roof of the three-story brownstone we were renting from. After that, the next time I went stargazing was 2018, when I visited a planetarium on NYC's Long Island and saw some of the Jovian worlds. I never did become an astronomer like I dreamed, but I still get excited about going to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. 

Insomniacs After School. Makoto Ojiro. 2019.

Insomniacs After School is a fun story for my inner child. As the title suggests, Nakami and Magari don't get a lot of sleep, so they sneak off to the school's abandoned observatory for peace and quiet. When they get caught, their only option is to revive the Astronomy Club despite not knowing what such a club does. While stargazing is a good start, the kids aren't using the school's professional telescope until they master the basics. To that end, Namaki learns how to use the Canon he has for long-exposure night photography. 

As of the first two volumes, Insomniacs suggests that in a small city like Nakao, Ishikawa Prefecture, light pollution isn't a huge problem. The countryside seems to be a train ride away. In major cities like NYC, ambient light creates a general halo around the city; light pollution means photographers invest more time in light filters and post-production. The Long Island observatory I mentioned was at the far end of New York, practically in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, veiled in near perfect darkness.

Insomniacs After School. Makoto Ojiro. 2019.

I live in Ohio nowadays. While it lacks comparable entertainment, ocean views, and robust transportation options when compared to New York, it makes up for with open sky. License plates boast the "Birthplace of Aviation" because Orville Wright was born here. Neil Armstrong, the first human on the moon, was from Ohio. NASA's Glenn Research Center has a whole webpage dedicated to showing how vital the Ohio-based facility is to the Artemis program. I don't own a camera or a telescope now, but I'm in a pretty good place to start thinking about space once again.

Here's a fun fact: the first manga I ever bought was Planetes back in 2003. Maybe I'll pick it up again when I catch up with Insomniacs After School.

I've had this book for twenty-one years? Damn.

Video Games as an Artistic Medium, or Why the Celeste Soundtrack Slaps

As a genre of video games, 2D platformers rarely catch my interest because I die too easily. I bought Celeste recently and learned that I still suck at platformers... but the Celeste soundtrack is amazing. It was nominated for Best Score at the 2018 Game Awards and won ASCAP's Video Game Score of the Year in 2019. I'd consider it a work of art.

Celeste. Maddy Makes Games. 2018.

On a related note, Polygon.com has a fun series on media hot takes, and their recent post on the writings of late film critic Roger Ebert have revived the debate of whether video games are art. I didn't know this was a question people ask themselves, but as an Art History degree holder, I'll shove my foot into this debate. 

A quote from Marcel Duchamp succinctly states my understanding of art production. Whether or not anyone else agrees about the quote's veracity is secondary to our the need to establish common ground:

“All in all, the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.”

Duchamp explicitly shares at least two facts:

• Creative acts are performed by an artist.
• Through interpretation, spectators connect creations to the outside world and become contributors.

The Fountain. Marcel Duchamp as R. Mutt. 1917.

I'll tackle the first point: who is considered an artist? Merriam-Webster defines an artist as:

1. A person who creates art (such as painting, sculpture, music, or writing) using conscious skill and creative imagination
2. A skilled performer
3. A person who is very good at something

Assuming people who design games are at least "very good at something" and use "conscious skill" to create objects from "imagination" in a virtual space, they should qualify as artists. But maybe the fact video games are commercial productions with dozens (if not hundreds) of developers and financiers corrupts this idea of artists and creations? Let's consider two viewpoints: 

• A conservative person might say, "Commercial gaming generates revenue by using software engines to capture audience interest. Artistic merit is secondary to how we get people to pay for the experience. Money is the creative force here." 

• A liberal person might say, "Gaming, regardless of finance models, is rooted in audience interest, and that interest is guaranteed through realizing the vision of creators who have mastered the craft of writing, directing, compositing, graphics, music, etc. People pay for good stories."

I feel both opinions would be right. Roger Ebert might yield that this portrait of the gaming industry as composed of corporate greed and countless craftsmen is eerily similar to the realm of film production. His own thoughts can be found in the article "Video Games Can Never Be Art," where he points out cathedrals need many people to construct them, yet they are arguably artistic creations. (He actually leaves this an open-question, perhaps not wanting to cause more trouble than he already has.)

Celeste. Maddy Makes Games. 2018.

Now let's tackle Duchamp's second assertion that spectators impact art creation. While this implies art is to be seen by others, video games produced privately on one's hard drive and kept from prying eyes are still a kind of creative practice, I think. Not all art is made to be seen: maybe the creator is embarrassed by it or changed their minds about selling it.

My Celeste stats, which are not impressive by any means.

Let's concede that many video game developers aim for distribution on commercial platforms. This means the spectators are the consumers who buy and play the games. These people, as I would extrapolate from Duchamp’s quote, add criticism and popular opinion to the creative act as they interpret the "inner qualifications" of any given work. This can be uncomfortable for creators because it removes agency from them, but it can also be liberating if we consider creation to be a communal process. This was exemplified in Roger Ebert, who was an interpreter of film because of his belief in its artistic qualifications, and therefore contributed to the form's legitimacy. 

To make a long story short, I think video games can be works of art. Celeste's soundtrack was recognized as a masterpiece upon release, and the game itself was nominated for and won more awards than I can articulate here. Yet, Duchamp would have agreed with Roger Ebert in stating video games are not art, if only because Duchamp's definition concedes to the subjectivity of art interpretation in general. And I'm perfectly fine with that.