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Girls' Last Tour
Episode 3

by Gabriella Ekens,

How would you rate episode 3 of
Girls' Last Tour ?
Community score: 4.5

This week on Girls' Last Tour, our heroines discover something I hadn't expected to see for a while: another person. This encounter leads to us learning a lot about their journey, particularly what their goals seem to be in wandering this desolate wasteland.

While travelling through yet another abandoned cityscape, Yuuri and Chito encounter the mapmaker Kanazawa. Following some initial hostilities (mostly on Yuuri's part), he and our heroines decide to team up for the immediate future. It's here that we learn what the girls have been aiming for in their travels. They're trying to get onto the “upper level” that exists atop the pillars. They haven't had much luck so far, but this time Kanazawa can teach them how to use the elevator. They make it part of the way up before it breaks, tilting the whole thing over. While they all make it through okay, Kanazawa's bag— which contains his map—falls down to the city below. His life's work gone, the mapmaker demands that the girls let him fall off alongside it. However, they refuse and drag him back to safety.

Afterwards, Kanazawa falls into a deep depression. The girls know what's up, since he'd been going on about the map being his reason to live. But when all of the city's streetlights suddenly turn back on, they manage to cheer him up with this display of the world's remaining resplendent beauty. He finds the strength to keep on going, as do our heroines who decide to head toward the brightest light on the nighttime horizon. As a parting gift, Kanazawa also leaves Chito his camera, which is sure to enhance her endeavor of documenting their travels.

The resolution to this incident reaffirms the show's primary theme of life's immense beauty, even in the face of what seem like catastrophic setbacks in life. This is what makes Girls' Last Tour such a reassuring show, despite its post-apocalyptic setting. Having failed in their initial attempts at mapmaking/getting up the pillar, all three characters decide to start again, having lost nothing in terms of the experiences they earned along the way.

In the meantime, we've also learned a little more about what's going on with this world. The sky-cities themselves aren't populated, meaning that they were likely affected by whatever catastrophe befell the rest of the world. There might still be folks living on its highest levels, but the lower ones have already been picked clean by scavengers. Apparently, whatever happened took place hundreds of years ago—the characters encounter decrepit scavenging equipment that's already been abandoned for more than a century. If nations still exist (and they seem to, seeing as Yuuri and Chito were recruited into somebody's war), then they would have emerged after the downfall of this advanced civilization. In fact, the world might be more populated somewhere else entirely. Kanazawa says that he's “going back south” after splitting up with the girls, and population centers have to exist for there to still be nations. My theory is that there's been some sort of global cooling, so the girls were sent to scout the far north, which is now inhospitable and littered with abandoned ruins. I'm excited to learn more—it's a promising setup, and I like what I've heard so far.

Overall, this was another strong showing out of Girls' Last Tour. This show has really nailed the three episode rule, propelling itself into being one of my favorite anime of the season so far. That's pretty good for something that I had no expectations for going in. As we head into the winter months, I suspect that Girls' Last Tour is going to be my weekly mug of warm cocoa. Looking forward to more.

Grade: A

Girls' Last Tour is currently streaming on Amazon's Anime Strike.

Gabriella Ekens studies film and literature at a US university. Follow her on twitter.


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