Saikano

In my anime fandom, I try and avoid the absolute of labeling a title as one that everyone should see. (The one exception to this rule is probably Grave of the Fireflies, which posses the most uncanny type of story in that it grabs people in a way that no other movie/series I've seen prior or since can even remotely attempt to emulate.) While I work to avoid the absolute, I do have a list that I will highly recommend to others that have caught me in a very strong way. Yet it's sometimes tough to see a title that one so strongly enjoyed, get a less than impressed reaction from someone else. There is perhaps no better example of this in my experience of watching anime over the years than Saikano.

Having known of the existence of the anime since the summer of 2003, I hadn't watched a single episode, or read a single page of the manga until a spring 2006, when I finally borrowed the anime from someone. Very quickly I found out why so many people used Saikano as their trump card for sad titles. Yet the sadness never became a chore, the lives of Chise and Shuji, as well as the others that fill in the events of Saikano's story draw us closer. We want to know what happens next, we want to know how things will turn out. And even as the world is ending, we want to think of some last glimmer of hope to shine through.

Yet even if it is not glorious, radiant hope shining down, but pure unadulterated despair that comes through, Takahashi Shin makes a story that grabs us. Without trying to spoil too much, the final scene with Akemi is one of the most bittersweet I've ever seen in an anime title. It's still funny to think that something this potent started off as a dating sim.

After finishing the Saikano anime, I found myself seeking out the first volume of manga as soon as I had the cash to spare. Come Anime Boston 2006 in May, I was grabbing three volumes to keep going. The following weekend I was rushing to the mall to grab the final volumes. I consider myself relatively well exposed to a lot of different anime and manga titles, but I still remember reading Akemi's final scene in the manga, and for the first time I can remember, I had to stop reading a volume of manga, sit back, and simply say "whoa".

It is practically a cliché to declare "Oh, the manga was so much better than the anime" yet Saikano falls into this category well. Perhaps what makes things so well is Takahashi's knowledge of how to use text. There are pages vacant of any words, leaving us with nothing but a landscape or an intimate scene to take in, as well as pages that are covered with almost nothing but conversation and narration. Takahashi balances these two extremes so well, and each has its proper moment.

Saikano's tag line is "The Last Love Song on This Little Planet". Its fantastic plot make take the audience or reader away from a normal realm by adding an unusual Sci-fi element, and its core, the story is a love story about two people, barely out of their childhood, finding and understanding what true love is, even as the world around them is slowly falling to pieces.

As I said when I began this entry that I cannot say Saikano is something that everyone should read or watch. That being said, it does get my highest suggestion. The manga gets top billing, followed by the anime. (But shy away from the live action movie)