This is part of a series where I talk lightly on things I found interesting in series that I don't have enough to say about for a full analysis.
I might just be the worst anime writer on the planet. It seems like I only write when I absolutely have to. But this is one of those times. A lot of people have an anime they'll point to as the personal-canon story that impressed the horrors of war onto them; this makes sense thinking about anime's postwar becoming what-we-know-it-as-today. For a lot of people that is Grave of the Fireflies, owing both to the historically grounded intensity of the story and the overwhelming popularity of Studio Ghibli. For people who know slightly more ball it's Barefoot Gen, usually the movie with its horrific depiction of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Or sometimes it's the layer of abstraction provided by genre fiction that makes the messaging hit harder, such as the tragic space operas of the Gundam metaseries or even the gritty, political isekai parable Now And Then, Here And There. Each of these hit with me for various reasons, and I don't think that anyone connects with just one, but that one of these (or a series I haven't listed) will stand out to most anime viewers as the most prominent example. For me, that series is Saishuu Keiki Kanojo.
It hasn't always been this way. A few years back, I read the manga that the anime series is based on, because I was starting transition at the time and the story of a girl going through militarized body horror seemed like something that would resonate with the feelings of suddenly realized pain and loss. More on that later. More than anything, I remember it as not the premier example of war horrors, but as the platonic ideal of the sekaikei (lit. "world-type") genre. This is a genre that's hard to define and has recieved scholarly attention, so attempting to keep it brief: It's characterized by a focus on interpersonal dynamics as a proxy for the state of an ended or dying world. The ups and downs of a central star-crossed romance and small supporting circle tie with the fluctuations of hope and despair for civilization as a whole. Often, as is the case in SaiKano, the central couple will be the only characters to survive to the finale, which will usually result in a choice for the protagonist between love and heroics, saving the romantic interest or saving the world.
Other examples include Go Nagai's classic manga Devilman and Neon Genesis Evangelion, which propelled the storytelling style into an explosion of relevance around the late 90's and early aughts. Doing research for this it felt like almost every other piece of otaku-oriented science fiction could be defined as a sekaikei story. (The SaiKano manga began circulation in the year 2000 while the anime aired in July 2002.) To put it politely, others argue Evangelion invented the genre, or even that it is not a genre at all, but just a dressed-up term for "Eva clone". I won't derail another blog post to talk about NGE; I do think it's worth considering sekaikei as a genre simply because its priorities are so different from traditional genre fic. It's more emotional, obviously, but tends to catch derision for its lessened focus on worldbuilding. This is certainly true of SaiKano, but I'd argue its vagueness allows for its themes to hit harder. Maybe I'll catch some flak for this, but I believe the sekaikei genre is percieved to be more feminine somehow–with its focus on romance and definitionally emotional plots alongside an insistence on sci-fi, it's also "taking up" a space with sometimes strict definitions of quality. (That being Sci-Fi–which anecdotally tends to attract people with a focus on realism, metanarrative, and plotting over emotion and characters, and those people tend to be guys who don't understand girls very well. At least, that's my take on it as a girl SF fan.)
Despite my defense of the genre's validity, I was struggling to watch this one at first. Not because it was bad, but because my time was so limited. The first few episodes are so tropey on purpose, with the "hell hill" feeling like so many other manga (and VNs, and light novels) before it... Haruhi comes to mind as a specific example, but it seems like a commonality to much sweeter (or at least less bloody) romances than this. And it just kept feeling fine for the first few episodes. Part of this probably had to do with the 480p rip I had to watch, with nothing higher quality available it felt like something I'd find at a secondhand shop and buy for a couple bucks regardless of quality. That's okay. I genuinely do not feel like the beginning premise is at all "the point", at least, not as a plot point. As an emotional beat, or series of emotional beats, they work as a generically sweet memory to hold onto when the world goes to hell.
I'll try to keep this pretty light, but it's hard to avoid drawing parallels from the explicitly-unbuilt world to our own. (I mean explicitly unbuilt in two senses here–world-building for its own sake is avoided, while one gets a sense for the systems at large through naturalistic interactions.) The closest we get to lore would probably be the reception the military gets at the end of the war, only arriving in Hokkaido when forced to on retreat. Aid was never a focus. It's pretty obviously a world focused on the war machine in ways that recall both the dying days of Imperial Japan and modern-day America. Someone buying the DVD this was ripped from back in the early 2000's would probably not have a hard time relating to the story of a small town seemingly all hopped up to go to war, nor a main character watching his friends all ship off to die, or in many cases, simply cease to be seen ever again. That part feels the most like my understanding of the waning days of the Empire of Japan–life proudly going on as normal, while being interrupted such that the dignified continuation of life seems almost as a farce. It also reminded me of the idea popular directly post-9/11, that "living in fear is letting the terrorists win" while the state reconfigured itself around militarism and "homeland security" at the cost of the common person's freedoms and provisions. I don't feel comfortable saying just what SaiKano's politics are especially as this all remains firmly background to a very personal tragedy, but I do find it–perhaps more interesting than I should, that my premier example of sekaikei cites a society with rightwing warrior brainworms as doomed to kill everyone.
This theme continues to the interpersonal tragedy, in what I read as an exploration of the tragedy implicit to domination-based ways of thinking, not jsust militarism but life as a weapon. Listen, all "living weapons" are trans by default as they become human, and ("a boy is a gun" as they say) probably transfem at that. Chise, the heroine of SaiKano, certainly reads that way. "Becoming a living weapon" is an unintentionally perfect metaphor for the wrong puberty. She has to take a certain medicine to not only keep hersef alive and functional, but to keep her in a non-distressing form; to keep her back from exploding into borad wings of destruction. But ultimately, the forces around her want that more than anything, want another strong and honored weapon. I'll leave this section with a scene that really spoke to this idea for me.
Aside from that, there wasnt very much else I had to say on the majority of Saishuu Heiki Kanojo's runtime. It's good! But, again, intentionally, in a very unremarkable way. I think that unremarkable good is a great boon, and as the renai game and romance manga cliches struggle to hang on to a world crumbling in the weight of war's grip that use of tropes reveals itself as something special. I do however need to talk about episode 10, in very vague terms.
There's a certain character death at the point where such things should have long since stopped being shocking that almost scared me to tears. It's not shocking at all, actually. No, I think scared is the right way to describe it. (This is the scene that motivated me to write my thoughts on the show.) At a certain point... It literally could not be more telegraphed "Hey, this side character is going to die." The next episode preview focuses on her while talking about "a sudden death". She's had secondarily-requited feelings for the protagonist. Has all life long; they're childhood friends. She's the childhood friend third in a love triangle in a show about war. The episode where she dies is named for her. It's telegraphed. Her little sister tells the protagonist "My sister wants to see you" and breaks down when asked to elaborate. It's impending. We know she's not going to make it. The bandages wrap half her head, on the diagonal around an eye. When the protagonist goes to sit her up, she sticks to her bed with the thickness of her blood. It's almost black, like the cell-shader left the liner pen on the cel too long and it got soaked through in ink. It's all done in digipaint but smells like iron and ozone. Her every movement is a sad smile, faltering out a flirtatious game as a means to a final proper confession; of feelings to the protagonist, and a laying-out of regrets by proxy. an end to the fears of loss everyone else will get to grapple with on their own time. And she breaks down. Not crying, not wailing. Screaming. It's nothing so much as angry, and I am angry with her, this girl who has hardly seemed less than happy should die soaked in blood. That she should rest in heartbreak, a heartbreak that couldn't be helped. But she is so alive, in her anger, that it sparks hope. Maybe. Just maybe, this dying world will respond to this emotion, too, tangled in those two who we know lead the world tapering to entropy. Tiny sparks keep firing and chaining like the returning of life to what must surely be shattered material behind her bandage. Her plea seems to continue forever, and the hope grows, then she hacks up blood and falls silent. There is half a beat before she goes limp.
It's obviously the play with expectations of a story that makes her death hit so hard. Obviously. It's not even about the contentiously defined tropes of sekaikei, its subversion of the basic nature of storytelling to the ends that war is not a story. But for such a tropey story in a genre for database animals set in a world defined by emotional beats, it had additional layers of meaning.
I guess the best way to distinguish between the anime and the manga is the ending. The manga ends like the twist of the music video for Porter Robinson's Shelter; that's not a non sequitr, they're practically identical. Love gets you off this broken, dying world, in a tiny pod past the sky. The inhabitant sees love there, in a different form; in SaiKano's case that's "a form which can't be percieved the same way." The anime goes for... well, the same thing, I think, but it's less laid out. We don't see the pod, only the void inside it, the field of blank white and the electrical impulse that has become of Chise as she saves her love. I'm embarassed to say I once again thought of Evangelion but its impact really cannot be overestimated when talking about this era of otaku art, especially on stories like this.
That ended up being a lot longer than I anticipated, but this really is a fascinating story. Or, I guess a set of fascinating characters. Like I said, the plot itself is not the focus and we've been seeing similar themes since the canonical founding of otakudom with Mobile Suit Gundam; but it's a plot that works. Thank you for reading!
