I read through the first 20-30 chapters of this manga on complete autopilot, because that's what I thought the manga wanted me to do.
I was supremely bored.
It wasn't until I started treating it differently to other SoL manga that I really became invested. Instead of passively reading and expecting it to entertain me, I started paying attention to the scenery and masterful art, and I started appreciating the manga more for what it actually was - A Journey.
One thing that really stood out to me above everything else was the juxtaposition between the genre’s. I can’t imagine anyone expected moe, epsisodic SoL to work well in a post-apocalyptic setting, but the writer and artist absolutely harness these elements so well that it emphasises both: The harsh, unforgiving setting highlights how young, inexperienced and innocent our main characters, and on the flips side, our cutsey, moe characters emphasise the dreadful nature of the post-apocalyptic world, despite how much they try to conceal it.
This manga has probably one of my favourite endings I’ve ever seen, it’s absolutely perfect and an incredible bitter-sweet ending to the manga, suiting the aforementioned clashing genre’s. It also serves as a perfect conclusion to the manga’s more philosophical commentary on the meaning of life, summarizing their conclusion of it all perfectly.
I’ll just leave you with a quote that actually made me bawl my eyes out for the only time so far reading a manga:
“Living was the best, wasn’t it?”
<3
