Saishuu Heiki Kanojyo

I wanted so much to like Saikano. Cute girl in seifuku with the terrible burden of ‘saving’ the world, involved a seemingly doomed relationship with her classmate, set in a bleak and hopeless world. These, I thought, were promising elements to set the stage for a good tragic story. However, I thought the true tragedy was their failure to fully develop and capitalize on the premise of the story, leaving me feeling empty when the final credits rolled up.

Saikano have several major themes, of which most of it has a tragic backbone to it and the biggest problem with Saikano is the development of these themes. The series was painfully, painfully slow because the characters kept going round and round the same set of problems. There is no sense of progression for most part of the anime. Some more noteworthy revelations and development occur in the last few episodes but it’s really too late, too little. There is also a serious lack of credibility of the world they have created. Granted, this is an anime, we should take the setting with a large pinch of salt. But the world they created was extremely unconvincing for me. Some tolerable credibility is important here, as many of the tragic events that occur during the story seemed dumb because they happened in unbelievable circumstances. Instead of lamenting on their suffering, there were times I tend to think how stupid all this is. A word of caution here for action buffs. Although Saikano is about a girl being a destructive weapon in a desperate war, don’t expect Gundam style nor Full Metal Panic! style combat. The focus of the anime is on love and suffering. Love between the various characters and how they suffer for it during the war. Combat scenes are only token scenes to further their theme of suffering and not there so that they can get a classification for ‘action’ in series genre. Do not watch this for action.

Despite the weakened storytelling and plot, I did take to some of the characters. The development of the major characters was pretty properly done though slow. I liked Chise (Miss Saishuu Heiki Kanojo herself) despite her incessant crying. Her love with Shuuji (Miss Saishuu Heiki Kanoko’s useless boyfriend) is multi-dimensional and quite engaging despite again the slow pace. Their struggles were more credible as opposed to other parts of the story and thus allowed me to be able to invest some emotions to share their struggle. The other supporting characters all had a certain depth and certainly added texture to the story. If only they have spent less time giving us overdoses of some themes and more on these characters and their interactions, Saikano would have be more watchable.

As for the technicalities of the anime, I did like the art although the ‘blush’ effect (as some other put it) took me a while to get use to. Some may not get use to their noses from the side either. The animation is ok but not outstanding as there were some scenes where fluidity of movement was severely absent. However I do must commend GONZO for having flawlessly integrated CG with traditional anime as I was unable to differentiate the two in Saikano. (Unlike Full metal panic! where it was more obvious)

If one is able to stomach the painfully slow pace, there may still some gems in Saikano to be discovered. After all, there seemed to be many who enjoyed Saikano and it was for the rave reviews that I watched it. However, personally I didn’t enjoy it and would only recommend it to the very patient and emotionally imaginative.