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I was wondering why the review wasn't out. I just assumed the reviewer was busy with end of the year stuff but its amazon screwing up again. Go figures.

Yep, this and MMO Junkie weaseled its way into my top 5 this year at the last second. For the second year in a row MHA gets pushed down to number 6 on the final stretch of the year (flip flappers caused it last year), maybe next year MHA, you just had to much competition this time...again.

Nice to see the relationship between Yuu and Chii more or less confirmed... Smile

Episode 12 was a great one to watch and really had me hoping for a season 2 sometime in the future. This show is something special and had me feeling all kinds of emotions throughout its run. Girls’ Last Tour is quite the thematic opposite of Made in Abyss, in my opinion, and I certainly won’t forget it for a long time.

Also, f*** Amazon and their delays.

Edit: Changed episode number.

Last edited by Lightice on Fri Dec 29, 2017 7:40 pm; edited 1 time in total

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After this, we receive some concrete details on the girls' backstories in the form of a dream sequence. It looks like they lived with a grandfather figure until a few years ago, when soldiers arrived to enact a pogrom on their village. Grandpa convinced them to escape on the kettenkrad and was most likely shot to death shortly afterwards

We already saw a shorter version of this scene in the very first episode, and I have to say, I interpret it quite differently. We see a glimpse of little Chi and Yuu running among the soldiers without care in the world -- I get the impression that they lived in a military camp, one of the last bastions of civilisation in this world. But, based on the Grandfather's parting words, I get the impression that the food was running out, and the soldiers were already planning on casting out or outright executing anyone deemed non-essential, and the gunfire at the end seemed to imply that discipline finally died altogether, and they all killed each other over what meagre resources they still possessed.

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Lore-wise, it's ambiguous whether these decomposers arose naturally over the course of humanity's self-destruction (nuclear mutants of some kind) or constitute some planned special ops squad birthed by a sentient planet.

Seeing that these creatures can link with human machinery, and that one of the video clips that the girls discovered was a callback to the idea of machine evolution from the earlier episode with the robots, I'd say that the "cuts" are meant to be artificial life forms that either naturally evolved from the most advanced technological creations that the humanity managed to create before their downfall, or else were deliberately engineered for the purpose of cleansing the planet of the mess that humans left behind. Either way, they are apparently the inspiration for the "gods" that the less advanced aftercomer culture revered and seem to be the reason why in the course of the series we haven't seen a single piece biological human remains -- being consumed by the "cuts" was probably seen as an ideal form of burial, literally joining up with the "gods" in their divine purpose. They did specify that they didn't eat living humans, after all.

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As an aside, there are some hints that Yuu and Chii may be in a romantic relationship.

They certainly framed the ending like that, didn't they? It felt a bit weird to me, since for some reason I assumed from the start that the two were sisters, but I suppose that in a way these two basically represent an entire society between them; all human relationships that they'll ever have are with each other. I guess that romance inevitably ends up into the mix at some point, no matter what biological connection they may or may not possess.

Blanchimont wrote:

Nice to see the relationship between Yuu and Chii more or less confirmed... Smile

Its not. Plus they were raised as sisters.

The nukos/kats (#### "cuts"?..) are for me bio-engineered creatures designed to recycle organic & inorganic materials.And these creatures have evolved over the long expanse of time since the ancient civilization died out.

The Mushroom did not tell the girls they were the last humans on Earth or in the city.the creature told them they were only humans on the upper levels of the city,aside from the upper most level which the creatures have NOT explored.

For those truly interested in their ongoing story,new chapters of the manga are released online on it's official site for all to read freely (in Japanese of course).

v1cious wrote:

Every time Rolling Eyes

I think the yuri subtext was pretty well-telegraphed from the outset, to the point where I remember some commenter on one of those "summaries of all the upcoming season's anime" sites complaining that they were really excited by the show's paragraph-long description... until they reached the last sentence, found out that both characters were women, and realized that it wasn't going to be a show about a boy and girl tsundere-ing their way across a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

(To be fair, it was also the sort of site where the comments sections were full of vehement proclamations from dudes who refuse to watch Kill la Kill because they "don't do action shows where the main character is a chick".)

ultimatehaki wrote:

Plus they were raised as sisters.

Oh, I guess that settles it, then, the anime industry would never try to use "siblings who aren't blood related and might be lesbians" to sell copies of anything. Laughing

Lightice wrote:

We already saw a shorter version of this scene in the very first episode, and I have to say, I interpret it quite differently. We see a glimpse of little Chi and Yuu running among the soldiers without care in the world -- I get the impression that they lived in a military camp, one of the last bastions of civilisation in this world. But, based on the Grandfather's parting words, I get the impression that the food was running out, and the soldiers were already planning on casting out or outright executing anyone deemed non-essential, and the gunfire at the end seemed to imply that discipline finally died altogether, and they all killed each other over what meagre resources they still possessed.

It's possible. The manga is vague about what happened. They lived in some kind of military camp, with food being rationed. Then one day the streets were filled with soldiers (possibly more than usual) and Grandpa realized that something was going to go down and sent them off in the last second. So maybe the soldiers rebelled against the civilians, or maybe the camp was attacked by a stronger army.

To be totally honest, I wasn't that satisfied with the last episode. I thought the first half of the episode was amazing and absolutely great. However the second half with the biological(?) waste eating mushrooms just felt so out of place for me. It was just a little too jarring and took me out of the atmosphere the show put me in, making their monologue feel like a sudden exposition dump. Rather than the natural story telling and discovery the story usually stuck with.

Ending scene sure was cute though.

I think episode 12 was a strong finale that helped cement Girls' Last Tour as one of the best animes of the year. This show is an example of why I love watching anime. Three months ago I knew nothing about this property, and now it is one of the most delightful anime series I had the pleasure of watching. I don't need another season because I feel satisfied with 12 episodes.

And f.uck Anime Strike. I am so glad Sentai is apparently done with them.

This along with Made in the Abyss would be the best shows of 2017 that I just don't care for very much. For both I recognize that they are well made shows with good production values, but in the end I'm rather "meh" about both of them. Oh well.

^^Meh. Not everyone can fully appreciate art and/or like it and that’s fine.

BodaciousSpacePirate wrote:

v1cious wrote:

Every time Rolling Eyes

I think the yuri subtext was pretty well-telegraphed from the outset,...

ultimatehaki wrote:

Plus they were raised as sisters.

As a yuri lover, I haven't been completely convinced, though Chii-chan did kiss Yuu who reacted with mild disgust. The last episode did seem to be angling toward romance since Chii-chan gets flustered, but that seems a little out of place given everything else (random fanservice?). However, I like that the production has been ambiguous on this point and sometimes get tired of people assuming that two people of the same sex can't have an intimate emotional relationship (like sisters) without having sex.

While watching the last ep I was thinking what would I think as the last human who ever lived and I came to the conclusion it would be so relieving. As everyone has, I sometimes think of my mortality and the eventual passing of myself and how frightening it is where I nearly always worry about the events I am going to miss out on. However, with these girls they do not have to worry about what they are going to miss, it ends with them, they have seen what humanity has done through the camera and know nothing else will ever come up. Coupled with the general themes of "dont worry about it" of the show I feel that it would be a grand feeling to experience.

A surprisingly weighty ending! I would not have expected a Chopin nocturne to accompany a montage of the apocalypse, or for the extent of the damage to be affirmed by a quasi-deity. (Then again, it should hardly surprise us.) My preference would have been for all the lingering mortality to remain as implicit as it had been beforehand, and for the finale to be a measured act of anticlimax rather than the ambivalent mixture of doom and of eerie, resigning acceptance that we instead received, though I appreciate the need for the show's efforts at world-building to culminate towards something.

While I hadn't considered the extent of Chii and Yuu's relationship until the final review mentioned it, such a matter is perhaps more important than I gave it credit. Indeed, the series' strongest scenes all indicate a notable love between them—my favourite of which being Chii adjusting Yuu's fringe when posing for a photograph, keener to address her friend's appearance over her own for the sake of a lasting memento—and it would be fully consistent with the story's focal points for their personal arrangements to be more than circumstantial.

I'm very grateful for Gabriella's write-ups. As gentle as this show is, the timeliness of its content and the comforting yet unsettling perspective it adopts have been all the more appreciable thanks to her weekly commentary.