Preface -
My 'spoiler' philosophy is fairly simple, I generally don't believe that a brief description of the events and characters in the first episode of a series should be considered 'spoilers', any more than the description on the 'back of the box' for a video should. It is often necessary to use examples from an episode in order to illustrate the points that are being made in a review. But if you are of the opinion that 'any' information about a show is a 'spoiler', then you really should stop reading at this point.
Introduction -
I didn't get to see 'Saishuu Heiki Kanojo' aka 'Saikano' when it first came out because my friend in Japan didn't receive it at the time on her various cable and satellite channels. But I read a number of glowing recommendations for it and so I wandered off to the official web site at
http://www.saikano.net/ to check it out. There, I was able to read the teaser, look at the character designs and listen to the three main theme songs.
I wasn't enthusiastic about what I found at the site. My first impression was colored by the two alternate English names for the show, 'She, the Ultimate Weapon', and 'The Last Love Song on This Little Planet'. Then there were the images of the heroine Chise, who stood there morosely with a sci-fi weapon growing out of her right arm, sort of like a cross between 'Trigun' and 'Project Arms'. The theme songs didn't do much for me either; they were pure 'elevator Muzak', straight out of a 'Denny's' restaurant. What this appeared to be was just another variation on 'Mahoromatic', which was not one of my favorite recent purchases.
Yet, because of all the enthusiastic reviews 'Saikano' received, I agonized for a while on whether or not I should spend the money to order the first DVD and try it out. I vacillated and vacillated, and finally was saved from the decision by the recent start of a re-broadcast of the series on the Kansai regional TBS channel in the same time slot in which 'Chobits' had just finished. So last night I got to watch the first episode.
Review –
The show starts out with the hero, Shuji, walking alone through the snow and darkness to a covered platform overlooking the dark countryside. He starts to remember things, and suddenly hears some bells tinkling in the wind. He turns and looks into an alcove and sees ( surprisingly uncovered by snow or debris ) some school bags. Shuji goes over to the school bags, pulls out a diary, and starts to reminisce.
We now flash back to a sunny day when in Shuji is walking to high school. A little voice calls from behind him and we see little Chise trying to catch up to the tall Shuji. Shuji tells us about Chise; she is small, weak and frail. She also apologizes for herself all the time. Chise likes Shuji and wants him to share a diary with her. Shuji reluctantly agrees and the two go off to school. We then see the two of them slowly going from friends to boyfriend/girlfriend until finally, at that terrace from the first scene, Shuji agrees to be Chise's boyfriend and they kiss.
All of the above flashback was done in a deliberately slow style, with an attempt to make the kids seem realistic, a la 'Too Heart'. ( Another 'popular' series that I was fortunate enough to be able to see from the TV broadcast instead of paying for a video. ) Everything is depicted as very 'ordinary', other than the occasional troop movement going on in the background, or the overflights of fighter jets.
Then, one afternoon while Shuji and his buddies are out buying trinkets for their girlfriends, everything changes. And at this point my 'suspension of disbelief' mental circuitry took a big hit and crashed completely. The guys hear some loud booms and assume that an earthquake is happening. They run out of the underground mall to see an incredible sight; the sky is black with bombers, flying low and slow as they carpet bomb the city. Do our bright high school seniors go back downstairs to the relative safety of the underground? No, they run out into the street to try to 'out run' the bombers.
Huh? Sure I know those bombers are flying slowly, but even assuming a stall-speed of say, only a 100 knots, which is pretty much impossible for any large jet, no one is going to out run a plane.
The bombs start to fall near the buddies. The guy who just bought a pink quartz heart for his girlfriend is killed. The fighter jets fly out to shoot down the bombers, but the bombers are too strong. Then Shuji sees a pink beam flashing out of a building towards the attacking planes. The beam starts to shoot down the bombers. But a bomb or missile hits in the center of the city, with a resulting huge blast that destroys most everything. Shuji is smashed to the ground. ( For some reason his glasses don't shatter; I guess that he needs to be able to recognize what happens next. )
Shuji gets up all bloody and dirty, but still alive. ( But not for long if that was a small tactical nuclear blast. ) Out of the flames and smoke walks Chise, still wearing her school uniform but with her right arm transformed into some sort of super weapon/gun. Shuji surmises that it was Chise who was shooting down the bombers. He also notices Band-Aides on Chise's knees; she had similar Band-Aides on her knees a few scenes before. Shuji staggers up to Chise and hugs her; her right arm is now back to normal. And thus ended Episode 1.
So what's wrong with this series besides being excruciatingly slow for the first half of the episode, and devolving into pure 'idiot plot' in the second half? Well, let's look at the 'suspension of disbelief' failure first off. As soon as I saw that sky full of bombers I got really twitchy. It reminded me too much of the old, really bad SF stories in 1930's pulp magazines. Why would anyone fly big, expensive bombers very slow and very low? Even the USAF in WW II flew carpet bombing missions only at night. Daytime missions were at 30,000 feet to minimize flack and stop the interceptors from getting to the bombers. Bombers are way too expensive and way too hard to replace to waste.
Of course, the reason for the 'low and slow' is simple; it's to allow Chise to shoot down the planes. If they were instead flying in stealth mode at 80,000 feet, or 10 feet off the ground at 600 knots, there would be no chance for her 'one girl' heroics. And that is the point that is being driven into the viewer's face here; this isn't a 'war story', it's an 'Anti-War Story'. And in an 'Anti-War Story', what is 'important' is the 'Message', not trivial things like originality of plot, self-consistency of story line, or the appropriateness of the characters to the situation. This is audience manipulation of the most blatant kind.
Okay, so we are being told in a very unsubtle manner that this is going to be a 'serious' and 'sad' story. I'm reminded of the line in the 'One Minute Critic' web site that says something like, 'This is sad. This must then be important Literature'. At the same time I'm reminded of the old quote for which I can no longer remember the correct attribution,
'The conflict between Good and Evil is melodrama. Tragedy is the conflict between Good and Good.'
As far as I could see from Episode 1, all we have so far in 'Saikano' is some didactic melodrama.
Never-the-less, I'm going to keep watching the series for a while. Every 'season' I watch one 'popular' anime that I don't really like, just in case it eventually causes my opinion to change. But let me tell you; after watching Episode 1, I almost needed Band-Aides on my own knees, because I was down on them, praying loud and hard, 'Thank God I didn't spend money on this piece of crap!'
Dave Baranyi
Chise fits that kind of requirement perfectly. 
