 The Weaponless ROSSMANWhat the
high holy hell was that?! I...I'm confused and disoriented,
and not in a good way. And She, the Ultimate Weapon is
100% to blame. It's like the writers couldn't decide whether
they wanted to make a teenage love drama, a war show, a horror
story, a sci-fi series, or a porno. So they just grabbed
a little bit of
this, and a whooooole lot of that, threw it into the blender
and hit "scramble". Then the milky-white, clumpy
shit that was left is what they molded the series with.
Maybe that's
a bit harsh, but they definitely missed the mark on making
anything coherent plot wise. For example, one scene you're
watching two high school kids talking about the fun they
had as kids eating ice cream and petting kittens while playing
on the swings, but then a second later we're knee deep in
blood soaked bodies in the center of a war zone with buildings
and heads exploding in a vision that would put Saving
Private Ryan to
shame... Oh yeah, and then a little girl with a rocket pack
would come in and vaporize a few war planes and enemy soldiers
with a bright light from her sucking chest wound. But I think
I better take a step back and explain the plot to you a little
first.
It all starts
out in the near future. The world is at war and Japan is
just starting to get attacked by American fighters (yeah,
they never just come out and just say it, but they're clearly
Americans who are killing all those poor Japaneses to Hell for
reasons unknown... But I'm willing to bet dollars to donuts
that
those little bastards started it! To war! To WAR!!... Oops, sorry.
Seemed to have channeled MacArthur there again). The main
characters
in the show (a high school guy named Shuji [who
looks like
a
40-something salaryman], and a high school girl named Chise
[who looks like a prepubescent grade schooler]) are just
starting to go out with each other because Chise's and Shuji's
friend
(doomed girl #1) thought they would make a cute couple. Doomed
girl #1 has a monster hard-on for Shuji herself though, and
spends the rest of the show feeling sorry for her own sorry
ass despite the fact that she was the one who initiated all
the ill-fated relationships in the first place. Chise and
Shuji are surrounded by boatloads of other (doomed) friends
who
don't
seem to understand or care about what the looming war means
to their pathetic, youthful lives.
Sounds like
a normal, Japanese drama to you? Just wait. See, it turns
out that Chise has been turned into the Japanese military's
number one secret super-weapon, and nobody knows this but
Shuji, who accidentally found out one day after seeing her
transform from her weapon body back into her little girl
form (when you think of Chise, think of a mixture of Megatron,
the Overfiend, and that overly cute
girl from
Hamtaro). Shuji's then sworn to secrecy
and begins to think that the only reason he's going out with
Chise is to keep
her level-headed so that she will not sink into a numbness
after realizing that she's really only a giant, flying, glowing
laser gun
being used by an uncaring military. Then the shit really
hits the fan and covers the whole room with feelings of despair,
betrayal and angst. It really doesn't know which way it wants
to go, so the plot basically goes everywhere at once. I was
so confused and bewildered and higgledy-piggledy that I felt
angsted and betrayed myself. I was so let down by what
this series could have been, what it should have
been, that I'm just going to tell you all how it ends so
that you won't have to waste your money and hard earned free
time on it too.
Okay,
so Chise is on call 24/7 by the Japanese military because
those
darn Yankee pig-dogs won't stop bombing the shit out
of the motherland. This breaks up lots of would-be dates
with her
boy toy Shuji, despite the fact that he doesn't even
think he really loves her. And the fact that he's still
bopping
the older woman to whom he lost his virginity to back
in middle school (lucky fucking dog!). Anyway, Doomed girl
#1
continues to feel sorry for herself for loosing Shuji,
but she refuses to give Shuji's best friend (aka "doomed
boy #1") a
chance at making the freaky freaky because she's mentally
unstable and feels that stalking the one you love is
always a more fulfilling relationship than being with the
one who'd kill
a baby for you with his bare hands. Speaking of "baby
killers",
doomed boy #1 joins the dwindling army in order to impress
doomed girl #1 for God only know what reason.
During
all of this, every other good friend and classmate of Shuji's
and Chise's is slaughtered in one horrific, coincidental
scene after another horrific, coincidental death scene.
Some
are shot by stupid gaijin soldiers, some get crushed
(very vividly)
in falling debris, some are earthquake victims and
some are just plain stupid. Anyway, after a while (and
a couple
of
break-ups and reconciliations), Chise and Shuji get
tired of the whole boring war and run away together (oh
yeah,
by this time doomed girl #1 and doomed boy #1 are deader
than
doorknobs). They find a small town
that's pretty much unaffected by the war (must be the last
one
on Earth), and begin to make new lives for themselves.
They're happy and all, but Chise's negligence in her duty
(as the
ultimate weapon) brings doom upon this happy little
hamlet in the form of napalm and cluster bombs. Yup, everybody
that
they knew and loved is now paste there too. Chise's
really
sick now (the military was keeping her in check with
some very curious "vitamins", which she's run
out of) and Shuji betrays her by handing her back to the
army doctors. Then he
calls it quits and runs back home to his parents (who
are like the only survivors of his old town) with his tail
tucked between
his legs. Then Chise comes back to him with her mind
wiped (the hell?....), and then the two fucked up lovers
start
humping like disgusting dirty gerbils for a full episode.
Then the final battle occurs right off the coast of
their town. Chise goes off to fight, a giant tsunami washes
the
fuck over the city, and in an ironic twist of fate
Chise saves Shuji with the last of her strength and he
finds himself
to be the last human being on the planet. Just like
that guy in that Twilight Zone episode,
except Shuji doesn't even
have a library to read all of the books he never had
time to read before... Thinking back on it that's not even
very
ironic. It's just cruel. I mean, the whole world is
a wasteland now and Shuji doesn't even have a box of Pop-Tarts
to get
him through the week, let alone uncontaminated water!
The least Chise could have done was to quickly zap him
with a laser before
she killed those patriotic Americans raining doom down
all around them. Bitch.
Anyway,
other than the incredible downer of a plot (if I had to
guess, I'd say that the creators were simply trying to make
a depressing war story about the helpless victims of war
that would rival Grave of the Fireflies in
its ability to make you want to slit your wrists in the shape
of "smiley
faces"... they came close, but honestly nothing will
ever be as sadly fucked up as Grave of the Fireflies),
there were
a bunch of other things that kept me from really liking this
anime. First of all, it's done by Studio Gonzo (nope, that's
not the bad thing). Now, while I think that Gonzo's animation
is usually eye-poppingly gorgeous, with fluid movement,
very pretty character designs, and filled with interesting,
if not great, uses of computer aided
effects, their stories are usually flat with no real substance.
Well, the exact opposite is the problem with She,
the Ultimate Weapon. The story is simply too full,
and the character designs and animation suck. For example,
none of the characters have
any noses, even in profile. Seriously, they look like the
Red Skull from the side! Their foreheads slope directly into
their chins. It's almost disturbing to see. Not to mention
the previously mentioned fact that Shuji looks like a giant
middle-aged man, and Chise looks like his tiny grandchild.
It's just sooooo wrong on so many levels. It reminded me
of the times that my married friends Alec and Meg would go
out and somebody would always ask him how old his daughter
was. Just creepy. But I digress.
Let me just
finish this damn thing up by stating that I was just thoroughly
confused by this anime series. It was the
most schizo show that I've ever seen. It was like it had multiple
personalities or a bi-polar condition
and forgot to take it's medication, instead choosing to ignore
the problem and hope it would go away. In the end, as a nasty
side effect, it just suffered from some horrible brain damage.
What
did I think of She, the Ultimate Weapon (Saishu Heiki
Kanojo)? Well,
I think I must give it a D-. It tried so hard to be different
and thought provoking and good, only to hit 1 out of 3 of those
points. That's not a good batting average when dealing with
a show meant to
entertain the masses. Just skip it and pretend that your Optimus
Prime action figure is a little girl and you'll have hours
more fun than with this mess.
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