"I didn't realize it before, but making a manga is actually pretty strenuous.
Despite the boundless anxiety eating away at me, occasionally I'm able to draw a good line something, and I get a little spark of joy. And when that happens, I sort of feel an overlap with the girls' journey."
Art: The quote above is the afterward from volume 1 of the manga. Tsukumizu's artstyle in Girls' Last Tour is really sketchy-looking, and it gives the the vibe of an artist who cares more about the overall image that something creates rather than each line that builds up to it. The backgrounds often lack detail, and the farther back you look, the more abstract shapes become until a skyline becomes a mess of rectangles. The only problem with this style is that sometimes perspectives seem off and certain panels come across as notably unplanned or poorly thought-out. The character designs are simple but nice, and the style allows for some of the comedic panels to have characters squished down, which seems to have become a Tsukimizu staple given how often they're used in Shimeji Simulation. Despite any minor problems I have with the art, it's unique and appealing enough that I enjoyed it a lot.
"Reading it over again, I think Ishii (and Kanazawa too) must have been terribly lonely... Do we humans start building airplanes and what not when we're lonely...? Perhaps they were envious of Chito and Yuuri, who have the luxury of living together. I get envious of these two girls I draw all the time too. 'Ah.living just for the sake of living... How great would that be?' I think as I pet my outdoor dog."
Character (1/3): The quote above is from volume 2. This section will specifically be about Kanazawa and Ishiii. I'll have sections later focusing on others and the main duo. Kanazawa is fairly unremarkable other than the fact that he gives the girls the camera which becomes important in volume 4. Other than that, his role is identical to Ishii's but I think Ishii captures the emotion presented better than Kanazawa does. This feeling is "relief in failure" or something along those lines. This emotion is key to Girls' Last Tour. One of the main ideas that the manga presents is that failure and success are identical in some aspects. In this world, failure and success both mean the same thing: and end to your journey. And Girls' Last Tour is all about the journey and the goal. No matter what the goal is, whether it's practical or not, whether it's meaningful or not, whether it's possible or not, a goal keeps you going on the journey when there's nothing else there.
"It seems like mankind still isn't able to define the concept of life that well, In contrast with Chito and Yuuri's instinctive perception of it, maybe life is really something that goes on eternally, uninterrupted. Maybe it has no end... Thinking of it that way makes me a little uneasy. An uneasiness that my 'self,' for which an end will certainly come one day, could end up being left stranded eternally... Or maybe it's loneliness? Life, civilization, the universe-I'd like all of these things to be over at some point. I think that having an end is a very comforting thing."
Character (2/3): By the way, I'm going to list all of the volume afterwards in order preceding each section. The quote above is the afterward from volume 3. Aside from Kanazawa and Ishii, my favorite side character in the manga is the robot from volume 3. There's not much too him, but the concept of a robot driven by empathy rather than any specific "laws of robotics" or something like that is appealing to me. The explanation of what empathy means to this robot is also so simultaneously simple and impactful. "It means that when you are happy, so am I." Anyway I don't have anything special to write about Nuko or the elevator AI so I'll cut this section short right here. In short: Nuko is great but the AI is fairly forgettable.
"Why are there always wars...? Why can't everybody have equal lives...?
I read a lot of books and think about this.
I'll make attempts to get to the bottom of it...or I'll dream about my ideals...
But I don't get it. I start to hate everything.
Thinking wears me out.
Maybe thinking too 'big picture' doesn't make people very happy The only feeling I want in life is the texture of the persimmons from the persimmon tree in my family's yard."
Story (1/2): Here I'll talk about the biggest flaw with Girls' Last Tour. The story is great and I'll write about why in the final section, but the largest flaw with the manga is the worldbuilding. The world isn't really the point of the manga so it's easy to discredit complaints about the worldbuilding as irrelevant or missing the point, but it still bothers me that the story of the world is so unexplored. Any consideration about the background of the world falls apart after any questions are asked. How did the fighting of the war reach so deep into the city as shown in chapter 27 when most of the city is still intact? Why are there residential areas so close to the giant mechas? Why was the city built in layers? What sort of apocalyptic event killed everybody on Earth but miraculously left four or five people not only alive, but completely unharmed? Why are there no corpses? What started the war in the first place? Some of these questions might have answers, but there's just so many questions to ask and not enough thought put into the world to address most of them. It's different from "we don't know all the answers" too, because it's clear that there are no reasonable answers to some of these questions. This is more of a character-focused manga rather than world-focused so it's fine that there was more thought put into the characters, but the review would be incomplete if I didn't write what I thought about the worldbuilding considering how large of a flaw it is relative to the rest of the manga.
"I like dreaming of the past.
Meeting people I'll never meet again, my childhood self talking to my mother or father..
Then when I wake up, I feel sad.
Does that sadness stem from having lost those things? Or is it because I've remembered that l'd forgotten even the
things l'd lost..?
Humans long for things to stay the same, for eternity, but on the other hand I think that the act of forgetting heals us."
Character (3/3): Time for the most important part. Chito and Yuuri are the heart of the manga. Most chapters for the first five volumes consist of these two talking, driving, and exploring. The characters simple enough that they're easy to understand from the start, but their interactions with each other and the world around them are still endearing. Yuuri's drive to eat fits perfectly into the situations where the girls have to look for food, and Chito's drive for knowledge is more interesting in a world where most knowledge has been destroyed and forgotten. There's not a single boring chapter because these two are always there to bring some light into the cold, dark, uncaring world. The more you read, the more you'll notice subtleties in their characterization. For example, you might notice that Yuuri is surprisingly more inquisitive than Chito is. Oftentimes their conversations will start by Yuuri asking Chito to explain something. The combination of simple characterization with subtle detail makes the situations relatable. Every experience that they had in the manga was something that I could feel for myself. Excitement when they find food, worry for each other, intrigue when they find a new person or area, and most of all the grief at the loss of the reliable Kettenkrad. The breakdown of the Kettenkrad marks the point in the manga where the journey will become a lot harder for Chito and Yuuri.
"This world is so massive and complicated that many things pass us by without us even knowing. But no matter what, Chito and Yuuri believed that the joy of living would never pass, and I want to believe that too... I think that's what I had in mind as I drew this...probably.
Thank you so much for reading my clumsy work all the way to this point."
Story (2/2): The concluding four chapters of Girl's Last Tour cemented it as one of my favorites of all time. There's not really a good way that I can describe the emotions brought up in these chapters, but it's a mixture of sadness, happiness, and maybe some other emotions too. But one of them is definitely relief. From the start, it was always about the journey before the goal. It doesn't matter that there's nothing on top of the city, what matters is that they made it there. As I wrote earlier, I think that "relief in failure" is one of the important emotions to the story, and the ending perfectly encapsulates it, or maybe the ending portrays "relief in success," or maybe it's the same thing. And in the very end, I don't really think that it's all that sad. After all, "Living was the best, wasn't it?"
Well thanks for reading my clumsy review all the way to this point. I didn't plan it at all and wrote it based on what I've thought about it over the course of about a year since I first read it. I mostly just wrote it for myself, but if anyone's made it this far and has any feedback about my review then I might write more in the future. If you want to hear more about Girls' Last Tour then "Hiding in Public" on YouTube has great videos about the series, and you might also like Tsukumizu's other manga Shimeji Simulation which is currently being published.
