Spotlight Manga: SaiKano MAL Manga Information Page: SaiKano MAL Score - 8.29 (by 1445 users) Ranked - #234 Popularity - #346 For the next week I would like to have a discussion about the manga that focuses on the key elements that we here on MAL use to critically rate a manga: Art, Characters, Story, and Enjoyment. I would like everyone to approach this thread as if you were going to write a review and structure your initial post like this: Art - insert rating Characters - insert rating Story - insert rating Enjoyment - insert rating Art - discuss any pros and cons of the art styling used in the series, try to include some specifics. Character - describe any of the things you liked or didn't care for in regards to specific characters in the series etc... If you are having trouble writing up a review or coming up with specific pros and cons, please don't worry. Just do the best you can with it and if you can only write two or three sentences about any of the 4 elements then that's OK. Not everyone here is currently at a level which will allow them to articulate their thoughts and opinions. After your initial post is made you can feel free to civilly discuss issues of contention. I am sure there will be many opinions expressed here that some of us will disagree upon and criticise and it is for that reason that this entire club exists. So I hope everyone has fun and I am really looking forward to seeing how this discussion will develop. RESULTS OF THE YOU DECIDE POLL SaiKano was NOT inducted into the club Manga list: 1 Yes - 25.0% 3 No - 75.0% 70 Don't know this manga - 94.5% of the total number polled 0 Abstained - 0.0% of the total number polled |
santetjanJun 21, 2010 2:52 PM
| You do not beg the sun for mercy. |
| I remember reading a volume or so in my highschool days. Back then, I thought it was the epitome of drama. Several volumes and years later, it's just... meh. I guess that's the problem with saturation. Elfen Lied went overboard with the gore, Akari Mizunashi went overboard with the cheerfulness, and SaiKano went overboard in trying to make everybody miserable. Sure, shit happens during war. But at the end of it all, I asked myself, "So what?" and I just couldn't give a damn about the show or its characters anymore. Also, there's the issue of suspension of disbelief. The author tried to do things in a serious and straightforward manner, but it all collapsed the moment he chose a hormonal teenage girl to be the titular ultimate weapon. Even in the realm of anime where 14-year-old mecha pilots and underaged Italian loli-assassins are the norm, that's stretching things a bit. She dates her boyfriend in one chapter, fries a city in the next, and wipes out all life on earth in the last. I think I'd rather have Shinji decide the fate of the world by navel-gazing while inside a giant naked girl that sprung forth from the earth. |
YuunagiJun 11, 2010 10:06 AM
| That's right. I still have one volume left of this. Which i haven't bought yet. Dammit. Mm, from what i remeber i don't think there is anything bad in this, but there is too much of it. There is only so much drama i can take, and after a while i get a "Get on with it!" kinda feeling. I really like the art of it though. It is somehow both vague and to the point at the same time. In the end it's more lika a feeling than a picture. But nah. I'm sitting on a 'no' right now. Maybe an abstain because of how long ago it was i read it. |
| SaiKano is without a doubt the clearest example of what I tend to refer to as 'emotion shells': little tales shot at the trenches wherein the audience cowers. If it hits you, you're blown away completely. If it misses, you wonder what all the fuss was about. If it hits, you'll be reading about the relationship between two rather average people who discover love, or at least some hybrid of affection and lust, and then see one of them becoming a literal weapon of destruction, doing what she must do for the sake of the establishment (and for protecting everything she knows) and full well knowing that she, and she alone, is the cause of much suffering. Moved yet? What if we throw in the other person, her sweetheart, staying behind in a place to which some war's front line moves ever closer, coping - together with his townsfolk - with the losses in all supplies and living through some rough times, seeing friends die before his eyes, waiting for his loved one to return, only to find that she destroys herself as much as everything else? Yes, SaiKano really doesn't use anything that hasn't appeared before. What it does, though, after the first bouts of eyebrow-arching about the nonsense of it all has lapsed, is throw it all at you with unforgiving speed, piling up the drama of this broken girl and her waiting beloved and add some very raw and unpolished - and therefore all the more potent - musings about the nature of love and desire before everything rushes to an exultation of the importance of this so very simple desire for a human life amidst the complete breakdown of the system of the world, asking you to decide whether the ending is completely bitter or just might be hopeful. All is focused on the two main characters: other persons are there really only to add to their outlook on what they want and think is best, offering them experiences and ideas that shape their decisions. The setting is deliberately kept vague, the war in the background kept devoid of detail and the enemy shown only to consist of some ordinary people just as hapless as the main characters. The art itself is kept minimalistic, so as not to detract from the focus on the story and so as to enhance the expressionism of gestures and facial features. SaiKano can never be said to be enjoyable, being the attack on the gut and the tear ducts it is, but it resonates. In all, SaiKano hammers away with the brute force, drive and sincerity of what is in essence a very simple story about what it entails to love someone, through pain and suffering and more, humbling all else. If it misses, you just wonder why you should care about some lunatic story about some relationship by some girl and some guy, the former for some inexplicable reason being drafted into the army to be a super weapon (say what?) and bursting out in tears for no other reason than some ill-conceived attempt at dramatics. All the while, the guy is leading his happy (or not so happy) little life, getting entangled with far too high a frequency in old and new loves while awaiting the return of his girlfriend and becoming nothing but some hormonally driven sap. To top it off, amongst all the soap-opera-style drama, the author just had to play pretend at waxing philosophical, even, apparently having fallen in love with the worst Eva spewed forth, using some vague connection between human desire and the world to end his story. The main characters themselves never become more than typical pubescent teenagers, gifted with lack of motor skills and a general shy kindness in some attempt to have them be more likable, whereas everyone else is only there to die and add to the drama, or to go around diffusing the wisdom of the street or the word of Scripture for rhyme nor reason and are probably intended to add the veneer of depth. The entire background receives no attention, so that all seems to play out in some vacuum, which is worsened by the lack of graphical detail, meaning that all stays well in cartoon land and is ridiculous before being moving. The complete lack of anything that can be really found in all this makes that enjoyability at best will remain at the 'it was an easy read' level. In all, SaiKano is an attempt to have people care about something that is implausible if not impossible, happening to characters too flat to be even remotely become dear to the reader, in a veritable soap opera of epic proportions, all the while believing itself to actually have something to say about human nature. Compared to the anime, the manga seems to be a bit more subdued. This mainly has to do with the speed: some scenes that became ridiculous in the anime because they were spread out for too long (the 'flight by bike' early on, for instance) are far less so in the manga, as they are resolved more speedily; for the same reason, a bit of the impact of some other scenes (e.g., Chise's deterioration at the end) was lessened in the manga, as it came less as a surprise. The lack of sound also clearly has an effect: that little sound Chise made when in flight and that you in the anime might come to dread (I really, really hated that sound by the end of the anime) is of course absent, while the lack of voices, particularly at around Akemi's death, lessens quite a bit of the raw intensity of the scene. In my case, SaiKano hit, and thus hit hard. I'll grant that this to a very large extent had to do with it being a perfect metaphor for some real-life issues (Chise was immediately recognisable, though I wish she weren't) going on at the time of watching/reading it. Then again, this is exactly what the author intended, as his message at the end of the last volume shows: in it, he more or less says to read the manga, to see if you can find anything that is of meaning to you. And if you can't find it, or cannot find it anymore, don't throw the books away, but give them to someone else. Maybe that other can find something again. Partly because of that message, one particular sense came through to me very strongly: this manga is, for lack of a better word, sincere. And I find that I can respect that, and that I can even, as was the intention, give it to someone else, hoping that that other may find something in it. That is, if we're looking to induct something that I'd recommend someone read, then yes, I'd recommend SaiKano, if only for this reason. If I let the critic in myself loose, though, then no, I will not induct it, as all that SaiKano is about and any worth to be found therein is too strongly dependent on whether or not it strikes a chord with the reader. |
| You do not beg the sun for mercy. |
| I think think a problem with Saikano (and Elfen Lied. Hell, a tenth of all anime in existence) is that the author gave in to the temptation of making the hero(ine) a key figure in deciding the fate of the world. It's a common trope, but complete unnecessary in stressing the relationship between Chise and Shuji. There are other shows with similarly absurd premises but are more palatable due to the difference in degree or emphasis. Take Gunslinger Girl for example. Turning prepubescent little ladies into killing machines seems preposterous, and the author's obviously doing it with moral dissonance in mind. Fortunately, Yu Aida was sensible enough to keep things down to the scale of a specialized SWAT team rather than some legendary and unstoppable "maidens who govern death". Voices of a Distant Star is another alternative worth considering. Highschool girl? Check. Mecha? Check. Space aliens? Check. Battle for the survival of humanity? Check. But in the end, all these are insignificant. What matters is that there is circumstance causing the separation of the two young lovers. Anyway, for those who did enjoy Saikano, I recommend trying out Ai-Ren. Despite their verbosity, I found the characters more interesting due to their different way of dealing with inevitable death. |
YuunagiJun 12, 2010 2:00 PM
| @Yuunagi: In this particular case I'm not too sure whether down-toning would be in the manga's best interests. If Chise were only 'she, the moderately effective weapon, if utilised according to the instructions presented in the manual', there would suddenly be more pressure to start explaining how she functions, how she is put to use, what the limits of her capabilities are, etc. In short, it would detract from the singular focus on the relationship between the two characters. As she is now, her abilities deliberately kept very vague, she simply is 'the destroyer', an almost abstract figure. And it is against this general and detail-lacking background of destruction that the story is placed, which itself shies away from paying any attention whatsoever to the particulars of how the background came to be. |
| You do not beg the sun for mercy. |
| It's not like the examples I mentioned were much more willing to divulge technical details. It would have been sufficient that Chise is given a cause for her loss of humanity and a duty to separate her from Shuji. Raising her power levels to over 9000 seems unnecessary and the exaggeration doesn't go well with the attempt to realistically portray the loss of life in war. It's weird enough that the JSDF (or whoever) chose Chise as their first choice for the job of saishuu heiki, we didn't need additional layers of absurdity on top of that. |
YuunagiJun 14, 2010 5:10 PM
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