“Girls after the apocalypse” has become a subgenre of post-apocalyptic fiction. Whether alone, in pairs, or with their pets, young women traversing a ruined world have carved a niche in science fiction manga and anime, perhaps relying on the juxtaposition of cute girls and brutal, ruined landscapes. Despite that, The Color of the End: Mission in the Apocalypse has more in common with Luciole Has a Dream than Touring After the Apocalypse - more than just a travelogue, this is a story about a search for hope where none may exist.

The plot follows Saya, a young woman who gives the impression of being in her mid-to-late teens, and her companion animal, a rabbity creature named Coo. Saya and Coo have been given the job of exploring sectors of a devastated world, searching for the corpses of victims killed by a disease known as “crystalosis” and hopefully any survivors of what's known as The Cataclysm. Both were brought about by alien creatures called Executioners; skeletally thin monsters who both eat humans and exhale a pathogen that causes crystalosis. The disease is incredibly contagious and always fatal, so Saya's job is to both cremate any corpses she finds to decontaminate the area and to bring survivors back into the light.

We don't know how long ago this disaster happened, as the story gives us conflicting timelines. Far from being a detriment to the story, this instead makes it feel like the natural result of a breakdown in history and communication. Saya is a new form of human, or at least a very special one – we see her heal from grievous wounds quickly, and that she's not susceptible to the crystalosis pathogen. That hints at a very long time having passed since the Cataclysm, because children would have to have had time to evolve, or be genetically altered. The technology of the lost world looks comparable to our own, but then we have mention of The Great War, which happened a thousand years ago and nearly destroyed humanity before the Executioners ever showed up. Historically, The Great War refers to World War One, but there's no guarantee that's the case here. Was there another, more deadly war a thousand years in the past, around when we live? We have no real way of knowing.

Saya's journey is, in this volume, largely a fruitless one, giving the book a pervasive sense of melancholy. As she roams the ruined cityscapes of her world, she encounters the bodies of victims frozen in time – crystalosis halts decomposition – providing a snapshot of what life used to be like: an artist and his beloved model, a man and his android maid, children in ruined shelter, surrounded by toys and string lights. A bonus chapter at the end of the book returns to all of those scenes as they were before the people died, adding to the heartache of the scenes Saya and Coo discover. Haruo Iwamune's art doesn't go all in on the pathos, which is a positive: they allow us to feel our own emotions based on what is depicted on the page. The use of black space is a key component of this; many of the grim details are obscured, rendering them both sadder in their hidden details and also more frightening as our imaginations fill in the blanks. Up until the final two chapters, there's also a paucity of dialogue, which again contributes to the eerie, depressing feel of the book. Saya does speak to Coo and with various nonhuman beings she meets, such as the aforementioned android maid and some AI avatars left behind. But these again just drive home the lack of humans and organic animals in her world, reminding us that she is, essentially, alone.

The Color of the End is one of the stronger “girls after the apocalypse” manga out there. More bitter than sweet and filled to the brim with loneliness, its atmosphere emphasizes Saya's journey of hope, even as things very rarely turn out the way she and those who sent her out want them to. It's the sort of book that brings tears to your eyes before you even realize you're about to cry, the physical embodiment of the silence in a graveyard, long after the mourners have gone.