This one might be hard for me to write because I don't really have much to say about it. Without giving away spoilers, Sadako at the End of the World is about two young sisters, Ai and Hii, living in a post-apocalyptic world who stumble upon Sadako's tape, watch it, and summon her. Being young and not knowing the rumor that is way before their time, they ask Sadako to accompany them as they look for more people to meet. Each person they find has their own story and quirks and they enjoy simple fun things like performing a home-made stage play with the help of a projector or getting a haircut.
To a more optimistic person or someone who is used to the slice of life genre this might sound like a story that has the potential to become cutesy and add a silver-lining to everything with Sadako changing as a person but they would only be half-right. There is fun for all of the characters to have without mulling over post-apocalyptic doom & gloom but all of that feels ruined by Sadako... well... doing what Sadako does.

When I finished reading it I felt confused. I wondered what the point was. I'm not proud to admit I am, compared to the average Tohno-chan user, a newfag so I don't know the post-apocalyptic genre very well but something I remember from, and something that this manga has in common with, both Kemono Friends and Girls' Last Tour is that no matter how bad things are there is always some kind of silver lining. There is always something to strive for, something to enjoy, something to fight for. I could also remember other post-apocalyptic media which involves people just trying to survive and crying and shouting at each other to pretend they have good writing. Then I look back at Sadako at the End of the World and I realize that it has none of the drama that characterizes the latter and seems to waste the former. After that I'm left wondering what the "point" of the story was. Was it to teach me some kind of lesson? Was it to be cute and fun? Was it to paint a positive picture of death? Or was it just to have Sadako do Sadako things? Because when you have people open up and talk about and do things that are important to them only to be killed by the end of the chapter it all just feels wasted and lacking in any kind of smart message that it wants to tell. Any narrative decisions made in that chapter feel wasted by the end of that same chapter. A focused and goofy silly fun story is fine but at the same time it also feels like the characters and stories get too personal for me to truly believe that it meant nothing in the end, even if they were deleted as if they were nothing. It’s like building a house out of Lincoln Logs only to kick it down right after you’re done without any attempts to preserve what you made. It’s just wasteful. All this in mind once again leads me back to square one where I ask myself: "What was the point?" The only logical conclusion I can think of, though I don't discount that there could be others that I didn’t think of, was that it was just to have Sadako do Sadako things which seems to line up with the afterword where the artist explains how much of a Sadako fan they are.

In the end, it’s something I might recommend if you’re a Sadako fan or if you just like the post-apocalyptic genre, perhaps even more so if you like that genre with optimism woven into it’s story. Perhaps you might enjoy it if you like thinking about what you finished reading and you’ll probably figure out what I didn’t. Otherwise I might reluctantly suggest skipping it, that reluctance coming from my assumption that this story likely has some kind of point to it that I’m unfortunately missing.

Post edited on 21st Feb 2021, 2:43am