Manga, Movie, Anime: Saikano was originally a manga authored by Shin Takahashi, and ran in the Shogakukan publication Big Comic Spirits from May 30th, 2000 to December 25th, 2001. It totals at seven collected volumes. It has been released Stateside by Viz, and the final volume was released January 3rd, 2006.
A live-action movie was released January 28th, 2006, and has yet to be licensed Stateside. I'll be covering this later in the review.
The anime itself was produced by Gonzo (famous for Gankutsuou and Red Garden), and directed by Mitsuo Kase (famous for directing the first seven episodes of Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory), and ran on Japanese TV from July 2nd, 2002 to September 24th, 2002. Saikano has been licensed Stateside by Viz, and the fourth and final volume was released November 9th, 2004.
Story: So, there's this couple, Shuji and Chise, who've just started going out, and they're so amazingly awkward with each other, the way you first are when you're just starting to go out with someone. There's a war going on, but they're somewhere near Sapporo on Hokkaido, the northernmost island in Japan, so it doesn't really affect them, up until the day that Sapporo gets bombed. There's this gleam of light that absolutely decimates the enemy bombers, and Shuji ends up following it when it crashes and it turns out that it's Chise, who's more or less been turned into a cyborg.
The rest of the series focuses on their relationship, and how Chise's being turned into a weapon affects that, juxtaposed with the war that's going on.
I am going to warn you straight off the bat; this is probably one of the most depressing anime in existence. You're going to want to keep anything you can hurt yourself with far away from you as you go through the series. There is a lot of death. You get to watch Chise lose her humanity bit by bit. You get to watch Shuji utterly unable to do anything about the former. You watch them trying to keep their relationship together while all of this is happening.
And it's everything that makes it depressing that makes a good story, really.
To be honest, I'm not really sure what happened in the last half of the last episode. This may be just me. But it is a bit confusing that way.
Art: The art style for this is a bit simpler than most of Gonzo's productions that I've seen; it seems closer to the style of a manga, in terms of the way characters are rendered. In fact, when I took a look at the manga covers the other day, it seems almost exactly the same. So that's a nice touch.
Gonzo uses a lot of reds, blacks, grays and dark colors, for the war zones, and brighter colors for Hokkaido, though that ends up turning more sinister as the story goes on.
Also, the CG is excellent, as expected from Gonzo. And luckily, it blends very well with the general style.
Music: The OP is amazing; I didn't like the song all that much, but it grew on me, and the segment itself is black and white, with the occasional highlight of bright color, and has random bits of French text throughout. The ED is also made of awesome; didn't pay too much attention to the segment here, but the song itself is done by the same artist who did the OP (Yuria Yato), which is a rare thing in an anime, because the contrast between the two really shows her range.
The background music is mostly variations on the OP and ED, but seeing as they're both so good, it's nice to hear. There's also an insert song that Shuji always hums, and when you finally hear it sung in the last few episodes, it's really a nice song, even if it ends up being a terrible thing for Chise.
Seiyuu: Chise's seiyuu also was Firiel in Nishi no Yoki Majo, which was a nice touch. As ever, the seiyuu did an excellent job; no issues here.
Length: Perfect, because it allows for just the right amount of depression, but stops before you actually consider killing yourself. Any more and I wouldn't have been able to take it, any less and it wouldn't have seemed right.
Movie: Saikano was turned into a live-action movie in 2006 by Toei. Aki Maeda, younger sister of Ai Maeda (who was Kino's seiyuu in Kino no Tabi, which she also did the OP/ED for) and also played Noriko in the live-action adaptation of Battle Royale, was cast as Chise.
I didn't like the movie as much. It was basically a digest version of the series (which was to be expected, as there was no way they could put all the material in a two-hour movie), but the thing was that some of the most emotional scenes from the anime ended up having little to no impact in the movie itself. Maybe it's because the build-up was missing; maybe it was becasue of the acting. I can't really tell you what went wrong here. And even though it went about things differently, it still had the same ending as the anime, which made even less sense, really.
Overall: It's depressing as all hell, but it's good.
Story: 9/10
Art: 8/10
Music: 8/10
Seiyuu: 8/10
Length: 9/10
Movie: 7/10
Overall: 49/60; 82% (B)
