Girls' Last Tour

Episode 11

In its penultimate episode, Girls' Last Tour has finally turned to face the vast shadow that's hung over the show from the very beginning: war. This is a post-apocalyptic story after all, and while its broad thematic landscape has so far covered the subjects of memory, mourning, and attempting to rebuild in the aftermath of immense loss, the precise destruction that got humanity to this point has never quite been addressed. The exact character of this apocalypse has loomed just out of frame since we first saw them scavenging for rations on that ancient battlefield, and now the girls are finally forced to confront it. And not just as bystanders either – the show addresses their status as human beings whose lingering foibles had a direct causal role in What Happened. Basically, after weeks of comfier adventures, the show is shoving some serious responsibility onto Chii and Yuu in order to see how they'll react.

As a prelude to the episode's real meat, the girls discuss cultural differences, specifically within the context of how they might have caused war. They can't really comprehend why things like different languages might have caused conflicts on that scale, which speaks to the irrationality of war when placed in a context of individuals living their everyday lives.

As per usual, Chii values efforts to investigate and preserve the past, while Yuu cares little for anything not of immediate use to her – mostly food. Their new friend, the Pillsbury dough-weasel, even chimes in to voice its agreement with Yuu on this particular issue, although it gains sustenance in a slightly unusual way: by eating bullets. By the way, it can officially talk in full sentences now. So this animal's even freakier than it seemed last week. (Also, I realize that the subtitles have settled on it calling it a “cut,” but that name isn't cute at all, and cuteness is a high priority for me. I'll be sticking with dough-weasel for now.) Later on, Chii also realizes that the dough-weasel bears a suspicious resemblance to those religious statues that they've encountered a few times recently. If the show were any longer, I suspect that this creature's identity would constitute a central mystery of the story. With one episode left, however, we'll see what this season decides to reveal. That particular story thread may only see its conclusion in the ongoing manga.

Afterwards, in the show's most chilling sequence yet, the girls get their hands on some of the very WMDs that caused the state of the world as they know it. Unfortunately, Yuu's the one who starts pressing buttons first, launching missiles that set the surrounding area on fire. Being Yuu, she finds this funny and presses more buttons, so it's up to a horrified Chii to knock some sense into her heedless companion. Chii gets seriously angry, and it's enough for Yuu to realize that she's done a big wrong this time. First she tries to blame the machine itself, then the people who piloted the machine in ancient times, but she's finally forced to admit that she herself is the cause of this specific destruction. Bowing to their culpability in this instance, the girls wait out the fire and then proceed on their journey.

At the end of the episode, the radio's music starts up again and leads them to their final location – a still-active nuclear submarine. While they've just learned an important lesson about pushing random buttons, this situation feels like the most hazardous they've been in yet. I don't think they'll be hurt, but the show's tone has been darkening in a way that feels like it's preparing the girls for something dangerous. Right before this, they had a conversation about the impossibility of ever knowing exactly what the future holds – a fact equal parts hopeful and ominous. Now that I think about it, those two adjectives are a good summation of Girls' Last Tour's tone and attitude on life overall. It's a profoundly hopeful show that celebrates the pleasures of living even in the bleakest of circumstances. At the same time, it doesn't sugarcoat the harshness of this world or try to dodge difficult existential truths about the human condition. All in all, it's a starkly refreshing (or refreshingly stark) work of slice-of-life philosophizing.

After eleven wonderful episodes, I look forward to seeing what Girls' Last Tour will deliver in its conclusion. I'm hoping that this season will tap out on a slight escalation in terms of stakes, but otherwise, this show is set to go down as a small-scale masterpiece.

Grade: A

Girls' Last Tour is currently streaming on Amazon's Anime Strike.

Gabriella Ekens studies film and literature at a US university. Follow her on twitter.