Review of She, The Ultimate Weapon

Saikano is extremely crude: the animation quality ranges from decent to subpar, character animations are dangerously close to looking like rag dolls, and many of the critical story elements are merely glossed over or completely unexplained. Only a few voice actors are worth their salt: Orikasa Fumiko's Chise and Miki Shinichirou's Tetsu are the ones pushing their own arcs and at the very least pull their own weight. Shuji, on the other hand, oh boy. Ishimoda Shirou is the voice behind Shuji, and his voice acting was, without a doubt, the worst I'd ever heard from anime. Shuji's angry tone, sad tone, happy tone, tired tone, gasping-for-breathtone, etc. sound exactly the same: as I will point out later on, understanding the characters' emotional status and reactions is absolutely critical to understanding the entire narrative of this show. Since Ishimoda's acting cannot properly convey Shuji's actions or emotions, it thus hinders the viewers from properly comprehending Shuji as a character! Compared to Ishimoda, Tommy Wiseau from The Room (2003) is a master-class actor. Even though I only watched this anime with subs, this is one of the few anime I could recommend watching in dubs just because of how frustratingly painful listening to Shuji's voice was.

Do not expect any amazing explosion, action, or transformation scenes, because it's clear from the very first episode that Saikano lacks the budget to properly animate even one of those. However, if one is aware of the experience they're going into and willing to exercise a substantial amount of suspension of disbelief, then Saikano offers an unforgivably brutal and raw observation on how people act in the worst of situations, how they can or can't cope when the world crumbles around them, and at that point, what choices will matter for them.

Saikano is a sekai-kei (セカイ系 / 世界系) show, in the veins of Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995) or Bokurano (2007): the fate of the world initially or eventually rides not only on the combat prowess of the protagonists, but more importantly their mental fortitude (or rather, their lack thereof), their choices, and even their psyche, behavioral patterns, and world-views. Saikano explores a dying, war-torn world's inhabitants through the lenses of Chise and Shuji respectively, and their budding, struggling romance. The former is forcibly turned into a living cyborg capable of instantaneously vaporizing entire cities, while the latter copes with having said person as a girlfriend: both experience fear, guilt, self-doubt, constantly question the meaning of their existence, their relationship, the fate of the world, and, in the end, if any of this is actually worth it.

Precisely because Saikano is a sekai-kei show, it chooses to totally ignore several important plot points or otherwise plausible questions regarding the story, including some other subliminal ones. Why was Chise chosen by the Japanese military to become their ultimate weapon, when literally any other person would likely have been more suitable? Why do neither Chise or Shuji initially complain to the military about this fact, and why does Chise not threaten the military to do whatever the hell she wants now that she's stronger than the entire Japanese military itself at the first chance she gets? Who are the so-called enemies, and why are they attacking Japan, or any other country for that matter? Why is the world so war-torn, and what is the reason for said wars? Why have the other countries not unleashed a massive nuclear barrage on Japan to wipe out everyone except Chise, to at least make the homeland invasion easier?
Sekai-kei shows can and often will ignore such 'outside' factors to zone in on what they consider more noteworthy: the main characters. The romance and drama between Chise and Shuji, as well as between all of the side characters are the main watching point of Saikano: if the lack of proper explanations bothers you, then this show is not for you. As I said, this is where suspension of disbelief must kick in for the viewing experience to be enjoyable.

So, if the military or the details of world-ending catastrophes aren't important, then were the romance and drama aspects executed well? Some of it yes, mostly no.

Chise by herself is a crybaby. She constantly cries because of the position she's in: she's becoming more mechanical by the minute and losing her grip on her humanity and emotions, and kills hundreds of people on a daily basis. Her emotional struggle is understandable (if you ignore the fact that she could just bomb the military and just "Nope" out of this whole disaster), but the way it's portrayed within the show does not allow for the viewers to delve into her psychological state. The show constantly switching between ordinary school life between Chise and Shuji, and her life as a kill switch for the military has such a jarring tonal shift that it's sometimes difficult to follow either of their emotional struggles.

Shuji is the more prominent issue. Shuji's constant interpersonal problems do not help in making him look like a likable or even relatable character, and this issue is only exacerbated thanks to the horrendous voice acting. Whereas Chise's attempts at coping are crying out of guilt, or either crying out to Shuji for help, Shuji will struggle to be faithful to his girlfriend (out of fear, guilt, and exhaustion), unintentionally misunderstand or mistreat Chise's attempts to be a proper girlfriend and hurt her physically or emotionally in the process, or attempt to do something for Chise and proceed to fail miserably.

I make it sound like they're both horrible people and characters, and that statement holds true to a certain extent. Even so, the crudeness of both the animation and the story managed to formulate a synergy that had me invested in the story and its characters. Saikano begins to truly shine quite a few episodes in, when it's established that even the school life is no longer safe, as war encroaches on the main cast's lives. People die, war continues, and the survivors must live on: as everyone's lives go on their separate ways, the choices that Chise and Shuji pick--frequently shifting from trying to somehow accept her both as a weapon and as a normal high school girl, to denying her weapon side so she can maintain her human side--can seem, from a narrative perspective, to be either self-defeating or an attempt at showing the multi-faceted qualities of human nature. This is definitely what I thought as the story progressed: some of their choices were decidedly ill-advised, and yet some others, despite how selfish or cowardly they may have been, were strangely believable.

What makes their choices interesting is why Chise fights, and the mental struggle Chise and Shuji go through each time she does so. She fights to 'protect her country', and so she can get regular maintenance at the military, but this is honestly only a façade: Chise fights to protect her hometown, to make sure that Shuji always has a home and family to return to, and because fighting is the only way for her body to not succumb to her mechanical side. Chise is endlessly tormented by her own guilt, and Shuji comforts her with both legitimate reasons ("It's the military's fault!" / "You did it to protect us!") and for purely self-serving reasons ("What's wrong if a massive murder machine like you lives to kill! I love you, and that's what really matters!"). As Chise's body and the world eventually crumble apart, their choices, while fundamentally unchanging, also take on slightly different meanings, and examining this gradual difference is where Saikano derives its enjoyment from. Chise and Shuji's romance and drama, awkward as it may be, fumbles and tumbles about to generate some genuine, raw observations from the creators' end.

If you enjoyed Saikano, then I strongly recommend both Bokurano (2007) and the visual novel Saya no Uta (2003) by Nitroplus (NSFW; try to get the uncensored version if you can).