Introduction
In the twilight of the human age, mankind continues to persevere, resisting the lull of nature's reclamation. For Alpha Hatsuseno and her café, things have not changed. The familiar sights and scenery instill a comforting solace—a sentiment cherished by Alpha. One day, however, a radio weather report forecasts an approaching typhoon that threatens to undermine the enduring peace.
After taking refuge at Ojisan's gas station and returning to the café, Alpha is devastated to see that her beloved shop had been ravaged by the storm. Determined to restore it back to its former glory, she resolves to find other jobs as a way to fund the repairs. The journey into the unknown is an opportunity to explore what remains of civilization, and Alpha seizes this chance to expand her view of the outside world.
[Written by MAL Rewrite]
Audience reviews
10 · Sample from the first available page, separate from the total number of ratings.
SpriteDrawsStuff
Oh boy, there's a lot to talk about here.
Quiet Country Cafe is the successor to the previous OVA, YKK. It continues the little story YKK began, and reintroduces us to familiar faces and new places. However, despite YKK being a masterpiece, QCC absolutely did not live up to its previous OVA.
First of all, the animation and art isn't the best. It might be good or better than average, I don't know, but compared to YKK, it's pretty much a downgrade in every way possible. Here, the characters, especially Alpha, are extremely rounded and simplistic, almost appearing childish in their design. The animation is pretty good when it comes to animating the characters themselves. However, it decides to completely stop animating the little plants & leaves that YKK used to do, making the world feel as…
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The second pair of YKK OVAs feels quite different, and worse. There's an attempt to emulate the meditative qualities of the first, but the sort of chibi-fied character designs and flat coloring feel like artistic sacrifices made for the sense of "more" animation, and this ends up not being the case at all, so... what happened there. The soundtrack and background paintings have also taken noticeable hits, even if the original OVA wasn't always a looker it had a sense of atmosphere. Here there's a lot of surprisingly uninteresting scenes which fail to take advance of YKK's unique setting and instead seem to be going for a "comfy small-town show" vibe. There are also some attempts to inject titillation into the story, which seem really misguided.
Read at the sourcestmwg01
Quick take: Purely slice-of-life, the second set of OVAs continue to explore the concept of learning to find the beauty in everything around you and learning to understand what it means to live.
Whereas I felt sad most of the time in the first set of OVAs, I felt much more “at peace” and optimistic about YKK:QCC. We see that Alpha has moved on in search of experiences and her personality and emotions grow. It seems that in order to make this move and discover life, she needed a push. Through this transformation and symbolic destruction of her previous life, we experience new emotions with her; worry, fear and optimism.
I still enjoyed the art, much like I did in YKK. It felt like an 80’s anime much of the time, despite being released in the early 00’s. I was given some satisfaction from…
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Don't get me wrong, I love YKK. I've read the manga, and I'd give it a 10 any day (this may be a sort of bias). I also liked the first set of OVAs, but haven't watched recently enough to say much about them. I immediately noticed that the animation in this set seemed more crisp, and was optimistic. I didn't remember the specific sequence of alpha and kokone riding their bikes from the manga, and was put off when kokone grabbed alphas boob(?).
The pacing was ridiculously slow. The still shots and pans of nature, while pretty, made me feel like I was watching a manga. I'm not inherently opposed to a lack of dialogue, but the silence wasn't really used to do anything. A short chapter or two from the manga were stretched out to fit the form of a thirty minute OVA, and it really showed.
The la…
Read at the sourceThedude3445
(Review originally from Letterboxd)
From the director of the criminally underrated coming-of-age nostalgia piece Ocean Waves comes a full-on animated tone poem about a young woman living a quiet life in a quasi-post-apocalypse.
To say that Quiet Country Cafe is understated would be itself an understatement. The dialogue is sparse, the story can be summarized in two sentences, and the worldbuilding is so vague that the sci-fi elements could be completely missed if not for one specific scene. It's all about the mood, and it works marvelously at evoking that tranquil feeling, warm yet tinged with an inner core of sadness.
Exploring the world, hearing the wonderful soundtrack play out, watching protagonist Alpha see new things and figure out what she wants with her life... it's nothing new…
Read at the sourceTeKSMeLater
One of the things that makes Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou a beautiful piece of work is how Hitoshi Ashinano meticulously draws the minimalistic lines that visualize a post-apocalyptic world slowly coming to a silent state of peace. Despite how effortless it may look with the natural flow of curvy lines his pen traces, you could very well see the thought put into every bit of detail within a single panel or illustration. The second OVA, Quiet Country Cafe, may not have consideration of how important these factors are into exhibiting the transient effect of the manga, and the end result is something that falls below average than what the source material has much to offer.
Being two episodes adapting several chapters from the manga, it aims to have a theme about Alpha temporarily leaving the cafe…
Read at the sourcelethargilistic
Skip these, definitely watch the first OVA set.
The second set of YKK OVAs is significantly not as good as the first. Main reason: the dystopian elements of the world were absent. Here's this beautiful, water-covered world, and they mostly only show parts that may as well be current-day Japan. The art is just bog-standard and sub-par. There's nothing you haven't seen 100 times before and drawn better elsewhere.
Also, there's the lingering ass shots. They even introduce Misago in the second half of the second of two OVAs, just so the show can have some boobs. She has no lines, interacts with no-one, and the only acknowledgement of her existence is a random line from other characters. I don't know whose idea it was to frame so many shots as potential fanservice, but they fundamentally didn…
Read at the sourceStarfleetCpt
Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou: Quiet Country Cafe (or just Quiet Country Cafe) is a sequel to Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou and an OVA adaptation of the manga of the same name. Having been made four years later, in 2002, and by a different studio (SME Animation Works, which would later become Aniplex), there are quite a few noticeable differences between the two OVAs as well as from the original manga source material.
Story: 9 (Great)
The story doesn't necessarily pick up from the previous OVA, and can stand alone on its own without having watched the other OVA before hand.
Alpha Hatusueno is a very human-like robot in the form of a young woman, who has befriended Kokone, another female robot much like her. Alpha runs a cafe on the outskirts of a Yokohama devastated by rising water levels as she wa…
Read at the sourcemaybelletea
I wasn't quite sure what to expect from this after watching the first one. The animation in this outdid the other. The backgrounds were absolutely gorgeous; the swaying of grass, the smooth water, trickling waterfalls were all animated beautifully. The characters were nicely rendered as well.
Like the OVA prior, it is again completely relaxing and pleasing to the eye. Nothing much happens as well, except for through the everyday life of Alpha a typhoon hits and she decided to move out of the comfort of her abode and explores more of the world. Now after watching this I want to go read some more of the manga. Even though I find the manga bit better, now I see that such a nice feeling doesn’t come off as well from paper and ink. The animation is just too beautiful in this… it&r…
Read at the sourceZirgo
Compared to the OVA prequel this OVA has more to give the viewer. Absolutely stunning environments and great character movements almost brings it alive in front of me, and somehow I wish that I was able to jump into the screen and just be lying there on the grassfield and watch up on the blue sky, counting the white clouds that move by.
Just like the prequel, this is just the right anime to watch when you want to relax and get the pulse down. Accompanied with a hot cup of coffée you are definitely on the right track!
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