Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Touring After the Apocalypse
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Hiroki not Takuya
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Hi there, you have now! It aired here in the US once and being a fellow apocalypse muser, I found it a nice character study, rumination on unintended consequences and had a fascinating SciFi premise based on the thought that sometimes one can't be sure one knows enough to predict everything that could happen. In some sense it was related to the also great late '60's movie Crack in the World I resist comparison between this show and Girl's Last Tour but understand the propensity for it as they have a few elements in common but are completely different takes with different aims, tone and characters. Actually, I still am not sure what the message of Touring is yet or if there is one and many mysteries remain. My first theory is "Big Sis" seen in the "shelter" was not real but an AI and in Ep1 when we see two young women setting out on a bike tour, one is actually Yoko. This would explain the "dreams" but that leaves an age discrepancy, unless Yoko is a clone with memories downloaded. Anyway, loving Touring to pieces and yes, Ep3 definitely tells us there was a Comiket after the apocalypse and another survivor. I about jumped when LiSA's song played on the phone, such a nice touch and your report that the VA did Kirito was another treat! |
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Jafwasw
Posts: 25 |
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Seen Quiet Earth years ago, a very weird visually beautiful film with a standout performance by New Zealand actor Bruno Lawrence. Funnily enough I get strong vibes of another obscure film (and more recently mini series) called On the Beach which is based on a novel by Nevil Shute. The finding of a corpse of someone who appears to have suicided is very reminiscent of that story. As is the apparent existence of an operation radio station after an apocalypse.
If I am to speculate I wonder if Yoko and Araii aren't unknowingly some sort of scouts to see what state the world is now in and that Yoko is actually a clone of whoever "Big Sister" was. I don't think the story is any hurry to answer those speculations but clearly something is going on here. Last edited by Jafwasw on Sun Oct 19, 2025 7:22 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Gina Szanboti
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That's one thing that's bothered me in this, that when they do find food and water they don't ration it at all. You'd think that unless they found a month's worth of food (in which case, sure, pig out), they'd conserve it as much as possible until they found the next cache. Another one here who's seen The Quiet Earth. I liked it a lot until he found other people. It went downhill from there and kinda ruined it for me, even though I knew they'd never make it a one-person movie. |
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Great Rumbler
 Posts: 348 Location: Oklahoma |
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The Quiet Earth mentioned! I'm always glad to see it still get mentioned 40 years after it first came out.
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Cosmos503
 SubscriberPosts: 14 |
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Thanks for the Voice Actor tidbit...I did freak out to hearing the song....so adds even more....mystery!
I hadn't noticed the gun, so went back...note that there are a bunch of bullet holes in the window/TV and the gun by the side like the person was shooting out. Not debating the more likely "suicide" explanation, just a note to add to the mystery. The other thing I have noticed is some of the night skies showed things in the first episode like the crisscrossing line of "satellites" in the sky (during the hot springs scene). The next scene showed and aurora with a satellite crossing the horizon then shoot off into space (warp?). . Guess will keep watching for answers 
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Great Rumbler
Posts: 348 Location: Oklahoma |
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There are a lot of weird background details: a lake with Nessie swimming in it, a falling star that suddenly flies away like a UFO, a massive world tree, Fuji being an active volcano, large craters that look like they were made be meteor strikes. They've also mentioned radiation, global warming, and animals with genetic modification. Feels like the creator didn't want to commit to a single cause for what brought down human civilization so they just decided to throw in everything as a little joke. Although perhaps an explanation will come later. |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 19137 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Good catch on the radio DJ's VA! I had not noticed that on the first view.
I was stunned to hear "Crossing Field" as the song they picked up in ep 3, and there's two ways to take that. One is that it was chosen because the lyrics of the song fit almost perfectly with the series ("Cloudy memories of the way it used to be. . . Looking back in time/All the images they tell me where I'm going/They guide me"), but given how liberally this series has scattered little hints throughout, it could also be a suggestion. SAO was about people whose consciousnesses were trapped in an alternate setting, after all. . . Yeah, I've been completely sucked in by both the mystery aspects of the show and how the underlying melancholy sharply contrasts with the spirited behavior of the leads. This is the series that I most wanted to see episode-reviewed, so I'll be back every week for the analysis. |
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Tenchi
 Posts: 4662 Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer. |
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I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks Airi is quite similar, character wise, to Renge Miyauchi from Non Non Biyori (save for how neither of Renge's arms can transform into a plasma cannon). I thought Airi seemed similar to Renge just from watching the trailer and that's what initially compelled me to read the manga.
As I write this, I still haven't checked out the anime adaptation (sadly, my mother was dying earlier this month and I wasn't in the mood to watch new anime). I hope to start watching it later this week but, from what I've seen in discussions of the first three episodes on /a/ and Reddit plus this review, it seems that it follows the early part of the manga very closely. I'll stay away from spoilers for anything that hasn't already been shown in the first three episodes but I don't think there's anything that ambiguous about Airi. She's an android who seems to get her energy mainly from consuming food like a human (she otherwise probably would have a hard time travelling around a post-apocalyptic Japan with very few places to recharge beyond the solar panels that they mainly use for charging the Yamaha Serow motorcycle). In that way, Airi is very similar to the androids from Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou who also seem to be able to get energy through digestion of food and drink. (In YKK, Alpha can't eat animal protein, unlike Kokone, a slightly later model of android, but she does eat some food and, of course, drinks coffee.) I suppose Airi must have something like a Back to the Future "Mr. Fusion" in her digestive tract. The YKK robots also require sleep, just like Airi. That's another thing that interested me in Touring After the Apocalypse, how the setting is somewhat similar to Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou in terms of taking place after an ambiguous, probably multi-factor, apocalypse. Both manga show Mount Fuji with a somewhat cratered cone, indicating that there was some kind of volcanic eruption, and both manga show the Greater Tokyo area partially submerged compared to the present day, with the ocean levels risings and some of the land itself sinking. It's not a perfect comparison because, while the human population is greatly diminished, YKK still has enough people left for a somewhat functional society (with the help of the androids) while humans, save for Yoko, have seemingly vanished completely in Touring After the Apocalypse's version of Japan, and Yoko and Airi often find themselves in perilous situations, unlike the overall peacefulness of the world in YKK, but both manga have a similarly elegiac tone, showing the ruins of familiar landmarks that were once bustling with people. My theory about the "sister" in the non-flashback timeline of Touring After the Apocalypse is that she is spoiler[a "Ghost in the Shell", a human consciousness uploaded into a mainframe computer and/or an android body]. I'm generally assuming that Sword Art Online's "Crossing Field" is in there because both shows are from Aniplex and, as such, it was easy for the Touring After the Apocalypse production committee to license it. |
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Key
Moderator
Posts: 19137 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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I am also assuming something like this.
No doubt that was a factor, but again, the lyrics seem more perfectly-matched to this series than to SAO. |
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Hiroki not Takuya
Posts: 3030 |
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Ep4- Wow, solid clue dropped at 0:54 and 0:57 which I think cinches my original supposition that an older pre-apocalypse Yoko was touring with "Big Sis" ("Sis" has black hair, Yoko's is brown). The closer animation/scenery in each episode includes four scenes. First is a girl, usually with a motorbike-riding suit, being photographed with a cell phone from behind at a location in the episode. In all episodes, when the girl in the first scene turns to the camera (before the glare obscuration effect overtakes it) her face looks like Yoko's would in profile and is obscured less on each episode, with this episode's being most clear at 22:26.5.
The second is a shot of the environment pre-apocalypse, sometimes with the episode guest focus character and here shows what looks like the beginning of the Akiba pedestrian zone and figuring prominently is "Akiba Jiro" (the first...) as named and shown in a poster on the whiteboard at 19:45. Love such self-consistency as it adds to the quasi-realism (having a zoo's worth of animals thriving in the middle of an urban environment isn't) and appreciating the attention to detail. One can tell the team really wants to bring this world to life! Adding a bit of nostalgia for the Japanese audience to create an atmospheric mood as if the show intends to be a reminiscence, almost every episode includes a traditional local Japanese song to fit the episode theme sung by Yoko and Airi. Here we have the well-known kid's song "Tenohira wo taiyou ni" with the theme "all living things are friends". The tiger the girls came across didn't look too friendly... And continuing with the "mystery vibe" twice we see a GIANT tortoise casually moving in the background. Guaranteed they didn't have that in the zoo... |
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Netero
Posts: 185 |
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Talking about classic post-apocalyptic movies, there's a big shout-out to "On the Beach" in this episode.
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Tenchi
Posts: 4662 Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer. |
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Speaking of On the Beach, I'm not sure how much of this carries over into the anime but in the manga, even though the primary mode of transportation is a motorbike, anyone with any interest in iconic cars can have fun just spotting all of the, often quite rare and valuable, cars that Sakae Saito crams into street and highway scenes. |
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dm
 Subscriber Posts: 1716 |
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When the opening showed Tokyo Sky Tree as covered in greenery that opens out to a canopy at the top, making it look like a real tree, I had to laugh.
There are signs of on-going disaster all around — the smoking crater of Mt. Fuji, but also plumes of white and brown smoke here and there in the background (occasionally in the foreground). I suspect these are the results of malfunctioning war-machines like in the first episode, not just in close proximity to Yoko and Airi. Or unexploded ordinance spontaneously exploding after many years of decay. |
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Hiroki not Takuya
Posts: 3030 |
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Talking about signs, that moon was far too large and there was a divot taken out of it. Lack of distinct features could be just artistic rendering, keeping it from looking like our moon at all, or maybe the moon was terraformed? I got a kick out of several things this episode. Yoko saying they were going to race the rain clouds (to keep dry), having lived in the Midwest, everyone tries and it never works! "Squall Lines" move at 60 mph. That storm was definitely not normal...Also, once encountered, marsh mud never gets shallower, being tempted to keep going usually results in getting stuck. Just turn back and go around... That feeling of restless unease before a big storm and the birds and insects going silent is real and accompanies tornadoes, so great attention to detail! |
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A Mystery
 Posts: 1962 Location: Netherlands |
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Whatever killed the humans must be non toxic for a lot of animals.
There is at least a radiation problem going on. But that won't kill al humans. Excessive violence won't kill 'em all either. Because humans are like cockroaches, most times some survive. Maybe a type of AI-malfunctioning robot that specifically killed all humans? A virus/bacterium specifically designed to kill humans? Or mutated because of radiation and proceeded to kill people? |
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