Girls' Last Tour has been on my list of shows to watch for quite a while now, but I never got around to it. I've never had much interest in manga, so reading it had never even crossed my mind, but by some mirracle my local book store had all six volumes sitting on a shelf and I sort f bought them on impulse.
Actually, I would have missed them completely if it two teenage boys seeing it and dismissivly proclaming to everyone in the store that it looked like crap. Once they had moved on to another section I swooped in and grabbed the first two volumes.
The first one is a quick read. The initial stories are largely disconnected and follow the sort of day to day life of two girls in a world ruined by a long past war. As the book goes on, however, a more cohesive throughline starts to form. After finishing the first volume I imediatley went out to buy the other four I was missing.
What ultimately grabbed me was surprisingly the world building. There seems to be so much here and I'm glad I went into it as blindly as I did. Stories about war have never really done much for me. I was mainly interested in seeing a slice of life scenario, which I'd heard was pretty wholesome, I what is usually a rather depressing setting. And it works well. The world feels well realised and the lighthearted story doesn't clash with it at all.
Another standout for me is the art style. The illustrations are well done and clear, but not as sharp as I've seen in other manga, and I love it. The backgrounds specivically often look more like sketches than finished illustrations, and it adds a certain vibe to the book that fits both the story and the setting really well. And just because I describe them as sketches does not mean that less effort has gone into the art.
I highly recommend checking Girls' Last Tour out. As far as I've heard, the show is good too, but I can't speak from experience there. The manga, however, is fantastic.