Tag: Girls’ Last Tour

Girls’ Last Tour’s Deathless End of Days

Girls’ Last Tour’s Deathless End of Days

Introduction to the Concept of Death

Last week, I discussed how Chi and Yuu were innocently ignorant about the world that came before them. This week, I’ll be continuing on my journey of discussing Girls’ Last Tour by breaking down the surprising lack of death featured in the series.

Something you may or may not have noticed while watching the anime or reading the manga is that Girl’s Last Tour tends not to show death. What I mean by this is that throughout the travels of Chi and Yuu, we never actually see the bodies of the deceased.

Why is this odd? Because these girls are exploring a massive city at the end of the world shortly after humanity’s final war has taken place. We even see that this final war was still waging during their lifetime. So, why are there no bodies strewn about the city? Surely there should be some from both the war and the starvation that ensued afterward.

A dead fish from the anime series Girls' Last Tour
A dead fish

I think the best explanation of why there aren’t any bodies depicted in this series is because we’re seeing the world through the eyes of Chi and Yuu. It’s as if the girls are blocking out all of the death that surrounds them on a daily basis as a way to cope with their grim situation.

But, as early as the second episode, the girls do come face to face with death in the form of a fish. I think they mentioned death in the first episode, but it’s not until episode two that the reality of death is shown.

And from here on, there are many hints about the mass death in the world. It’s these hints that I want to focus on today.

The Graveyard

After the dead fish in the second episode, it’s actually not until episode eight that the girls have their next encounter with death. We can assume that both Kanazawa and Ishii died, but they didn’t die where Chi and Yuu could see them. They died sometime after parting ways from the girls.

But in the eighth episode, the girls find themselves in a graveyard. At first, they don’t understand what the graveyard is, but as they spend more time in it, Chi eventually figures it out.

It’s at this point that the girls are first confronted with the idea of leaving something behind to commemorate their lives. Throughout their journey, Chi has been keeping a journal. However, she seemed to be keeping the journal more so because she thinks that keeping records of things for the future is important, and less so because it proves that she existed.

Interestingly, even in the graveyard, we were shown no signs of physical death. This graveyard is actually a nokotsudo, or columbarium. The lockers depicted would normally house an urn or other container with the deceased’s ashes inside along with other items belonging to the deceased.

However, the girls make no mention of finding remains within the lockers. Instead, Yuu notes that most of them are empty except for the few items they found inside some of them. Was this another case of the girls ignoring the death around them, or were the lockers truly empty?

Do Machines Die?

In episode 9, the girls are confronted with death of another kind: That of the machines. Unbeknownst to the girls, they had actually come across other “deceased” machines in the past. Notably, the structure they sought shelter under in episode 5 was actually the remains of a giant machine.

However, it’s not until episode 9 that they meet a living machine and discover that although they’re not “alive,” they too still have a life. The room in which the girls first encounter the machine is littered with the remains of other machines that have broken down. And the machine they meet says that it too will end up that way one day.

It’s in this episode that the girls also take their first “life.” Although it can be argued that the machines aren’t really alive, Chi and Yuu seem to want to believe that they are. Their world is barren, so believing that there’s more life than just them may be a comforting thought.

The giant machine the girls destroyed from the anime series Girls' Last Tour
The giant machine the girls destroyed

In order to save the lives of the fish and the small machine, Chi and Yuu destroy the giant machine that’s dismantling the facility. I found this to be a very interesting scene from the perspective of how it may have affected the girls.

Yuu is the one who plants the explosives on the giant machine, and when she does so, she apologizes to it for what’s about to happen. Then, after Chi detonates the explosives, she comments on how perhaps “life” extends even to machines and the city as a whole.

Based on what they both say here, you might expect the killing of the giant machine to affect them emotionally. However, that’s not the case. It would seem that at this point, the girls have become skilled at compartmentalizing the death within their world.

Evidence of Death

Throughout all of the anime, we never see a single dead human. But what about in the manga after the anime concludes? Well, there is actually direct evidence of death in the manga. Specifically, it comes after the final chapter, in the extra chapter from the volume 6 tankouban.

Technically speaking, we do see Chi and Yuu die, but at the same time, you could argue that they aren’t yet dead when we last see them. I’m not saying that they don’t die. They definitely do and this is confirmed by a panel of them in the afterlife. I’m just saying maybe they’re not dead yet in the last panel we see them in before that.

They probably are dead by that point though, and are no longer simply asleep.

The first dead human of the series from the manga Girls' Last Tour
The first dead human of the series

In the panel shown above, after the deaths of Chi and Yuu, we get our first evidence for human death in the entire series. We see what appears to be some kind of animal skull, some other bones that are probably animal in origin, and a human skull.

It’s this panel in particular that makes me think we were seeing the rest of the series through Chi’s and Yuu’s “rose-colored” eyes. Why? Because it’s not until after they die that we see human remains scattered around the city. Once we’re no longer seeing the world through their eyes, we can see it for what it really is.

Conclusion

Hopefully, this discussion has made you think more about how the lack of death present throughout Girls’ Last Tour was used as a way to illustrate the perspective from which we as the viewers/readers were seeing the world. While it’s not the first series I’ve seen that does something like this, I do think it did a very nice job of revealing it at the end.

If you enjoyed this article, remember to click the like button ❤️ down below. Also, follow me over on Twitter @DoubleSama so you don’t miss out on any future content. And come join our Discord server if you’re interested in discussing anime (and manga) with other members of the community.

Finally, I’d like to thank HeavyROMAN for supporting DoubleSama.com at the Heika tier this month. To learn more about how you too can become a supporter of this blog, check out Patreon.com/DoubleSama.

The Innocent Ignorance of Girls’ Last Tour

The Innocent Ignorance of Girls’ Last Tour

Culture Shock

Since I focused on the Girls’ Last Tour manga in my previous post on the depressing existentialism of the series, this week I’m going to focus (mainly) on the anime. And with that said, what do I mean by the “innocent ignorance” of Girls’ Last Tour?

Well, one of my favorite things about this series is how real the world and the characters within it feel. This is mainly due to how Yuu and Chi interact with the world around them. For example, they know some things beyond what’s required to survive, but they’re generally ignorant about the world before their time.

There are many examples of this throughout the series, and in this post, I’ll be going over a few of them.

Yuu and Chi making
Yuu and Chi making “music” with rain

It’s fair to say that Chi is more cultured than Yuu. However, neither girls really understand what culture was like before the end of the world. A great example of this is when they create music by laying their helmets and various cans around in the rain at the end of episode 5.

What they make isn’t something that most of us would refer to as music. But since they had never heard music before, the sound of rain dropping onto these cans was the closest they had gotten to real music up until this time.

A few chapters in the manga after the anime ends there’s another example of this in action. The girls explore an art museum and comment on the various works found within. Notably, they don’t understand why there would be a painting of someone using a camera — because to them, a camera replaces the need for painting.

Is it a Cat?

Moving on from music and art, another thing the girls don’t seem to really understand are animals. This is a great bit of world-building because it illustrates the fact that by the time they were born, most animals on the planet had already been extinct. Or, at least those within the city.

We’re never explicitly told that animals are extinct. And even if we never saw an animal in the series, we wouldn’t necessarily be able to assume that’s the case. However, the girls’ overall lack of knowledge regarding animals tells us everything we need to know.

The first encounter with an animal was the dead fish Yuu found in episode 2. At this point, Yuu didn’t know what a fish was, and while Chi did, she had only read about them in books. Neither of them had ever seen a real fish before.

Yuu and Chi find a "cat" from the anime series Girls' Last Tour
Yuu and Chi find a “cat”

Another great example of this is the Nuko. When Yuu first finds it in episode 10, she assumes that it’s a cat. This may at first make you think that she’s seen a cat before, but on closer inspection, that’s not the case. Yuu and Chi know of cats, but they clearly have never seen one in person.

They understand that a cat is a small animal that walks on four legs, but that seems to be where their knowledge of the creatures ends. It’s possible that they’ve seen a picture of a cat before when they were much younger, but I think even this is unlikely.

In reality, they probably either heard stories about cats from their “grandfather” or Chi had read about cats in a book and told Yuu. But what I really like about this is that it puts the mystery of their world in perspective. Them finding the Nuko and thinking that it’s a cat is like historical humans finding narwhal tusks and thinking they were unicorn horns.

What is Chocolate?

The final example of Yuu’s and Chi’s ignorance about the world is their reaction to different foods. The only type of food that they had confirmed knowledge of before they set out on their journey was bread. Later on in the series, it was stated that they used to bake it with their “grandfather.”

We can also assume that they ate rations before setting out on their journey as well, but I don’t believe that was confirmed. Either way, the girls are very familiar with rations by the time we join them on their journey in episode 1 as they make up the vast amount of Yuu’s and Chi’s calories.

Other foods they discover on their travels include the aforementioned fish, potatoes, and chocolate. All three of these are important because they tell us different things about the world in which the girls grew up and how they view it. The fish I already went over, but again, it illustrates the lack of animals.

Yuu and Chi eating chocolate from the anime series Girls' Last Tour
Yuu and Chi eating chocolate

The potatoes are similar to the fish in that while the girls seem to have heard of potatoes, they didn’t know exactly what they were. Additionally, their introduction to potatoes was in the form of powdered potatoes that are boiled within a bag, not the genuine article.

Also, in the manga chapter directly after where the anime ends, the girls enjoy some canned fish. This was a neat twist because, for the first time in the series, they came across the real food (the dead fish) before the processed version.

And lastly, my favorite instance of Yuu and Chi discovering a food, the chocolate found in the submarine in episode 12. I loved this scene because earlier in the series they had eaten chocolate-flavored rations. So, when they find real chocolate, they assume that it’s just another thing flavored like chocolate, not chocolate itself.

Conclusion

Yuu and Chi’s innocent ignorance about the world around them is one of the best world-building devices in Girls’ Last Tour. The attention to detail regarding what knowledge the girls have about the world before their time is impressive. It’s honestly one of the most immersive aspects of the series.

If you enjoyed this discussion, remember to click the like button ❤️ down below. Also, follow me over on Twitter @DoubleSama so you don’t miss out on any future content. And come join our Discord server if you’re interested in discussing anime with other members of the community.

Finally, I’d like to thank HeavyROMAN for supporting DoubleSama.com at the Heika tier this month. To learn more about how you too can become a supporter of this blog, check out Patreon.com/DoubleSama.

Why Girls’ Last Tour is the Most Existentially Depressing Manga

Why Girls’ Last Tour is the Most Existentially Depressing Manga

An Uncertain and Unknown Future

Before anything else, I need to warn you that this article is going to be full of spoilers for both the Girls’ Last Tour anime and manga. If you haven’t watched the series and read the final volumes of the manga after the anime, I highly recommend you do so before proceeding with this article.

With that warning out of the way, I was originally going to focus on both the anime and manga in this discussion of existential depression in Girls’ Last Tour. However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the manga chapters after where the anime ends are where the true existential depression comes into play.

Chi wondering about the allure of exploration from the manga series Girls' Last Tour
Chi wondering about the allure of exploration

Throughout the entire series, Chito (Chi) and Yuuri (Yuu) don’t really know what to expect from their adventure. They continue to travel through and up the city, but what’s their goal? They know they want to reach the top layer, but they don’t know what they’ll find there and don’t even remember why that’s the goal they’re attempting to reach.

Eventually, it’s revealed that their “grandfather” is the one who initially told them to travel upward, not downward. But even with this bit of information, their purpose remains unclear. Why were they told this? Will they find civilization at the top?

While that’s their hope, it becomes clear that the girls don’t really expect to find civilization clinging on at the top of the city. They’re aware that the farther up they go, the more scarce the resources they need to survive become. And yet, this is the uncertain journey that Chi and Yuu have committed their lives to.

A Forgotten Existence

You could say that the uncertain and unknown future of the girls is exactly what drives them. Perhaps it’s the thrill of exploration. But, that’s clearly not the case. They explore their immediate surroundings out of curiosity, but it’s survival that drives them to keep moving forward.

However, throughout their exploratory detours, especially towards the end of the series, the girls do go out of their way to leave their mark on the world around them. And this is what I think is the most depressing part of the entire series.

Just three chapters after the conclusion of the anime is my favorite chapter. Chapter 32, titled “Art,” features the girls exploring a museum and ends with Yuu posting a drawing of her own next to cave paintings that are 36,000 years old today. The first and last of mankind’s art, side by side.

Yuu's drawing next to cave paintings from Altamira from the manga series Girls' Last Tour
Yuu’s drawing next to cave paintings from Altamira

Why is this such a depressing chapter? Because while we see the girls leaving their mark on their world, nobody is left to see it. This is the first time in the series I really thought about that fact.

Previously, we had seen Chi keeping a diary of their travels, and the girls even used the camera to take a picture of themselves. These are obviously ways to document their existence. But Yuu’s art and the poem that the girls inscribe at their final resting place were obviously meant to be “discovered” in the future.

The only problem is that there is no future.

Nobody will ever see Yuu’s art alongside those cave paintings. The impact of the first and last of humanity’s art side by side is lost to the world. And the same goes for their final act of inscribing a poem. Nobody will ever read it and know that two, young girls struggled to survive and made it to the top of the world.

Their entire existence was forgotten as soon as it ended.

Meaningless Lives

Chi and Yuu traveled through an unknown world in order to reach an uncertain goal. Their achievement will never be known by anyone. And in the end, there was nothing waiting for them at their goal other than death. With all that in mind, how could anyone argue that their lives had meaning?

I know that it’s often said that the journey is more important than the end goal. Most people would probably argue that the same goes for life itself. But is that still the case if your life is the final life on the planet?

This is where existentialism really comes into play. Yes, the girls enjoyed being alive. But at the same time, is the enjoyment of life itself really enough? I don’t think so. I think everyone needs a purpose in order to continue striving to survive.

Chi and Yuu questioning their lives from the manga series Girls' Last Tour
Chi and Yuu questioning their lives

After reaching the final layer of the city, Chi has some interesting things to say. She wonders if they made the right choice by continuing to travel to the top layer. She questions whether they might have been better off going in another direction.

For Chi and Yuu, their purpose was to reach the top of the city. Once they achieved this and were ultimately let down by it, that’s when their lives come to an end. Did they still enjoy life? Yes. But as I mentioned, that alone isn’t enough of a reason to keep on living.

Would they have survived if they attempted to descend the city? No. They were out of rations, they were tired, and they no longer had the mobility of their vehicle. They were doomed. But they didn’t even try, and that’s what tells me that once they realized their goal had been meaningless, there was no longer a reason to survive.

Conclusion

Hopefully, this discussion of existentialism in Girls’ Last Tour wasn’t too depressing, because I plan to write more about this series every Tuesday for the next few weeks. Next week’s topic is going to be on the innocent ignorance of Chi and Yuu, something a bit brighter than this week’s.

If you enjoyed this discussion, let me know by clicking the like button ❤️ down below. Also, follow me over on Twitter @DoubleSama so you don’t miss out on any future content. And come join our Discord server if you’re interested in discussing anime with other members of the community.

Finally, I’d like to thank HeavyROMAN for supporting DoubleSama.com at the Heika tier this month. To learn more about how you too can become a supporter of this blog, check out Patreon.com/DoubleSama.

Girls’ Last Tour

Girls’ Last Tour

Girls' Last Tour manga series cover art
Girls’ Last Tour

The Adventure Anime I Wanted

On Tuesday I binged the Girls’ Last Tour anime from start to finish and then picked up the manga where the anime left off and finished that as well. That might not sound like an amazing feat, but I’m not sure when the last time was that I was so immersed in a series that I binged it all in one sitting.

Usually, I’ll watch an episode or two each day. And going to read the manga after finishing the anime? The only other time I’ve done that was with Attack on Titan. My point is, this series is something special for it to have been able to get me so invested.

I’m not sure how long this review is going to end up being, but based on my outline for it, it’s looking like it will be around twice as long as my usual reviews. On top of that, I already have five other articles planned around this series for the future. So as you can see, I have a lot to say about it.

But, let’s start with the basic fact that Girls’ Last Tour is the adventure anime I’ve wanted for a long time. Great adventure anime are hard to come by. There are good ones, sure, but it’s rare for them to really scratch that adventuring itch I have.

The most recent anime to almost achieve that was Somali and the Forest Spirit, but even that fell short of what I was looking for in an adventure.

Emptiness and Loneliness

The series focuses on two, young girls named Chito and Yuuri who are traveling together through the ruins of a mega-city far larger than anything on Earth today. The unnamed city’s immense scale compared to the girls is what really makes the series feel like an adventure.

Yes, the whole series takes place in a single city. But the city is so massive, so empty, and so full of varying terrain and scenery that their journey feels like an epic quest. But at the same time, Chito and Yuuri’s journey is far different from most other adventure series.

Typically in an adventure anime, our protagonist(s) would come across a wide variety of other characters along the way. Even if the journey is a solo one, there are usually so many people coming in and out of the protagonist’s life that it always feels lively.

Girls’ Last Tour is the opposite.

Chito spotting for Yuuri's target practice from the anime series Girls' Last Tour
Chito spotting for Yuuri’s target practice

Throughout their entire, months-long journey, the girls only come across two other individuals. And in both cases, they part ways only a few days after meeting one another. The vast majority of this last tour is solely made up of Chito, Yuuri, and the empty expanse of the city.

An adventure with almost no characters might not sound all that exciting, but in this case, it was extremely effective. With no side characters to distract us, the focus is entirely on the dynamic between Chito, Yuuri, and the world in which they live.

We learn so much more about the girls through their interactions with each other and their environment than we do from their fleeting interactions with other people. They’re products of the empty and lonely world in which they live. And that’s no more apparent than when they come across objects left over from the world before which they lack the context to understand.

Questions About the World

One of my favorite aspects of this series is that as viewers, we have so many questions about the world the girls live in, but they don’t. It’s not that Chito and Yuri already know everything about the world in which they live. Rather, it’s that this is the only world they’ve ever known, so they don’t see the questions that are there to be asked.

We see this towering city made up of multiple layers stacked on top of one another and ask why it was made in the first place. To Chito and Yuuri, the “why” doesn’t matter. All that matters to them is that the city exists and that they exist within it. As long as they’re able to continue surviving and moving forward, why the world is the way it is means nothing.

At one point late in the series, I believe it was in the manga after the end of the anime, one of the girls poses a question to the other. She asks why they’ve continued on their journey to the top of the city this entire time.

This question isn’t really about the world, but rather, it illustrates their lack of understanding about the world. They’ve been traveling up the layers of the city for what seems like years — months since the start of the series — and yet, they don’t know why.

They know that at the outset of their journey, they were told specifically to travel up the city and not down it. But why they were told this is unknown to both the girls and us as the viewers. It’s one of the great questions of the series. For what purpose was their journey? Why did they continue without knowing what they would find?

Life at the End of the World

I mentioned that the girls only come across two other people throughout the course of their journey. This is because, by the time we join along, the vast majority of life on Earth has been eradicated. But, this does open up some interesting questions, such as “what happened to cause this outcome?”


I’m going to begin getting into some spoiler territory in this section. And the following two sections are going to heavily focus on spoiler content. I suggest skipping to the conclusion if you want to avoid all of that.


I’m going to venture a guess and say that Chito and Yuuri are no older than 17. They’re pretty clearly still children, but based on Yuuri’s body type when we see her swim in the fish tank, I think it’s safe to assume that they’re supposed to be around 15 – 17 years old.

However, they appeared to be much younger, maybe between 10 – 12 years old at most when we see them first set off on their journey. And, before setting off, they lived with their “grandfather” in a town populated by what seemed like a lot of people. So, what happened to everyone else?

Yuuri making a snowman on Chito's head from the anime series Girls' Last Tour
Yuuri making a snowman on Chito’s head

The obvious answer is that war happened. However, it’s clear throughout the series that there have been many wars since the construction of the city. From what I can tell, there were at least two, but probably three major wars that resulted in the eradication of life on the planet.

The first of these wars was the nuclear war that plunged the world into a nuclear winter. The second war was the one that utilized the giant robots capable of destroying vast amounts of the city. And the final war was the war over the last remaining resources.

This is the war that Chito and Yuuri fled, and it explains why there’s hardly any life left on the planet. Everyone else either died in the struggle over food or ran out of food and starved within the next five or so years. Chito and Yuuri only survived thanks to their travels.

Girls’ Last Tour Anime Ending

If I had to point to my least favorite part of the series, it would undoubtedly have to be the ending of the anime. This is for two primary reasons. First, there’s the entire thing with the Nuko. And second, there’s the fact that the anime ended where it did.

To start, I should point out that the name Nuko comes from the word neko which is Japanese for cat. Neither of the girls has ever seen a cat before, so when Yuuri finds the adolescent Nuko, she assumes that it’s a cat — a creature she had only heard stories of.

The Nuko then attempts to repeat the word neko, but says nuko instead, which is where it gets its name from.

We don’t really know what the Nuko are, and that’s my main issue with them. They’re some sort of creature that eats and breaks down volatile materials. For example, when the first Nuko is introduced into the series, Yuuri feeds it bullets. And later on, we see larger Nuko eating nuclear missiles.

Along with eating volatile materials, Nuko are also able to communicate via radio waves. And, their bodies are quite unique. They can either take the form of elongated, cat-like creatures or humanoid mushroom-like figures that can apparently fly. I’m also going to assume that their white coloring is due to the nuclear winter, as we see the fish are also a pale white.

Are Nuko aliens? Were they man-made creatures designed to clean up the waste littering the world? We don’t know. And because of that, their inclusion in a series that’s otherwise fairly grounded in reality is just awkward.

As for where the anime ended, it concludes at chapter 29 out of 43 of the manga. This is a problem because it leaves the ending very open despite that not truly being the case. For anyone who watches the anime and doesn’t read the conclusion of the manga afterward, it’s a very different series.

Girls’ Last Tour Manga Ending

The ending of the Girls’ Last Tour manga is probably the most special thing about the whole series. And that’s exactly why it’s a shame that the anime ended where it did. I don’t think it needs a second season, but a movie would probably be the perfect length to conclude the story.

I plan to write another article focusing on this, but let’s quickly go over one of my favorite chapters of the series. Chapter 32 is titled “Art” and follows the girls as they explore an art museum full of famous works such as “The Birth of Venus” by Botticelli.

At the end of the chapter, Yuuri draws a picture of her own and affixes it to the wall directly next to a large stone with cave paintings on it. I love this scene because it shows humanity’s first and last pieces of art side by side. It’s a perfect representation of many of the story’s themes.

Yuuri and Chito reflecting on their lives from the manga series Girls' Last Tour
Yuuri and Chito reflecting on their lives

Moving on to the true end of the series, I mentioned that it wasn’t as open-ended as the anime made it out to be. That’s because while Chito and Yuri’s adventure does continue on for a bit longer, it has a definitive end — their deaths.

Upon reaching the top layer of the city, the girls are confronted by nothing. There’s nothing above them but a starry sky and nothing on the layer other than a single, square structure with no entrance. The ground is covered in snow, and it’s clear that there has never been permanent life on this layer.

It’s at this point that the girls contemplate their lives and journey while eating their final pack of rations. After determining that they’ve enjoyed their lives, they fall asleep together against the structure and succumb to the freezing temperatures in their sleep. With that, humanity and life as we know it ends.

And before anyone says that they didn’t die because they mentioned thinking about what to do after waking up, that’s not the case. They said that as a way to reassure themselves so that they wouldn’t fear death. There’s an extra chapter after the final chapter in which it’s made clear that they’ve died because we see them in the afterlife.

Conclusion

I know I’ve been praising Girls’ Last Tour for the majority of this extra-long review. But in the end, I think both the anime and the manga are 8/10s. They’re very good, but they do still have some problems, such as the awkward inclusion of the Nuko or the magical digital camera.

But, if you’re looking for a great adventure series that focuses on themes as varied as friendship, mortality, and existential hopelessness, I can’t really think of anything better. And, once you’ve finished the anime, I highly recommend that you pick up the manga starting at chapter 30. Finishing the manga should only take you maybe an hour.

Since I usually comment on the OPs and EDs of series at this point, I’ll just say that I like them both, but that I like the ED more. However, the true best song of the series is the insert song/ED for episode 5 known as the “Rain Song.” I plan to write a full article dedicated to that song in the future, so look forward to that.

If you enjoyed this review, remember to click the like button ❤️ down below. Also, follow me over on Twitter @DoubleSama so you don’t miss out on any future content. And come join our Discord server if you’re interested in discussing anime with other members of the community.

Finally, I’d like to thank HeavyROMAN and Key Mochi~ for supporting DoubleSama.com at the Heika and Senpai tiers respectively this month. To learn more about how you too can become a supporter of this blog, check out Patreon.com/DoubleSama.