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Reviewed by Michael Aronson “Chise is a cute, slightly clumsy, shy teenager – just like most high school girls. But one thing makes her very different – she’s been engineered to be the ultimate fighting weapon for Japan’s Special Defense Forces. To further complicate her life, Chise accidentally hurts an innocent bystander on one of her covert missions. Her boyfriend, Shuji, rushes to help the injured girl and discovers it’s his first love.” That synopsis might make Saikano sound like an overly melodramatic soap opera, and that’s kind of what it is: boy likes girl, girl asks boy out, girl and boy date, girl turns out to be an insanely powerful living weapon for the government. Where it falters is ignoring the background information – like why their town seems so primitive, what the war is being fought over – in order to just milk the high concept of a tragic relationship. The good is that while the relationship contains more awkwardness and crying than a western audience might appreciate, it gets major points for exploring the dynamics of two socially inept lovers – the cute yet naïve Chise and the overly cold and inconsiderate Shuji. It’s Shuji’s narration that makes Saikano a fascinating read, especially in this volume when his insecurities about Chise’s military job start to get the better of him. Ever had a lover who took a job you wanted them to quit? Saikano explores this situation in an extreme setting, and it’s rather bold and unique. Though Chise and Shuji both have good intentions at heart, their differences place them in moral jeopardy, too often of their own making. It’s hyper melodramatic stuff, but it’s really engaging but exploring new ground – a frail girlfriend as the world’s deadliest weapon – and using that to springboard emotional dissonance. The art doesn’t exactly stand out, but it adequately conveys the necessary emotions at the right times, and the translation is slick enough to make the cultural differences palatable for western tastes and slightly tone down the soap. The real trick will be maintaining this balance once the drama skyrockets in later volumes . . . Comment on this review of Saikano v2 on the Manga Life Forums. |
6 October 2009
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