There's no denying that there's a lot of war pieces or post-war movies out there whether it's Saving Private Ryan, Dunkirk, Apocalypse Now etc. I think the reason why we love to make stories about war is that many people fantasize about war and how it's gonna altered humanity as we know it, especially when it comes to how people are gonna survived this war and if they did survived how they gonna rebuild the world that has been devastated by this catastrophic events and even then how different it is to the civilization before the war. These are the question that the answer are still speculation because such an event hasn't even been closed to wipe out humanity as a whole or even matches it.
Now why am I talking about this you may asked. Well I went and watch Girls Last Tour, a post-apocalyptic or war anime about two girls, Chito and Yuuri trying to survive in a world where it's only just a ruin. And I found this anime to be quite fascinating for a number of reasons that we will be discuss but before we do it, let's talk about the technical side of this anime and what do I think of it. Honestly the fact that this anime is both fluids and static at the same time is really impressive especially when it comes to the character design that's very cutesy moe blob juxtaposed with the gritty dark and ominous the world around them with it's ruined building and the lack of soil makes this anime feel grandiose and well thought out. The soundtracks here is perfect with the ambient and lo-fi orchestral sound that's really cinematic and really moving, speaking of moving the OP here is top notch and this is a thing I guess
Trust me this is a good anime.
Another thing I wanna highlight about this anime is that it doesn't reveal itself too much of a story on what happened before the world is in ruin. It's pretty much subtle in a way of the world building and in a way it told the story through the dialogue, interaction between characters and even the technology of this world. there's actually some nuance in the writing, while it's not as deep as White Fox's other works like Steins;gate, but they do sounds intriguing with Yuu asking philosophical questions as what is cheese? what is chocolate? to what is god? all of which still taken as granted but since they live in a post war scenario they just asked that question and giving some vague answers to that question because the environment and the fact that they just want to survive so stuff like cheese or the concept of god is just not crossing their minds until something brought that up.
And that leads us to why this anime worked so well as it is. Most post war or apocalyptic movies or shows doesn't really resonate with me mostly it doesn't sounds so realistic and how they managed to make something for this situation is off-putting like I get that after the war you really need a healing but to me it just came across as desperate. With this anime I feel like the characters are desperate but it's beyond that because they kinda detached to this world that what matters the most are themselves. They still have empathy but since they're the only one in this world they still fighting for survival. It highlighted very well on the first episode where they found some food from abandoned plane but there's only five of them so what they do for that last bar, Yuu took it and straight up threatened Chi if she took it away from her by a sniper. That's surprisingly dark but understandable move from Yuu since the word "war" isn't associated with big battles between two opposing side but in this world it's more of a hyperbole of fight or argument which is added more weight to the world they lived in and without delved into spoilers but at the last episode we do get to see what happened and it genuinely moving while also shows the bad side of human that we're all just a person who wanna survives in some ways.
It also helped that the atmosphere of this anime is matching the tone of the anime which is wishful hope in a shitty situation. In most post-apocalyptic films or shows it really feels depressing and dower because so much of it focuses on the idea of the world after the war will be bleak and unpleasant because duh there's no happiness about this you just survived a big war now tough it up and live this way. In this anime however they still want to find some place to stay or saw some glimmer of hope that they lost. it is uplifting in a way that no other films or shows can captured that. But damn it did in a way that's feels genuine with the best atmosphere you'll see in anime I mean the combination of the background, the animation and the soundtracks it's just works.
So with that I'll give this show a 10/10 and the highest of my recommendation, if you are an anime fans you really need to check this out and for those who are put off by the character design, just so you know that the director of this anime has also directed Persona 5 The Animation and has the writer of most Jojo series and Claymore. So even though they still alone in their world at least they still have themselves and I approves this anime.
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