James Nicoll Reviews

2023’s Touring After the Apocalypse, Volume Five is the fifth tankōbon in Sakae Saito’s post-apocalyptic iyashikei manga. Touring has been serialized in in ASCII Media Works’ seinen manga magazine Dengeki Maoh since September 2020. Amanda Haley’s English translation was published in late 2024.

Mount Asama is part of a spectacular volcano complex. Post-apocalyptic tourists¹ Youko and Airi could hardly pass up the opportunity to see it in person. As Asama is an active volcano, and as the route the pair chose passes through a pocket of toxic volcanic gas, Mount Asama might be their final destination.

Luckily for Youko, cyborg/android Airi is either immune to poison gas or highly resistant. Airi therefore can make a heroic effort to drag Youko out of the lethal region before Youko dies. Less luckily for Youko, it’s not at all clear that Airi is strong enough to drag Youko far and fast enough to save her.

Enter Eight. More importantly, enter Eight’s vehicle. The android is able to convey the pair to safety in time.

Eight’s story is, as is so often true of the robots and androids seen so far, rather melancholy. Five years ago, Eight woke in Kosatsu. He found the tourist resort in ruins. His directives compelled him to restore the resort for the enjoyment of visiting humans. Youko is the first living human that he has seen.

Eight² and Airi are similar but also very different in some ways. The most important difference is that Airi can heal. Eight is dependent on a large, immobile support and repair complex. Airi therefore can tour Japan with Youko. Eight is effectively trapped in Kosatsu.

This presents a problem. Eight does not want his new friends to leave. Youko and Airi not only want to continue touring, but it is in their best interest to resume their wandering as soon as possible. Mount Asama is, after all, an active volcano.

~oOo~

Ah, Chekov’s Volcano. SFF has enough of those that I could easily put together a review about Five Books With Active Volcanoes You Are Better Off Not Living Next To. What would be tricky is Five Books With Active Volcanoes That Are Safe to Live Next To³.

A curious detail about which the manga has been very consistent concerns robots/androids. For some reason, they cannot be completely powered down and then restarted. If they are running off an internal battery and that battery hits zero, that’s it for them. Among other things, this means the girls cannot turn Eight off until they reach another repair facility.

In general, this post-apocalyptic world isn’t too bad for Youku (at least until she has her first really debilitating injury), but it sucks for the machine folk. Yes, there are some impressive facilities that are still in working order. How long can that last, though? The general trend is for stuff to break.

This was an entertaining volume, full of lavish scenery porn and with a dilemma with no easy solutions. The volume does have one small… flaw isn’t the right word. Disappointing element. Once again, I’ve read a series new to me so fast that I’ve caught up with the English translation. Publish faster, Yen!

Touring After the Apocalypse, Volume Five is available here (Yen Press), here (Barnes & Noble), here (Bookshop US), here (Bookshop UK), here (Chapters-Indigo), and here (Words Worth Books).

1: USA delenda as all get-out. Probably.

2: Eight has other bodies. This made me wonder for a second if Youko’s hallucinations reflect that she’s imbued with the memories of a pre-war person. However, it’s clear she is not a robot or android so if that is what’s going on with Youko, she is a clone or something along those lines. Which, if true, could mean there are other Youkos out there.

3: Yes, my great-parents strolled across Kīlauea Caldera’s semi-solidified lava, but that was just for a lark. They lived over on Maui, near Haleakalā, which is dormant.

Probably.