Now imagine them as the only other remaining person on Earth, and your lone companion in a grey sullen apocalypse. That's Yuuri to me, and I adore her as she adores Chito. Together, they're the inseparable pair upon which this entire series rides, and it's a joy to watch them interact. How believably they bicker, how mirthfully they find their little moments of play in that moody, decrepit industrial wasteland of a world, with its forgotten machines creaking and groaning out their last vestiges of function in pointless unthinking service to the masters of a vanished civilization.
Our duo explores its darkest bowels and crumbling spires, rumbling along in their gas-guzzling military relic of a vehicle from site to site, ever scavenging for food rations and shelter. We learn who they are as the series unfolds, and they learn just how deeply they matter to one another. How their differences are a complement, and that the tragedy of humanity's forlorn fate only binds them closer. That tragedy is mysterious and foreboding, and the reasons for it are gradually unveiled.
I found the setting and story to be utterly captivating even in its mundanity, each new location holding small treasures, curiosities, or traces of life that the girls observe, tinker with, and ponder over. The pacing is slow and the silences long, but by the end, I wanted nothing more than for their journey to last a thousand episodes, because it felt to me like I was right there with them, taking shelter in the warmth and sincerity of their friendship like a third girl huddled in a cozy blanket against the barren winter of eternity.
