With all civilization dead, only Chito and Yuuri remain. Together they decide to hop on their motorbike and wander aimlessly looking for their next meal and fuel. Despite a bleak existence, they remain each other’s light in this dead world.
Bleak and depressing, who knew this anime could also be so happy at times? If you are a glutton for depression, this series and these subsequent anime recommendations are for you.
Anime Like Girls’ Last Tour
For Fans of Apocalypse Children
Made in Abyss
The Abyss is an enormous cave system and the only unexplored place in the world. No one knows how deep it goes, but generations of bold adventurers have descended into it. In the town at the edge of The Abyss, an orphan named Rico dreams of raiding, as her mother did before her. One day while exploring the murky depths, she meets a boy, who turns out to be a robot, kicking off the start of her epic adventure.
As Made in Abyss is also so new, it is only natural that everyone compares these two shows. However, they are truely distinctly similar. Both shows have the childish sort of anime vibe to them, but they deal with things that are far beyond children’s anime. While Girls’ Last Tour is vaguely depressing, Made in Abyss goes for straight darkness.
School Live
Yuki Takeya is in love with school life. She loves it so much that she joined the School Living Club with three other girls, their supervising teacher, and the club dog Taroumaru. This club makes the most of living at school. However, Yuki’s blissful school life is all a delusion. The real purpose of the School Living Club is to prevent Yuki’s fragile reality from shattering. In reality, these girls are surviving the zombie apocalypse by barricading themselves within the school.
These are both anime series about young girls being put in impossible situations. Whether it be a world that has died or the zombie apocalypse, you don’t expect these girls to do well. However, they hold each other up and take great joy in small pleasures. Both dip into darker territories, but primarily the stakes are low and more slice of life in both of these series.
Kemono Friends
Japari Park is an enclosed piece of paradise where animalistic humanoids live in peace. One day, these humanoids, known as “Friends” encounter a new Friend that doesn’t understand what species she is. This sets in motion an adventure throughout Japari Park to help her discover it, but the Friends will discover many things on their own.
The crucial difference between Girls Last Tour and Kemono Friends is that in Kemono Friends you don’t really realize it is post apocalypse, but it really is. By using bright colors and happy characters, they keep things light through most of the show. However, despite differences in mood, these shows are about friendship and keeping each other uplifted.
For Fans of Aimless Travel
Kino’s Journey
Accompanied by her talking motorcycle, Hermes, Kino travels through her mysterious world, spending only three days and two nights in each town. The idea is that three days is enough to learn almost everything about a place. This is the story of her journey.
Kino’s Journey is extremely similar to Girls Last Tour. In it, you have a varying amount of girls on a motorbike that just kind of travel around. However, Kino’s world is very much alive and the story is about exploring that. She isn’t trying to survive like the girls in Girls’ Last Tour, but it has a similar sort of introspective and distinctly downer vibe to it as well.
Mushishi
In this world, there exist Mushi, spirits that often exist with no purpose. However, these Mushi can affect the physical world in countless forms from diseases to more pleasant phenomenon. Why do these Mushi exist? That is the question that Ginko the Mushi-shi, a researcher on the phenomenon, asks himself as he travels the land investigating Mushi-related incidents.
Mushishi differs from Girls’ Last Tour mostly because it has supernatural elements to it in the form of Mushi. The show also tells a variety of stories. Some of them are happy, and some of them are as distinctly bleak as Girls’ Last Tour. Mushishi also isn’t about friendship so much as it is about exploring the world and the mushi within.
Flip Flappers
Paprika and Cocona hold the keys to open the door where they can meet from their different times in a dimension called Pure Illusion. In this dimension, they search for the Shard of Mimi which is said to grant any wish. However, finding it will not be easy.
A key similarity between these two series is what they do with color. Girls’ Last Tour is distinctly muted in color to convey certain tones while Flip Flappers conveys tones through an almost blinding amount of colors. However, these shows are about friendship. Both travel around (albeit through different dimensions in Flip Flappers) and generally follow a storyline that focuses on their friendship and not so much anything else.
For Fans of Worlds That Have Ended
Planetarian
After the Space Colonization Program, Earth has been abandoned and humanity is near extinction. A deadly rain permanently falls on Earth and the only people alive, known as “Junkers”, continuously scavenge the ruins. One Junker sneaks alone into a dangerous part of Sarcophagus City where he meets Yumeni, a robot companion. She mistakes him for a customer in her planetarium and tries to show him the stars, but the projector is broken. Pitying her, he tries to fix it.
These are both stories about a world that has ended. Humanity is done and now the Earth is just waiting for the last bits to die. You follow these last bits in both series as they explore a world that is completely theirs to do with as they please. Life is hard in both series, and they each have an innate sense of discovery about them that make an enticing post-apocalypse series.
Humanity has Declined
After constantly declining birth rates, human civilization is almost extinct. The few humans left now coexist with fairies who have extremely advanced technology and very little regard for humans safety. The story follows a mediator between humans and fairies that tries to make it so both races can live peacefully.
While these series have the same setting and general set up, they handle things very differently. There’s more supernatural in Humanity Has Declined, for one, but it is also bright and relatively happy as an anime series. However, you get those tinges of sadness through the setting and other aspects. Oppositely, Girls’ Last Tour uses the characters to brighten things up and the setting and color palate to just kill your soul.
Seraph of the End
After a mysterious virus killed every human over 13 years old, the vampires rose up with a promise to protect the survivors. The only thing they asked in return is donations of blood. For Yuuichirou and Mikaela, they have grown tired of being livestock and pose a daring escape plan. It ultimately fails with only Yuuichirou left alive. However, after joining up with a mercenary company, he swears vengeance on the vampires, no matter the cost.
Seraph of the End is, obviously, a more action-heavy series with a lot of fights and shounen elements. However, it is also a bleak show about humanity’s impending death and a world that is very much dead. On top of that, friendship plays a huge part throughout the show, just as much as it does in Girls’ Last Tour.
If you have any more anime suggestions like Girls’ Last Tour, then leave them in the comments section below.
