You all ready for some charming adventures on the brink of oblivion? Well I certainly am, and I’m the one who picks what order these posts get released in, so I hope you’re ready too. It’s been a few weeks on my end since we last watched an episode of Girls’ Last Tour, but my love of this show certainly hasn’t diminished – in fact, I think the show’s ninth episode was far and away one of its best so far.

Chi and Yuu’s robot companion turned out to be a charming and poignant addition to the cast, and his adventure served as a tidy illustration of the vaguely defined and ephemeral nature of life itself. Conversations about language and empathy led naturally towards a genuine action setpiece, and the episode resolved on the painfully frank “the fish and I will live for a little longer now. Though we will all die one day.”

From Yuu and Chi themselves to the architects of their dying city and beyond, nearly all of Girls’ Last Tour’s human characters fret about impermanence. Whether it’s through capturing their existence in a stone monument, leaving personal effects behind, or achieving a feat that cannot be matched or forgotten, they all wish to somehow survive this bleak moment, and at the very least remain in memory. But as Yuu and Chi have regularly demonstrated, monuments which last beyond their creators lose their original meaning, and gain new resonance in the lives of those who witness and inherit them. All things end; and in light of that, it’s important not to hang all your hopes on the future, and appreciate the moments of your life as you live them. Girls’ Last Tour is ultimately very sympathetic to Yuu’s worldview; she certainly needs Chi to survive, but as she trounces around this playful apocalypse, she is truly in her element. “If you keep living, something good will happen” might not seem like much, but it’s something. It’s enough.

Episode 10

As always, we enter in a state of confusion. This time, it appears like a flash photography camera is very laboriously taking shots of runes much like the robots’ “language”

Ah, the inconsistent light was actually caused by a train passing through, rushing past dimly lit lamps

The passing of the train facilitates some wonderful partitioned layouts, as well as unique uses of lighting

It appears this was actually some sort of heavy transport train, which helps maintain the sense that this city is altogether too big for its current inhabitants

They pass over some gorgeous underground facilities. I love the ambiguity of this city – even as members of the audience, the fact that it was built by multiple eras of human inhabitants over time means we can’t really pin it down as any specific kind of industrial or residential center. It is nearly as indecipherable to us as it is to the girls, drawing us closer to their perspective in this metal Seussian world

Heavy plunked guitar strings for their ride, which is unusual. The show tends to lean on either environmental noises or human choirs, which lessen the sense of an overt “score” drawing us out of the drama

Yuu is bored, and thus decides they should head towards the front of the train. Chi agrees. Their fundamental needs illustrated in miniature – Yuu is a natural inhabitant of this world, and seeks only novelty. Chi needs purpose and direction, but making sure Yuu’s adventures don’t get anyone killed provides plenty of that

That programming code keeps flashing as they pass broken down robots. I wonder if it represents Chi thinking of their friend, or if we’re about to meet another robot

Yuu realizes that because they’re in a moving train, they’re driving faster than usual. Chi is pretty sure that’s not how physics works, but she can’t actually explain it herself, so she instead shows off by demonstrating her knowledge of the earth’s rotation

Having made a robot friend, Yuu and Chi now speak of disabled robots in terms like “dead,” rather than “broken” or “deactivated”

“There’s no reason for us to hurry. We’re on a moving train!” This train makes the pointlessness of their journey more explicit than usual – they’re not actually going anywhere, but they still have to keep moving

Chi mentions that long ago, everyone carried clocks everywhere. That sounds like a lot of work to Yuu

Yuu asks if they’re getting off at the first stop, but Chi says they’ve got a lot farther to go. Yuu complains, and Chi responds that “our time is measured in our available food.” In truth, all of these stops are equally likely to provide food and shelter, but Chi fundamentally needs to feel like she’s making responsible decisions in pursuit of a specific goal

The square train provides limited opportunities for interesting visual compositions, so the show’s doing a lot of work with light and shadow instead

They traveled on the train for hours, but the city still remains. What a strange world this is

“Wavelength”

It’s interesting comparing noises now that they’re off the train. The squealing of the train felt both unfamiliar and potentially dangerous, like it could hurtle off the tracks at any time. In contrast, the familiar putter of their vehicle’s engine feels like an old friend, a sound evoking productive labor that you actively want to hear

Turns out Yuu actually kept the radio they took from that grave

Yuu attempting to describe hearing a song with no frame of reference for what a song actually is is pretty clever

They’re moving through an interesting facility at this point. It looks like they’re on the floor level of a giant automated factory – everything around them is far too large to be intended for human manipulation

I love this discussion, moving from music’s ability to inspire emotion to a general discussion on whether anything conveyed through waves can inspire happiness. It’s the kind of “reassessing our assumptions starting from first principles” thought experiment that Yuu excels at, but it’s both complex and scientific enough for Chi to also get inspired and theorize

Grainy piano spills from the radio as they reach the surface, as if from a music box. “You’re right. It’s sad music”

“I bet the red sunset has a sad rhythm to it.” God, what a powerful moment. There’s barely any narrative context for this moment of pure aesthetic tragedy, but it hits so hard. A radio stolen from a forgotten grave, now playing a mournful song through static as they watch the sun set through a thin gap in a dying city. Every element of this moment, from the music to the setting to the girls themselves, makes it feel like we’re watching the fading embers of a lost age

How can a show be so bleak and so warm at the same time. Girls’ Last Tour is a special thing

As segment three begins, the girls are rising on the edge of a giant crater, beneath a massive hole bored through the upper levels. It looks like a bomb managed to fall this far into the city before exploding

“There are a lot of weapons lying around here… I guess there was a fierce battle here or something”

“This big hole was made in a battle a long, long time ago… and then there was another battle in the town that was built around it.” Even the scale of the older civilization’s wars is far greater

The city is essentially a human version of a coral reef – new ecosystems built on the bones of the old

Yuu still regrets not eating that fish in the aquarium. Pretty sure she mentally catalogs her past journeys in terms of food eaten or not eaten

What the heck. There’s some kind of amorphous blob creature that looks like a ghost in one of these gun barrels

Oh my god it’s adorable. It’s like a weasel made out of pillsbury dough

The dough-weasel can apparently repeat things they say through the radio? We’re taking an unexpected turn here

“We can’t eat something that can say words.” Chi lays down the law, such as it is

Yuu is growing wise to this empathy racket

The dough blob likes them. Please let them keep it

And Done

Oh my god what the heck was that. This was a good episode of Girls’ Last Tour on the whole, but seriously, what the heck is that thing. I get the feeling the original manga’s more minimalist, expressionistic art style meant that this creature could very well theoretically be a cat or ferret or something – but in animation, it is straight-up a living tube of cookie dough that makes little wailing noises. It is perfect. What a beautiful creature.

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