Episode 4 – Touring After the Apocalypse

© 2025 Saito Sakae/KADOKAWA/“End Touring” Production Committee
After last week’s accident Sword Art Online In the radio song “jumpscare,” the brave duo Yoko and Airi arrive in Akihabara to search for the source of the signal in the hope of meeting another survivor of the mysterious apocalypse. Yoko’s sister’s voiceover gives us a history lesson, telling how Tokyo was quickly rebuilt after being destroyed in World War II, and the Akihabara area became famous for producing electronics that were sold around the world, hence the name “Electronics City.”
The Akihabara of this world is no longer filled with bustling crowds, nor is it permanently illuminated by glowing billboards. Instead, the city is a verdant garden, with streets lined with lush, vibrant green grass and populated by a diverse collection of exotic animals that have most likely escaped from a nearby zoo and have become native. Among shabby vending machines and abandoned cars, the girls discover kangaroos, monkeys, a worryingly large turtle, and even a random capybara.
Their sudden encounter with a hungry tiger is heartbreaking, but Yoko remains calm and discovers that it has already killed a tiger that just wanted to eat in peace. Airi prepared to take out the plasma bazooka she had hidden in her arm and blast the ferocious feline to heaven, but Yoko stopped her, thinking that even being eaten by such a beautiful creature wouldn’t be the worst way to die. Love is expressionless and seems to have other ideas.
Yoko understands that there’s no point in going to one of Akihabara’s famous maid cafes, so Yoko forces Airi to add some role play Acting in a cat maid costume (hereafter referred to only as “An Yan”), Yoko accompanies her as a cat butler, both with pointy ears and tails. They are both adorable and spend the rest of the episode in uniform! I wonder why the interior of the maid cafe is so perfectly preserved, including rows of original costumes? Tokyo doesn’t look like a city destroyed by a nuclear blast, just a place suddenly abandoned.
Radio Akihabara gives us only the vaguest hints of what happened, and it turns out, of course, that there wasn’t another survivor. The radio station is run by an autonomous artificial intelligence, programmed by its human predecessors to keep the music playing no matter what happens to humanity. There is something hauntingly sad and beautifully elegiac about this concept. Long after the human race is gone, this lonely computer continues to select the songs it sends, floating through the airwaves into eternity. At least you have taste and have fun Acne won’t dream about bunny girl seniorsThis time the ending theme is “Fukashigi no Karte”.
Yoko is visibly disappointed, especially when she realizes the AI is very simple and incapable of actually having a meaningful conversation. Still, she and Airi did what they could to upgrade the solar-powered DJ’s capabilities, hooking up Akihabara’s external speaker system so anyone passing by could hear the music without a radio. I love that about these two. They definitely don’t need to bother with this seemingly pointless task, but it feels right to them. As they set off singing along to their requested track, we see them riding through the beautiful, empty but vibrant city while flamingos swarm in the sky above them. As far as apocalyptic catastrophes go, this is pretty damn beautiful.
grade:
Post-apocalyptic tour Currently live broadcast
Crunchy roll.
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