Shoujo Shuumatsu Ryokou

Hmm this anime has quite the reputation online. Peak anime. Tranime. Larp anime (whatever this means I actually don't get the nu-twitter meaning of larp LOL). And so on... I read a bit of Shimeji Simulation a few years back but stopped because it was coming out, which apparently it's done now so maybe I should finish it... And I'm all too familiar with tkmiz's infamous lolitroon tweets too, which doesn't help with how reluctant I was to finally give this a try. But whatever, I've heard more good things than bad, and I don't like to write things off because of the author.

First, the setting. We're in a not so distant future, that has advanced rapidly because of something we find out in the last episode. The world is divided into platforms, and the girls are traversing from the lower levels to the upper ones in hopes of finding more supplies and maybe, civilization. The world is extremely sterile and doused in concrete as far as your eye can see. There's hardly any nature, both macro and micro, and food is scarce and existing mostly in the form of military rations and other long lasting forms. To put it simply there's nothing, it seems the eco system is completely gone and all that remains are these weird expansive cities breathing through rocking and swaying steel beams, wherein you can find functioning infrastructure such as oil and water pipe lines. The world is just as much of a character as the girls are, and that's something I really enjoyed. It actually develops as the story goes which was my favourite thing in this whole anime/manga. There's a slow drip of things being introduced as the upper levels are reached since they're less war torn, from electricity, to religion, to alcohol, to a graveyard, to potential signs of life, and it's all done really wonderfully. A plus goes to the anime here because the sound design was FANTASTIC. It made the environment so alive, despite it being biologically desolate. I'm also in love with the general worldbuilding which is drip fed to us until the very end of the anime when they go a bit nuts, but the overall mystery is still kept after the lore dump. It reminded me a lot of the worldbuilding in Haibane Renmei, where it feels like you're along for the ride but nobody is bothering with exposition dumps yet, it makes the world feel large and mysterious through obscurity of information. It's hard to get right but when it is, I can instantly put that work in my favourites.

The characters are fine, although Yuuri really got on my nerves at first lmao. By the end of the anime, and then continuing onto the manga, I grew to like her more. Sometimes I don't like when moe characters are "moe" because they're always inconveniencing the other characters or the plot, it can feel tiring. But I think she grew past that as a character once she got more established. Chii was more rounded from the start, a bookworm type that prefers to think over doing physical work, she loses hope more easily and is afraid of heights, she was more appealing overall... Their dynamic is one of the more important things in this anime, a straight man and a foil situation but make it an apocalyptic world in which they're possibly the only two people alive and they depend on each other to survive. Yuuri's ignorance makes for a great setup for conversations to take place, so it doesn't feel like Chii is just talking to the camera. We get to see a couple more characters, human and non human alike, that we encounter on the journey and I've got no complaints about them. Their stories were handled well, all ending in some sort of sadness or failure...

Lastly, the ending, without spoiling anything. I think the manga wins here. While the anime ending is nice, and if I hadn't read the manga I wouldn't think it's bad or anything, once I finished the manga I felt like I really finished the story. It was a perfect ending, and it made the most sense. It's rare to see such a perfect ending that fits the theme of the story so well.

As for the weird stuff, there's some barbie nudity and the two main chars are of course of the necessary teenage age, despite them being in military uniforms and driving a Kettenkrad and having weapons. It's obvious it reads like some /k/ommando's fantasy by combining his most favourite things...... but it didn't really have a large effect on the story nor was there anything salacious and pearlclutch worthy so it didn't ruin my enjoyment tbh. The world was so immersive and cool looking I honestly forgot about all of this like 3 episodes in.