Episode 12 was clearly the series’ final episode, so it’s time for one last look at all of the strangeness and a general look back on the series as a whole.
While there’s more natural splendor to experience here, the real highlight of the episode is something that fans have been longing for almost since the beginning: more of a look at the shelter Yoko and Airi came from. It’s really only been seen in one previous episode, and then only briefly, so a more prolonged reflection on it here is quite welcome. But those looks also raise more questions than the clues they provide.
Clearly their shelter was built as far underground as the facility in episode 8, and from the various shots it’s not hard to understand why Yoko and Airi said that facility looked similar to theirs; hence it’s safe to assume that the same organization was responsible for both. Its access elevator is also located in an innocuous but real place: the Yamabiko Ryokan in Kurokawa:
If this looks like a school building, that’s because it was originally; in fact, all of the former classrooms are guest rooms. Most interestingly, the design of the shelter beyond the room Yoko and Airi sleep and attend classes in is clearly modeled off of the inn’s upper floor, with the electronic window screens displaying the view that would be visible from that floor:
Their room is designed like one of the classrooms, too. See the school lockers along the back wall in this shot from 8:58?
The rest of the episode strongly suggests that the the “shelter” was probably more a training facility for Yoko, so the fact that both the room where they take classes and the rest of the deep shelter being modeled (indirectly) after a school room may have been more than just an aesthetic choice by whomever built it.
Yoko and Airi being trained to grow (curiously big!) food and slaughter animals (in a VR session) as practical skills could genuinely just be teaching them survival skills in the advent that the shelter’s automated facilities eventually fail, but this scenario feels less about that and more about them being prepared to set out and explore. Could be as simple as “Big Sis” just wanting them to get to experience the real world, but all of this – even the timing of them being let out – smacks of carefully-orchestrated ulterior motives. I’m liking more and more the theory that Yoko is a clone being used to investigate the post-disaster world.
The most significant scene in the episode, though, is this one at the 15:10 mark. This view, and the unknown person whose thoughts we’re hearing, strongly suggests that the avatar of Big Sis had a real person behind it, perhaps a much, much older version of “big Sis”?
All of this extensive shelter facility also begs pondering why only one human and one android are physically present in it. That and Yoko not being able to remember a time she wasn’t there further support that all of this is a grand experiment rather than a “last survivor” ploy. There are also multiple references to “we” and “they” concerning the determinations about Yoko being allowed to go out, so this person probably isn’t the only one.
Does this really bring us closer to the series’ grand truths, though? In the end, these mysteries are more a framing device for all of the pretty scenery and neat little phenomena like the Brocken specter (which is a rare but real thing) than the driving impetus of the story. The series is, in the end, exactly what it appeared to be at the beginning: a post-apocalyptic travelogue. And honestly, that’s totally fine.
Will we see more of this series? I sure hope so. These twelve episodes adapt only the first four tankoubon of the source manga (at an apparently-steady pace of three episodes per volume) and eight total have been published to date, so there’s enough material for another full cour. In another season does eventually get announced, it will instantly be one of my highest-priority titles in whatever season it debuts. This one delivered much more than expected, and so stands among the season’s best.
Overall Series Rating: A-
USA Anime 