“THE THREE OF US WERE THE ONLY SURVIVORS…
WE EACH STARTED ALONE ON THIS LONG JOURNEY THROUGH DEVASTATED LANDS, A JOURNEY FULL OF DISASTER AND SADNESS…”
That quote should feel heavy, like a closing thought after everything we’ve been through. Instead, it just floats there, vague and hollow. Not because the words are bad, but because the story never really earns the weight it’s trying to carry by the end.
Volume 10 doesn’t crash or implode, it just drifts. After everything, being buried alive, losing friends, losing sanity, crawling through ash and fear and silence, you’d think there would be some kind of final echo. But the impact isn’t there. It’s quiet, not in a haunting or thoughtful way, just quiet in the way a story gets when it runs out of direction.
The raw survival horror that made the early volumes so gripping is long gone, replaced by scattered reflections and moments that feel like they should matter, but don’t. There’s a lot of walking, a lot of staring, and not much else. No catharsis, no clear shift. It’s not that I needed a twist or a big reveal, I just needed something to hold onto. Some kind of emotional thread to tie it all together.
By now, the best of the series feels like it’s in the rearview. Volume 6 was the summit, everything since has been the slow walk down, and this final volume doesn’t bring us to any real conclusion. Just a vague sense of having reached the edge of the story and being told to stop.
It’s not offensive, it’s not a disaster. It’s just… empty. And after ten volumes of watching these characters struggle and suffer and survive, that feels like a bigger letdown than anything else.