Anime Reviews (2010-2019): Girls’ Last Tour – Complete Collection (a Neo-Tokyo Anime on Blu-ray Review)

“Girls’ Last Tour” is an anime series that may not be an uplifting anime series but it is a anime series that makes you think about war and the direction our world is going in.  No major violence or anything to dark, just a story of two young ladies trying to survive another day in a world devoid of humanity, in search of food and fuel. 

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TITLE: Girls’ Last Tour – Complete Collection

DURATION: Episodes 1-12 (300 Minutes)

BLU-RAY INFORMATION: 1080p High Definition, English and Japanese DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0, Subtitles: English

COMPANY: Sentai Filmworks

RATED: TV 14

Release Date: January 29, 2019

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Originally Created by Tsukumizu

Director: Ozaki Takaharu

Series Composition: Fudeyasu Kazuyuki

Music by Suehiro Kenichiro

Character Design: Toda Mai

Art Director: Miyake Masakazu

Anime Production: WHITE FOX

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Featuring the following voice talent:

Minase Inori/Cat Thomas as Chito

Kubo Yurika/Juliet Simmons as Yuuri

Ishida Akira/Mark X Laskowski as Kanazawa

Hanazawa Kana/KAlin Coates as Nuko/Cut

Mitsuishi Kotono/Stephanie Wittels as Ishii

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The world we knew is gone. The massive cities, once filled with people, lie silent, empty and decaying. There are no more forests filled with animals; no more birds in the sky. But life hasn’t disappeared completely; not just yet.

Amidst the rubble two small figures, young girls, travel together, scavenging what they need to survive as they explore the remnants of a world that they are too young to remember. It’s a strange journey, but one that’s filled with wonder as each new day brings another discovery, another echo of the devastated past or moment of unexpected beauty. And as long as Chito and Yuuri have each other, they have a reason to keep pressing forward. As long as there’s still life, there’s still hope for a future.

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From 2014-2018, Tsukumizu’s manga series “Shojo Shumatsu Ryoko” (Girl’s Last Tour) was serialized in Shinchosha’s “Kurage Bunch” online magazine.

The series would receive an anime adaptation in October-December 2017 and now the series is available on Blu-ray courtesy of Sentai Filmworks.

“Girls’ Last Tour” revolve around two young girls, Yuuri and Chito, who travel in a modified Kettenkrad, after an apocalypse.

They have seen no other humans left but each other and now they are seeking food and supplies in order to survive.

While Yuuri is the smarter one of the two and loves to read, while knowledgeable about machines, Yuuri is great with rifles and not as smart and often wants to eat.

For the most part, the series starts off as fun between two individuals so different from each other that Chito tends to get on the nerves of Yuuri quite frequently.  Yuri is more focused, while Chito likes to talk a lot and is always hungry.

But as the series starts to play out, you start to realize how bleak things are in the world.  Humanity has nearly been obliterated and if they do find those who are living, unfortunately the very few they meet are near desperation.

For the majority of the series, each episode plays out as seek and explore and survive.  For Yuuri and Chito, they are not sure why the world is this way and why their lives have become what it is but one thing they have never considered, what would life be if one of them is no longer there?

And how do they survive, with a world in which they hardly have any fuel or food, all that’s left are many weapons.  What good is that going to do them?

And no doubt the series has a message about war and how countries settled their problems is through war and weaponry.

I was listening to an old time radio show from the ’40s during World War II and the plea for people to purchase savings bonds daily because the money goes to by weaponry to fight the axis.  And the emphasis on “We need more weapons!” repeated over and over.

While the final three episodes does provide an answer of what happened to the world and what will be happening to the world.

If anything, the series is slow-paced and it’s definitely not a happy, bright story.  But due to the two characters naivety and just doing all they can survive, one can only hope through each episode that there is some glimmer of hope for them.

As for the Blu-ray release, you get Japanese commercials, promos and the clean opening and closing animations.  Character design and art design is very good for this series and the voice acting, I am a bit more biased towards the Japanese voice acting for this series but both are done well.

Overall, “Girls’ Last Tour” is an anime series that may not be an uplifting anime series but it is a anime series that makes you think about war and the direction our world is going in.  No major violence or anything to dark, just a story of two young ladies trying to survive another day in a world devoid of humanity, in search of food and fuel.

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