REVIEW: ‘Touring After the Apocalypse’ Volume 1

One of manga and anime’s most underrated subgenres is the road trip. The idea of characters’ entire stories being put on a trip and readers following their exploits and growth along the way is simple. Still, it offers a big reward for showcasing interpersonal relationships. While this concept works with just your regular slice-of-life road trip, it’s better when you blend it with another genre. For ZOM 100 Bucketlist of the Dead, it’s horror, and for Touring After The Apocalypse, it’s science fiction.

Published and localized in English by Yen Press, Touring After The Apocalypse is written, illustrated, and created by mangaka Sakae Saito. The Yen Press Edition of the manga is translated by Amanda Haley and features touch-up art by Phil Christie. Set after, well, the apocalypse, this manga series offers a surprisingly upbeat tone for exploring the end of the world. All alone after the end of days, two girls, Youko and Aki, jump on a motorbike and travel through the empty ruins of Japan. Raised in a bunker, Youko is trying to grasp the adventure and beauty that existed before the fall of humanity. Guided by her sister’s old social media account, Youko tries to follow in her sister’s footsteps and reclaim the world as it was with Aki by her side.

Touring After The Apocalypse Volume 1 is a fantastic start to a great series. It’s built on sisterly love and friendship. It captures traveling brightly and, more importantly, the beauty you can find even at the end of all things. By looking at the fall of humanity, it’d be easy to turn this road trip into something sad. But, instead, there is a balance between yearning for the past you can never experience and making new memories over the ruins of others. Additionally, when you add that Youko is essentially making this pilgrimage to be closer to her sister, each stop has an emotional impact.

But that’s not it for Touring After The Apocalypse Volume 1. In the last few chapters, Saito pulls out all of the stops and shoots their narrative directly into sci-fi territory with a look into the bunker and revealing how tech will come into play in the story. Specifically, robots, or, to be more specific, androids. That said, the bulk of this first volume is more concerned with setting the tone of the series and developing the goal that Youko has for this road trip than diving deep into the world’s technology. There are glimpses of the tech, its name, and how it comes into play with the world, but only on the surface. This leaves the door open for deeper exploration as the series continues but outlines what the world is and contains perfectly for a debut volume. Add in the stunning landscape art, and everything works.

Touring After The Apocalypse Volume 1 is a stellar new series from Yen Press that brings wholesome relationships and a love of sci-fi. This series is sure to become one of the best out there as it develops over time, and for now, it’s one of the best debut volumes I’ve read in a long time.

Touring After The Apocalypse Volume 1 is available now wherever books are sold, both physically and digitally.