Trivia / Girls' Last Tour

• Acclaimed Flop:
  • The anime performed below-average in terms of sales and was a financial failure; 2,497 disc copies were sold during the first volume, with 2,387 more sold during the second. To be considered for another season, however, an anime normally has to hit an average of 4,000 sales per volume, which this show didn't quite reach. However, it received universal acclaim from viewers and critics, who cite elements such as its endearing main characters and unique setting, tone, style, and message. It won accolades such as the title of "Best Slice-Of-Life" during the 2018 Crunchyroll Anime Awards, and is regarded by many as a Cult Classic, alongside being frequently ranked as one of the best anime and manga from the 2010s, and even of all time. Ultimately, Tkmiz would eventually get his second chance at anime when his next work was approached to be animated.
  • The manga itself won the award for "Best Comic" during the 50th Annual Seiun Awards in 2019. Its first two volumes were also included in the American Library Association's Great Graphic Novels for Teens in 2018.
• Bonus Material: The anime aired alongside a side-story OVA series called Girls' Weekend Class (Shoujo Shuumatsu Jugyou). It has 12 episodes — each lasting for about a minute and a half — depicting the girls attending a school, with different lectures and events occurring based on each of the mainline anime's corresponding episode. The style is different as well, with Super-Deformed visuals (Courtesy of Studio Puyukai of Isekai Quartet fame) and an even more laid-back and lighthearted tone.
• The Cameo: In Shimeji Simulation, Tsukumizu's following manga, Chito, Yuuri, and Nuko occasionally appear as background characters, only the girls are now wearing casual clothes and Nuko resembles an actual cat. The manga deliberately refers to them as unnamed "neighbors." This is without mentioning that it is a Stealth Sequel to Girls' Last Tour, and we do see the real Chito and Yuuri in the manga's penultimate chapter, as the neighbors aren't actually them.
• Creator's Favorite Episode:
  • In an interview published inside the anime's official Blu-Ray booklet, Inori Minase (Chito's voice actress) stated that her favorite scene in the series was when the main duo got drunk and danced together under the moonlight in Episode 8, explaining how adorable it was to see the normally-serious Chito act uncharacteristically bubbly and playful towards Yuuri.
  • For Yurika Kubo (Yuuri's voice actress), the scene that impacted her most was in the chapter "Destruction" in Episode 11, where Yuuri fires a giant laser cannon into an empty cityscape and then laughs about it. She expressed her concern for her character's behavior and well-being, citing this moment as an example of how her recklessness could easily land her at death's door.
    Yurika Kubo: The more I played Yuuri's role, the more I worried about her, sometimes even getting a little scared for her. [...] When I watched the show, there were plenty of scenes where I thought, "Man, I'm so glad she has Chi with her."
  • Tsukumizu gave an interview during the manga's run, translated into English and published on March 2018. When asked if there were any scenes or chapters they liked in particular, they responded with the "The Sound of Rain" from Chapter 13 of the second volume.
• Inspiration for the Work: Tsukumizu has cited a few influences for different aspects of the manga. For instance, they got the idea for the Kettenkrad from Steven Spielberg's 1998 war film Saving Private Ryan, stating that it was a perfect vehicle for Chito and Yuuri to travel in. They also drew inspiration from another post-apocalyptic sci-fi manga Blame! for its world-building and visual aesthetics.
• Pilot: The prototype for the manga was the "Bath" segment from Chapter 3 of the series' first novel, which Tsukumizu created while attending university. When a publishing company offered to serialize it, however, Girls' Last Tour was expanded into the series it is today.
• Production Posse: Inori Minase voices one of the two main leads opposite to their dizz counterpart in an anime adaptation of an early 2010s Moe manga released three years after their original source material animated by White Fox as one of their unusual shows from a script written from Kazuyuki Fudeyasu. Sounds familiar?
• Self-Adaptation: A partial example. While the anime itself is an adaptation by White Fox, Tsukumizu personally hand-drew and animated the ending credits sequence, including a few scenes from the original manga.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The anime covers all but the last handful of chapters of the original story, resulting in an ending less conclusive than the manga's; to make matters worse, the aforementioned manga wasn't even finished yet. Tsukumizu has expressed interest in adapting the rest of their work into anime form, but the show's insufficient disc sales and overall financial success (See Acclaimed Flop above) mean that its chances for a second season are pretty slim. On his Twitter, Tkmiz would later state he still had interest as late as June 2023, but the studios are uninterested and have no plans for it. On the contrary, Tkmiz's other manga was approached to be animated in the meantime.
  • Around the time the original manga ended, Tkimz had proposed an Alternate Universe take titled Hunter Gatherer Girls as his next manga. Chito and Yuuri would have explored a world where the roles of life and technology were swapped, and followed them exploring the invention of humanity's creations. The pitch was rejected by his editors, and in its place, Shimeji Simulation was created at Comic Cune.
• Write What You Know: Downplayed. In Tsukumizu's interview from 2018, they claimed that Chito and Yuuri don't so much represent their self or past experiences, but rather pose a lot of the same questions the author ponders about life, morality, and philosophy. Played more straight with Kanazawa and Ishii, as they actively reflect Tsukumizu's personal worries about the future and reaching their goals (Kanazawa wanting to complete his map of the city and Ishii trying to build an aircraft).
  Tsukumizu: [Chito and Yuuri are] not the light and dark inside me, but I get them to do the questioning in my place. With the guest characters Kanazawa and Ishii, there are areas of overlap with me.

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