Jul 13, 2022
I bestow upon this manga the award to "The Most Confusing Manga I've Ever Read", and yes, I really mean it. Saikano ringed a bell to me so I thought I would start reading it, since there was the whole collection in a nearby library.
Saikano is about a rude boy who starts dating a good-for-nothing girl, their names are Shuuji and Chise respectively. Now, the twist comes when you learn that Chise is a human mass destruction weapon (pretty obvious when even the manga's name implies it) and that Japan (if not the whole world) is in a constant war, being Hokkaido (the region where ... they live) the only part of Japan not affected by war, until...
The story evolves most commonly in mundane scenes, such as going to class, meeting after school to do some couple-related things, sharing moments with other ing characters etc. while war advances and Chise goes help the army. I've only understood the story up until this point. After this, I don't know exactly what happens, everybody cries a lot, Chise and Shuuji break up like 4 times, Shuuji survives to like, what, 8 massive bombardments, and other things that I just can't seem to fathom. It was in the last volume that I lost the will to try to understand what was happening, everything was so surreal that I just read text without processing anything of it. Were I to have understood it better, I would have probably enjoyed it more.
The art is OK. Landscapes are nice and characters have 3 types of design: one that is shoujo-esque, another chibi-esque and another quite more detailed.
Now, the characters specially, are what confused me the most. The problem is that I just can't understand the characters' motivations, and ask myself questions like: "Why is he crying?", "Why would she say that?", "Why is he doing this?" or "Why does this girl want to get laid even though she is greatly injured and half-dead?". I could more or less understand Akemi, Atsushi, Tetsu and Fuyumi, but Shuuji and Chise are a fucking mistery to me. Specially Chise.
I quite enjoyed it at the beginning but thereafter it became a mentally-exhausting read, at least for me, of course.
In the end, I didn't understand shit about neither what happened nor what was happening, but that's OK I guess. I'll have to read some kind of adapted summary so I may understand it.
I can't really say I recommend it, but I think that it's worth reading if you perchance understand it. Just give it a try and see for yourself if I'm right or wrong.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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