Review of She, The Ultimate Weapon
This series ended up being very disappointing. Echoing the thoughts of others who have the same views about Saikano, it tried hard to be a tragic romance and turned out to be more zZz than depressing; only making me watery-eyed from boredom. There are series that depress without making it obvious the plan is to pull on heart-strings... and then there are series that make it so obvious that you expect people to die just to get a reaction. Saikano is the latter. Before watching I thought it was going to turn out to be a winner in my eyes. It has great looking box/DVD art,a depressing sounding story, short length and only a £10 fee required to own the series. I couldn't see how, for such a small amount of money, a fairly highly rated show could fail to meet my expectations. But, sadly for me, Saikano got all the basics wrong, and it's a shame because the story had a lot of potential.
In the Saikano world, Japan is losing a war against a nameless country. The Japanese government decide to make an ultimate weapon to change their fortunes, and they pick Chise, a 17 year old girl with poor grades and physical abilities, to be that weapon. She has to deal with the fact her body has become a weapon of mass destruction and, at the same time, come to terms with being in love for the first time.
The first problem the series has is terrible pacing. The first half of the series left me feeling like nothing had happened; like events simply kept repeating themselves in slightly different ways each episode. Chise cried, she had a talk with Shuji (her boyfriend), Chise cried some more, Chise then went off to fight (without the fighting getting shown since that would require money) and the episode ended. The script for each of the early episodes had very little variation, and the characters started saying fake sounding rubbish (such as talking about kids and marriage after being together for 1 week...), which made the show a difficult one to stick with.
Even though the relationship between the main two failed miserably for the most part, the series still could've saved itself if the sci-fi elements had been explained in convincing fashion. However, almost as you'd expect after seeing how badly the pacing and love side was handled, the sci-fi parts of the story weren't explained at all. Chise, seemingly not caring a great deal, reveals to Shuji that she, a useless girl who can't get anything right, was turned into some kind of humanoid weapon that can grow rockets out of her back...and that she forgot to ask any important details after having her body irreversibly transformed. From start to finish, that's all you learn about why a pathetic school girl was turned into a living weapon. And, worst of all, it's never even revealed who Japan is supposed to be involved in a war with, as if such a minor detail doesn't matter.
If a story is going to work these things need to be explained. Simply expecting viewers to believe that an annoying high school girl (who happens to look eight!) would be forcefully turned into a weapon instead of a consenting adult is stupidity of the highest order. How was I supposed to care about the events that occurred if the story seemed far too daft to take seriously?
I suppose the damage the snail pacing, fake/generic dialogue and completely unbelievable story did could've been lessened if the characters made me care about them. After all, the key to making a viewer feel something when characters die is to build up their attachment beforehand. But Saikano failed to make me care enough about any of the cast to make me feel anything. Chise acted pathetically, crying at every available opportunity and being a doormat for Shuji whenever possible. Shuji was a plain guy with glasses who managed to get three of the opposite gender, including an older woman, after him...and he played around. Akemi, who was probably the best of a bad bunch, was only there to support Chise and be another female who longed for the glasses wearing male lead. None of them did anything for me; I was almost willing the main two to be killed at times!
Aside from the pacing, story and characters (not much really!), the other thing that bugged me about Saikano was the art. For reasons known only to more intelligent people than myself, the characters have a blushing effect going on 24/7 in Saikano...well, either that or Earthlings in the Saikano world have red lines on their faces by default. And the face weirdness didn't stop there: the faces all look silly from the sides due to the way the noses are drawn so small. If you mix those two issues with a lack of animation then you have a problem, and Saikano shouldn't have had problems (at least not with the animation) visually when it's only 13 episodes long. The only plus on the looks side was the excellent use of eye-catching colours.
As for the music, the less said the better. The only theme that has managed to stick in my memory is the guitar theme that plays on the DVD menus. I don't even remember the opening and ending themes. The soundtrack failed to draw any emotion out of me, which is quite a serious flaw for an anime that wants to play with my feelings.
Overall, Saikano disappointed more than it pleased. I almost dropped it after the first six episodes, only ending up continuing to see if the end made up for the first half. Although there was a considerable amount of improvement once the same episode stopped seeming to keep repeating itself and the plot actually started to give me the feeling it was going somewhere, the content wasn't good enough to save what had been an awful series up until that point. And the series wasn't even able to end in style, with the ending being rushed (the world was ending all of a sudden, for no reason) and the conclusion to the events making little to no sense.
Rating: 4.5/10