Review of She, The Ultimate Weapon
Saishuu Heiki Kanojo, abbreviated to SaiKano is a tragic tale of love in a world on the brink of collapse. An innocent and full of life young girl named Chise just wants to live a normal life and experience true love with her boyfriend Shuuji but unfortunately for them, happiness was never on the menu in this universe. Shuuji finds out the truth about the body of his beloved and the story begins. So if it wasn't obvious already, SaiKano is a sad and dark series that barely shows any glimpses of happiness, far from your typical romance anime. The show begins with a fantastic openerepisode that immediately sets the tone and lets the viewer know what they signed up for.
However, I found the series to not always hold the quality parts of the tragic plotline, especially around the middle. Some episodes are just fully focused on trashy behavior and dialogue from characters, both main and support cast. Another issue I had is that the series has a lot of tragic events throughout but for most them I didn't really couldn't feel for because most of the side cast didn't receive enough screen time and or development.
And by far my biggest gripe with the series is the horniness. My god, the amount of lewd scenes and dialogue made it feel like the thing was written by a boy in puberty just discovering intercourse for the first time. And to wrap up my grievances, Shuuji's voice actor is a seemingly random dude with no other credited roles and it shows. His performance for the most part was just bad.
The best parts about the series to me was the emotional struggle of the characters wanting to continue living their normal lives and hoping for the best in a very obviously horrible situation. Chise in particular goes through so much turmoil you can't help but get your emotions all riled up.
The storytelling makes decent use of the show, don't tell style too. We don't get to see a lot of the conflict parts but everything is still somehow presented in a way that at least personally I wasn't bothered by the lack of information but rather, found myself actually more interested in everything specifically because we were lacking the information. Although worth mentioning the 2 episode OVA series is a fantastic supplementary work to the series which opens your eyes even more after the series. I highly recommend those after you are finished with the show.
And finally I have point out the OST. It can be a hit or miss depending on the person but I personally loved all the pieces using electric guitars. They significantly boosted the emotions going on in many scenes to a new level.
SaiKano overall worked for me. As I mentioned I definitely had some issues with it but found myself invested regardless. It's like one of those horrible accidents you just can't look away from.