How would you go about your life if you knew, with some degree of certainty, that you were the last living person on Earth? There are nearly as many answers to this question as there are people to answer it. Some might search the Earth for other survivors in hopes of rebuilding, while some might accept their situation more willingly. The prospect of infinite alone time has a certain appeal, as in the famous “Time Enough at Last” episode of The Twilight Zone, but others might decide that a world without other humans isn’t one worth living in. The end of the world is a challenging and unpleasant idea to grapple with, and there are no easy answers to this dilemma. While it may not look like it at first glance, this question, among others, is at the heart of the anime Girls’ Last Tour.
Girls’ Last Tour is a 2017 production by Studio White Fox, based off author Tsukumizu’s 2014 manga of the same name. It follows the story of Yuuri and Chito, the titular girls on their tour of a post-apocalyptic, highly industrialized planet earth. The two scavenge for food and supplies, drive around in their kettenkrad vehicle, and talk about whatever comes to mind, from philosophical ruminations on the causes of war to whose turn it is to do the chores.
This setup, along with Girls’ Last Tour’s episodic storytelling, will ring familiar to you if you’re even a slightly seasoned anime veteran. “This is a slice of life anime!” you’re currently telling yourself, as I, the writer, prepare to shatter the preconceived notions you held in a hypothetical of my own creation. To be sure, GLT has slice of life elements; it somewhat inevitably focuses on Chito and Yuuri’s everyday lives in their struggle for survival. However, comparing GLT to the cavalcade of plodding, unfocused, nothing-happens-and-that’s-the-point shows that make up the majority of the slice of life genre does it a disservice. Girls’ Last Tour is one of the best anime to come out in the last 10 years, and if you’ll indulge me, I’d like to explain exactly what makes this show so good, and what you’re missing out on.
(Possible mild spoilers for Girls’ Last Tour)
The Dynamic
I’m not going to mess around here, Chito and Yuuri absolutely make this show. When a show’s premise necessitates following the same two characters around for the entire runtime, they had better be entertaining, and boy are they ever. On paper, their dynamic is nothing special, an intellectual neat-freak paired with an emptyheaded slob, the Odd Couple made manifest as two potato-shaped anime girls. But for GLT, it’s all a matter of execution.
The series’ excellent dialogue manages to make profound philosophical discussions seem like a completely natural back and forth for these two, and it takes care to not completely typecast either of them. Yuuri is an airhead, but she’s not so dumb that she can’t understand complex concepts when she wants to (for example, when the subject pertains to food). Chito meanwhile has a clearly strong intellect, but she’s never above indulging in the simpler pleasures in life, such as a nice hot bath or a snowball fight. The series keeps true to their characterizations, but neither one fits neatly into our preconceived notions of them, and this subversion makes for more complex and enjoyable characters overall.
It would also be a failure to not mention the voice acting. Inori Minase (Chito) and Yurika Kubo (Yuuri) breathe so much life into these characters. It’s astounding watching them effortlessly convey such a wide range of emotions. Even without subtitles, you can often tell through audio alone exactly how both characters are feeling in any given situation, and with a good deal of specificity. Sadness sounds like one thing, while worry sounds like another; the same goes for the difference between joy and wonder, frustration and anger, and boredom and exhaustion. When Chito and Yuuri melt into the warm water of the first bath they’ve had in months, you feel it viscerally because of the way Minase and Kubo vocalize the feeling. This is one of those anime that’ll have you picking up new Japanese words you might’ve otherwise missed, simply because they were said with so much energy (I guarantee you will never forget that “kurai” means “dark”). The voice acting does just so much to enhance Chito and Yuuri as characters and strengthens their dynamic 1000-fold.
To sum up, the dynamic between Chito and Yuuri is the most important part of this show, and GLT absolutely nails it.
While we’re on the topic of GLT’s audible qualities, I should mention that the soundtrack is an absolute delight. Kenichiro Suehiro, the man behind the also exceptional Re: Zero soundtrack, knocks it out of the park with this one. Most slice of life anime have decent soundtracks, but oftentimes it’s sufficient just to make a series of relaxing tracks to throw in the background while the story takes its time going absolutely nowhere.
GLT is different. The series demands a much wider range of emotions, and Suehiro hits on nearly all of them. There are tracks like “Cheese-tte Nani?” that speak to the sillier side of the show, but also tracks like “Hazumu Kokoro” that capture the sort of awestruck melancholy essential to GLT. “Koudou to Zenshin” has an active, enterprising feeling to it, putting you in the girls’ shoes as they get to work overcoming their next obstacle. “Tansaki” evokes the immensity and foreboding of the cold, unfeeling, already-dead world around them, while “Yochou to Keikai” startles the listener during some of the rare moments when the girls find themselves in legitimate danger. These are just some examples, but the entire soundtrack is worth a listen.
The OP, “Ugoku, Ugoku” and ED, “One More Night”, both sung by Minase and Kubo, are outstanding, foot-tapping songs, right at home among some of the best anime bops to come out in the 2010’s. The anime-original insert song “Amadare no Uta” (lit. Rain Song) is such a jam, and the scene it comes in is a literal high-water mark for the show. Between these songs, the soundtrack, stellar performances from Minase and Kubo, and some excellent environmental sound effects, Girls’ Last Tour just sounds incredible on a moment to moment basis in a way that many other anime simply don’t.
The Visuals
If the dynamic between Chito and Yuuri is the most important aspect of Girls’ Last Tour’s story, then the visuals are the most important part of the production as a whole. Anime is, after all, a visual medium, and while not every show can have the undeniably cool aesthetic of Cowboy Bebop or the stylistic flair of Mob Psycho 100, solid animation and effective visual storytelling are a must for any anime.
Luckily, Girls’ Last Tour excels at both. Admittedly, the show doesn’t have quite as striking an appearance as the rough, pencil-drawn style of the manga. However, it maintains just enough of the manga’s aesthetic to set itself apart from the usual “anime-look”, and what it loses in visual uniqueness it recoups in its highly detailed background art and fluid frame-to-frame animation. As a side note: if you wanted an animation style more faithful to the manga’s art style, then the ED has you covered, and lord is it gorgeous.
Girls’ Last Tour isn’t necessarily an exceptionally well-animated show on the level of Mob Psycho or Ping Pong the Animation, but that has more to do with the format of the show. Most shots in Girls’ Last Tour feature Chito and Yuuri sitting around and talking, maybe while performing some mundane daily tasks. There’s just not always much to animate.
However, the anime more than makes up for that visually through excellent camera work, framing, vivid facial expressions, and especially background art and lighting. Girls’ Last Tour has a truly excellent grasp of lighting that does wonders to set the tone for each scene, and really brings to life small details like a campfire burning in the foreground. It also has some of the best background art in anime, full stop. Look at this shot from episode 4, or this shot from episode 5, or this shot from episode 8. Art like this is so common in Girls’ Last Tour that it took me all of 2 minutes to find these shots, and they’re part of what makes the show’s visual storytelling so striking. The industrial post-apocalyptic wasteland around the girls starts to become a character in its own right, both reflecting and influencing the emotions of our two main characters as they journey through it.
However, when it really wants to, Girls’ Last Tour can also have downright gorgeous animation. Episode 12 in particular is a treat to watch in action, as the series goes out on a bang. When the animation needs to be on point to deliver on a big story note, you can bet that Girls’ Last Tour will pull through.
My only gripe with the animation is that they sometimes use 3D animated models for Chito and Yuuri when they’re driving the kettenkrad, and it just does not look good. However, the animators seemed to recognize this, and so when they do use 3D models, they do so sparingly and in scenes where your attention won’t necessarily be on Chito or Yuuri. It’s visible if you look for it, and it definitely doesn’t look good, but it’s nowhere near as jarring as the 3D animation in Zombieland Saga, for example.
(The OP also has this shot.)
Summary
Girls’ Last Tour is a roaring success on just about every level. It’s fantastic from a writing perspective, a joy to listen to, and one of the most visually stunning anime of the last 10 years. If it isn’t already clear by now, I’m a huge personal fan of the show, which may be why I struggle to find bad things to say about it. The incredibly conservative use of 3D animation in the production is nearly imperceptible flaw, and hardly a backbreaking one. Many slice of life anime struggle with sluggish pacing, but Girls’ Last Tour never feels like it lingers too long on any one story beat. Some also struggle to find purpose or direction, but Girls’ Last Tour always feels very intentional and pointed toward a specific goal, even if we don’t quite know what that goal is until the end.
The Message
Returning to our question from earlier, how does Girls’ Last Tour address its core subject matter? Well, unlike a lot of other anime, it doesn’t come out and give its answer explicitly. Chito and Yuuri have plenty to say when it comes to philosophy and human nature, but their answer to the question of what to do when you’re completely alone in the world is so innate to their characters that they barely even address it.
Girls’ Last Tour has a constant tug and pull between Chito and Yuuri’s more lofty thoughts and the often-desperate reality of their situation. They have a goal, however ambiguous, but while constantly pursuing that goal, their day-to-day needs most often take precedence. There’s something eminently relatable in this dynamic; after all, isn’t that what most of us do on a day-to-day basis anyway? The world around them has ended, but Yuuri and Chito’s lives certainly have not.
The philosophy of Girls’ Last Tour is perhaps best summed up by its OP, “Ugoku, Ugoku”. “Ugoku” is a verb meaning to stir or to shake, but here it might more accurately mean “to move”, or more pertinently “to keep moving”.
What do you do when you’re quite likely the last two humans in a world that’s already ended? Keep moving, of course.
Submitted December 27, 2018 at 10:20PM by BonemanAndTheBrisket http://bit.ly/2Vb1ZTW
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