When I did the first installment of this exercise a few weeks back, I was half-jokingly making a reference to the classic TV series The X-Files with the title. After Touring After the Apocalypse episode 11, though, I have to take the reference more seriously. One of the key underlying implications of The X-Files were that aliens were afoot behind the scenes, and as of episode 11, that’s now true for Touring as well. Or at least apparently it is; you never can be too sure what’s really going on with this series. And if it is genuine, it’s entirely possible that the aliens have nothing actually to do with any of the other weirdness in the series.
Compared to earlier episodes, 8-9 did not have a lot of weird stuff in background shots, although there was no shortage of weirdness. The whole business at the race track carried the strongest metaphysical vibes yet but not a lot of significant little details.
Episode 10
The journey into the large underground space revealed on the second instance of bodies being found. (You have to look closely in the following screen shot from the 9:35 mark, as some of the suggested bodies are deep in the shadows.)
Also in episode 10, there is, of course, the boulder-splitting scene at the 14:18 mark:
Was that actually done by the mythical figure Benkei, which Yoko imagined she saw? Speculation I’ve seen elsewhere is that this was a satellite weapon activating to protect Yoko and Airi, and that was my initial interpretation, too. If true, that means they’re being watched closely by someone.
But by far the most intriguing shot in episode 10 comes during the closer. This looks suitably ominous, perhaps a result of whatever damaged the moon?
Episode 11
The first evidence that the ultrasonic signal Airi is hearing might be from a non-human source comes at the 9:54 mark, right before the mid-episode break. That swirl in the sky certainly isn’t normal:
The more obvious swirl, followed by the black teleportation sphere, follows at the 12:27 mark:
When Airi gets zapped into space, she briefly sees a satellite, but it’s also wrecked:
The alien encounter scene which follows felt like a clear homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey‘s famous final sequence, with perhaps some influence from the interstellar transport scene in Contact. The revelation which Airi gets from that is interesting: that the aliens last visited roughly 1,500 years ago. Since the aliens said they helped construct the Yoshimi Hundred Caves, which were believed to have been made during the 6th and 7th centuries, that means the current time of the series probably isn’t more than, at most, a few decades past the apocalypse. The original, long-debunked theory about the cave’s origins was that they were a city of little people called Koropokkuru, and they were associated with mythical beings by locals before that, so connecting them to aliens is a sly extension of local superstition.
But possibly the most interesting comment in all of this is this report from Airi:
That and the following comment about how she and Yoko “were one possibility for the future” both suggest that human civilization hasn’t completely ended, despite most other signs to the contrary.
Another fairly obvious movie reference is later pointed out by Yoko in her reference to Close Encounter of the Third Kind to describe the final encounter with the alien. (Curious that she knows that movie.) And of course the aliens zig-zag when they depart because that’s what aliens do:
On other fronts, what are those plumes of smoke off to the right in this shot from the 18:05 mark? Volcanic activity off the coast, maybe?
For the latest in oversize animal oddities, appearing at the 21:08 mark is what would be called a “dire boar” in Dungeons & Dragons:
The anime series seems to be adapting the source manga at a steady pace of three episode per volume, which means that one more should bring the adaptation to the end of manga volume 4. That seems like the ideal break point for the series, so likely episode 12 will be the last. What mysteries or encounters will the season end on?
USA Anime 