Touring After the Apocalypse

Episodes 1-3

Girls' Last Tour is one of my favorite anime and manga of all time, so I was probably genetically predisposed to love the conceptually similar Touring After the Apocalypse. Ever since childhood, I've been fascinated by stories of lone survivors traversing a post-apocalyptic landscape, discovering how the world has moved on without people. I blame this fascination on an obscure New Zealand film The Quiet Earth that I watched as a kid late at night on British TV. I've never met anyone else who has seen this movie, but it's the haunting account of a man who suddenly finds himself alone in a world utterly bereft of other human beings. It's a slow, reflective, and mesmerizingly odd film, and anime that conjures a similar vibe is like catnip to me.

Where Girl's Last Tour is a bit more abstract, set in a nameless future megalopolis built on multiple enormous layers, and with two main characters whose designs err more towards the squishy moe-blob end, Touring After the Apocalypse is significantly more grounded. For one, it's recognizably set in a future Japan, with each episode named after the towns and cities the main characters explore. It's also vibrantly alive, to the point of color-oversaturation. Every crumbling building overflows with searingly verdant vegetation, while animals of all shapes and sizes have colonized the empty streets, gardens, and waterways. This is post-apocalypse by way of vacation picture-postcard imagery.

Instead of a German military-produced Kettenkrad vehicle, our two protagonists ride on a vintage motorcycle converted to run on a solar-powered battery, which means they're not hampered by the need for combustible fuel. Peppy brown-haired teenage girl Yoko is our POV character, oddly dressed in what looks like a school uniform, and she's accompanied by the seemingly younger gray-haired Airi, whose flat intonation and general demeanor remind me a lot of Renge from Non Non Biyori. So far, we don't know a lot about either of them.

In the first episode, Yoko and Airi face a reactivated tank controlled by a confused AI. As it chases them down, launching tremendously destructive explosive ordnance in their general direction, the childlike Airi unexpectedly unleashes what appears to be an ultra-powerful plasma rifle built into her arm, melting through the tank and halting it in its tracks. What, exactly, is she? The show is coy with details. We see her eating and drinking, just like Yoko, plus she needs sleep like a normal human. However, in the second episode, Yoko treats the converted cyborg they find, who is essentially a robot with a human brain, as the only other human she's ever met. Airi claims to have “memory banks” rather than a brain, and in the third episode laments that she cannot swim, as she's unable to float like the human Yoko. So Airi's true nature is one compelling mystery.

The second major mystery is the identity of Yoko's “big sister,” whose previous travelogue appears to be the blueprint for the girls' journey across Japan. The first character we meet in the pre-apocalypse prologue seems to be the sister, but later her features are never clearly shown in the photos on Yoko's cellphone, and Yoko's bizarre dreams/hallucinations substitute herself in place of her sister in what seem to be vaguely recalled memories that she should have no way of accessing. It's clear from context clues that Japan has been empty of people for decades. Skyscrapers don't grow forests on top of them in the space of a few years, and entire cities don't become submerged by the sea overnight. Add the obviously AI-generated sister/teacher on the screen of Yoko's underground bunker in episode two's flashback, and then we have more questions than answers. Yoko seems to be human, but why does she seem to have someone else's memories? Another mystery to solve.

Then there's what's happened to the world. Why are there no people left? We get some clues from the tragic cyborg we meet in the second episode. I can't help but think he would have been happier without his memories of his loving wife and daughters. The scenes where the girls take him to the seawater-filled crater of what used to be Yokosuka are quietly devastating, and we see a flashback to him witnessing what may have been a nuclear bomb. Although the girls ask him to join them on their journey, which he seemed to be thoroughly enjoying as an amnesiac, he politely declines. Yoko and Airi share a grim look that indicates they know they'll be leaving him to his death. After they depart, we see him lose battery power while gripping the photograph of the family he loved ages ago, before falling into the inky black water, rejoining them in death. It's an unremittingly bleak scene that made me tear up.

I'm not sure if the world is empty only because of nuclear bombs, though. Yoko has to test the water she collects in the third episode, and her smartphone can check not only for poisons, heavy metals, and radiation, but it can also sterilize with UV light! It seems like high levels of radiation were a problem at some point, but now the levels are safe enough for human survival. When they later find a relatively intact building in which they discover perfectly preserved tinned food, they muse on how it's so much harder to find anything in ransacked homes. That suggests that the fall of civilization took a while, and perhaps wasn't due to a single, catastrophic event. Yoko even discovers what looks like a corpse holding a gun in the upstairs bedroom, suggesting the former resident committed suicide. The show's tone varies wildly from bright, fun road trip to dark, existential dread.

Mostly, it's heavy on the “fun” part, especially when animals are involved. Episode one ends with a relaxing bath in a Hakone hot spring, shared with a cute little wild boar family. In episode two, Yoko's attempt to fish in the sea off the broken Bay Bridge near Yokohama is comically (though also terrifyingly) interrupted by a hungry shark. Another shark is later devoured by an enormous orca, seemingly mutated and grown to incredible size by the presence of “endocrine disruptors” in the environment. Episode three features an absolutely delightful sequence where Yoko makes friends with a group of penguins, swimming alongside them on an idyllic Summer afternoon. These interludes make the post-apocalypse out to be not such a bad place to explore after all. You know, apart from the chronic lack of food or permanent shelter, the kind of thing that gives me stomach ulcers thinking about it.

Episode three features a trip to Tokyo Big Sight, the location of Comiket in our world, and the girls even find a stash of doujinshi there. I wonder if this was from a group of otaku coming together after the apocalypse? I think I noticed the lifeless bodies of deactivated quadrupedal military drones lying on the floor in one scene, though. Also, what is the enormous tree growing above the Tokyo skyline? What does it all mean?

Yoko and Airi play off each other well; they're fun to watch. Yoko's a bundle of excitable energy, whereas Airi's a little more reserved but still up for shenanigans when Yoko's involved. Their friendship is strong, as they both resolve to stay with each other “forever.” I'm not sure what that means in this type of environment, nor even what the potentially artificial Airi's lifespan even is. At least they know where their next destination is: Akihabara. Episode three ends with the truly bizarre Akiba Radio broadcast of the famous song "Crossing Field" by LiSA, opening track for the Sword Art Online anime. Even weirder, the voice actor used for the radio DJ is Matsuoka Yoshitsugu, who also voiced SAO's protagonist Kirito. Is there really another survivor? I can't wait to find out next week.

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Touring After the Apocalypse is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

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