The Fall 2022 Manga Guide

Touring After the Apocalypse

What's It About? 

All alone after the end of days, two girls bike through the empty ruins of Japan—and they're not about to let the collapse of civilization get in the way of sightseeing. Even when the world ends, their journey goes on.

Touring After the Apocalypse has story and art by Sakae Saito, with English translation by Amanda Haley and lettering by Phil Christie, and Yen Press will release its first volume both digitally and physically on November 22.

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Is It Worth Reading?

Jean-Karlo Lemus

Rating:

I like a story that doesn't get too bogged down in details. We don't know what cataclysm wrecked the world in this cute post-apocalyptic story. All we have is a girl, her bike, and her robot friend wandering around the ruins of Japan. As they follow the itinerary set by Youko's sister's social media, they place themselves in just the right spot for some lovely shots of cities reclaimed by wilderness. There's a sense of wonder as Youko tries to imagine what the world used to be like when it was inhabited by people, what Tokyo Big Sight was like when it was a thriving convention center, what people were like when they lived in houses and not shelters.

Touring After the Apocalypse plays its cards close to its chest, but sometimes simplicity is all you need. The art is there, the emotion is there, the charm is there. This is a strong recommendation, without a doubt.

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Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

It'd be easy to think of Touring After the Apocalypse as Girls' Last Tour 2.0, and maybe that wouldn't be entirely unfair. But while this is very much in the vein of that other series, it has a totally different sensibility to it, one that I think is a little more upbeat. It's still about two girls, some of the only survivors of some sort of cataclysmic event, riding around Japan on an old motorbike, but Youko, the more human of the pair (there's a strong implication that Airi is an android) is unflaggingly chipper, and that gives the story a perky edge. Youko has her older sister's old cell phone, and she's using it as a blueprint to travel to all the places her sister did before the fall of humanity. Is her sister still alive out there somewhere? Maybe; we definitely see her on a video call back before Youko and Airi left their bunker, but we don't know if that's really her or if it's a sophisticated AI program. That's set up as a distinct possibility when the girls find half of a cyborg in Yokohama – the man whose consciousness was uploaded into the machine lived through the disaster, and he's still very much a human on the inside, right down to the final choice he makes.

Part of what makes this volume so good is the way that information is parsed out. From the man's memories, we know that there was an attempt to evacuate people, but that things escalated really quickly. From the tank that's still on autopilot and Youko's sister's words, we know that radiation was a major concern. There's a gaping hole in the coastline where Yokosuka Port used to be, so it's not hard to imagine a nuclear disaster, although there are hints of an environmental one separate from that, as well, and the last date we see on a calendar reads “204-.” The book ends with the tantalizing hint of another living person on the girls' route, so they aren't likely to be the only people left, but as we saw with the man in Yokohama, the people might not be flesh and blood.

The bittersweetness of the story is borne of the clear world-ending scale of whatever happened mixed with Youko's enthusiasm for life. We don't know much more than we do, and the art does a beautiful job of showing us how quickly everything just…ended. It's a little creepy to read, but that's what makes it good.

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MrAJCosplay

Rating:

Touring After the Apocalypse mostly presents itself with a general lighthearted tone of discovery. It's about two girls traveling from place to place with a surprisingly laid-back and even chipper attitude most of the time. This acts as a perfect contrast to the desolate destruction that they often pass on their vehicles. Some context clues and backstory are given to give you an idea of what exactly happened but I would almost argue that the reason for this apocalyptic wasteland is irrelevant. What's important is our protagonist trying to make the best out of the situation. There's never a sense that these two are in denial or even frustrated, rather there is this sense of acceptance and understanding that things are far from ideal, but that doesn't stop them from moving forward. You become curious about what new location or living thing they're about to come across next because you want to see what each adventure leads to, whether it's something incredibly mundane or even something incredibly heartbreaking. I don't think this is something that you should jump immediately to read as it might be a bit more of an acquired taste but if you have the time and see it at your local bookstore, I think you can spare an hour to watch two cute girls going on a rather unique road trip.