The Spring 2023 Manga Guide

Yokohama Station SF

What's It About? 

In a future where Yokohama Station covers most of the island of Honshu, there are two ways of life-inside the station and outside. Life within the station is strictly controlled, and those who fail to follow the rules are expelled to the harsher world outside. When one of these exiles receives a temporary ticket to go into the station, he's also given a mission to find the leader of a group determined to free humanity.

Yokohama Station SF is based on the novel by Yuba Isukari and Tatsuyuki Tanaka. The manga is drawn by Gonbe Shinkawa, with English translation by Stephen Paul and lettering by Adnazeer S. Macalangcom. Yen Press will release the first volume on May 23 digitally and physically for $6.99 and $13.00 respectively.

Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

I tend more towards fantasy than science fiction, but stories like Yokohama Station SF still always draw me in. Mostly that's because good writing is good writing, and this manga adaption of the novel of the same name has some fascinating world-building going for it. At some point between our time and the future the story is set in, Yokohama Station was apparently equipped with the ability to self-propagate in response to something called “The Winter War.” Even when the war ended, the station continued to grow, and now apparently it covers all of Honshu, expanding and stretching itself without end. The implication is that it can only create materials that the original station building in Yokohama was made of, so escalators, elevators, and concrete seem to be the landscape available. As far as dystopian landscapes go, it's different and impressive—I can't say that I ever thought about Mount Fuji being covered with layers of escalators, but it's effective and unsettling.

While most people live inside the station, others inhabit shantytowns just outside of it, subsisting on the refuse jettisoned from the majority of the population inside. Interestingly, our protagonist Hiroto takes the first opportunity offered to him to get inside because he wants to see what life's like there, not because he necessarily feels any discrimination inherent in the system. Probably the greatest success of this volume is the way that we're allowed to see everything at work and draw our own conclusions. Sure, there are a few passages that are strictly informational (like the deal with the Suika implants that allow people entry and the JR North group in Hokkaido), but mostly we just experience things through Hiroto's eyes. He's an observer rather than an active player at this point, and that really works to immerse us in the story.

As you may have noticed, the manga is replete with references to both the Japanese rail system and classic works of science fiction. Chapter titles reference A Clockwork Orange, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, all of which help to establish the book as a work of science fiction literature in a universal sense. And apart from regional references, it really is that—change the names, and this could take place anywhere. That's a major strength and an important skill in speculative fiction: the world and story should be believable, as if they could happen to anyone anywhere. If the bland backgrounds in most of the book don't make for compelling viewing, they at least have a reason for it. Even if you're not always a science fiction reader, this is worth checking out, because it nails the one thing all truly great science fiction does: make us wonder if this is a future that could someday exist.

Christopher Farris

Rating:

Yokohama Station SF is weird, in that I'm not a hundred percent sure how I'm supposed to be coming at it in this first volume. It's actually an adaptation of Yuba Isukari's original novel story, and so many components of it seem to indicate that this is specifically a science fiction parable acting as some sort of high-concept societal commentary. The Yokohama Station taking on a life of its own sure seems to be a take on creeping urbanization and industrialization, even bringing in allusions to Hokkaido and the Ainu people as resistors against such assimilation. But not only are so many of presumptions of this supposed satire misguided in their deployment, it seems downright unaware of the gravity of its allegory at times. The author comments at the end that the title participated in a collaboration with the real-life Yokohama Station, which seems like a weird move for a story positioning the facility as a symbol of encroaching techno dystopia.

Perhaps it's for the best if Yokohama Station SF isn't actually intended to be some sort of strongly salient commentary. There's a fundamental misunderstanding in the way it frames its issues, primarily in the Yokohama Station being this creeping, unfeeling iteration of The Machine imposing on people. It ignores that in real life, The Machine is still very much driven by the actions of people, however few behind it. As a result it effectively comes off as a cornball libertarian oppression fantasy, where train crews and governments are "narrow-minded organizations" carrying out the tyranny of advanced public transit systems. It's thus up to the reader to figure if Yokohama Station SF is either cynical or simply unintelligent, and neither is a great look.

In terms of looks, though, what really sinks this manga adaptation is its visual component. Given that Yokohama Station is effectively a character in its own right which drives much of the story, the concept could have been elevated by its presentation. A mismatched railway station extended via effective machine learning could have resulted in a compellingly bizarre patchwork of a place. Instead we get endless too-similar hallways. This is without even mentioning the way panels and layouts devolve into incoherence any time anything remotely action-oriented picks up. Poorly considered satire aside, this was a concept that could have had legs if the presentation could keep up. Without that, or a story that's worthwhile, this is one train you'd rather miss.

Jean-Karlo Lemus

Rating:

Yokohama Station SF presents an interesting concept: train stations are already vast, confusing mazes. So what if there was a train station that could self-propagate? The world of Yokohama Station revolves around this idea, with the train station less of a place and more of a sentient building that is slowly dominating the landmass of contiguous Japan. At the outset of the story, layers of escalators and concrete ceilings have consumed Mt. Fuji. Our protagonist Hiroto explores the claustrophobic maze more akin to an authoritarian dystopia where security guards flex their power, walking turnstile robots eject anyone caught raising a fistfight, and children are thrown out of the complex if their parents can't afford to get them a Suika pass.

The artwork manages to be engaging and captivating in spite of the subject matter; Gonbe Shinkawa definitely deserves credit for their task of making a sprawling train station not feel as hellishly dull to look at as it honestly would be. The perversion of society found within is certainly captivating, and Hiroto's exploration of the morass is engaging; it'll be interesting to learn the hows and whys of this station and how it came to be. The concept itself is a bit of a hard sell and I imagine it'll turn most readers away, but this is a fascinating dystopic science fiction story. Recommended, with some reservations. Content warning for a minor plot point involving pedophilia.