One of the things I like about Gonzo: they take risks. That’s really where the best ideas come from. Sure, they definitely have their screw-ups; but then again: who doesn’t? In any case, another product of Good Gonzo is Saishuu Heiki Kanojo, or Saikano or She: The Ultimate Weapon as it’s known as as well. However, this isn’t just going to be the case where I simply list everything that it does right and just get things over with: like a lot of Gonzo’s series, it has a lot to like, but also a lot to hate about it.

Ultimately, whether or not you’re going to be able to enjoy this series is how much you can stomach teenaged angst, because BOY, do these characters WHINE in this series. On top of that, it loves to pull those plot twists that add extra drama: death, destruction, extravagant love triangles, for this series it can’t get sad enough for the lead couple, and the result is that the characters hardly every stop crying an whining.

I really was expecting a huge tear-jerker when I started watching this series, and I believe that the creators also intended this series to squeeze as many tears out of the viewer as possible, and yet I didn’t cry once, nor felt the inclination to. As a tear-jerker this show lacks subtlety. There’s just too much angst and sadness. This series just keeps bouncing back and forth between love triangles here and war is bad there, and I guess that this format failed to impress me.

Instead, I was sold on this series through completely different things. The characters just feel incredibly genuine. No matter what kind of overly sad plot twists the creators pull, the characters act believable and charming. The dialogue is consistently of a very high quality, and especially the voice acting made a lot of impact on me.

In fact, this series would have worked for me even if the lead female character, who is an ultimate destructive weapon that can wipe out entire cities at once, had been completely removed. What this series excels at is portraying how a huge war affects ordinary people, and how their lives are majorly impacted by it. The quiet moments in this series are so much more memorable than the obvious sad tear-jerker moments when the umpth character kicks the bucket.

In the end though, I can’t call anything about this series truly bad or flawed. Sure, the romance had its annoying moments, but for each annoying point it also had more than enough charming ones. Sure, the setting is overly sad, but I’m not going to deny that it made impact. In the end, the creators managed to create a provocative and hard-hitting series, that may not be perfect, nor hits any heights, but has enough that makes it worth watching.

Short Synopsis: Munto tells Yumemi about the past of his country.
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Excellent)
Ah, finally! It was a long wait, but finally we know a bit more about what the heck is going on in this series. Finally we see a bit of the elf country when it’s not fighting. While it’s certainly not enough yet, it’s definitely a good start, although again the dialogue was pretty complex, meaning a lot of trouble for me to understand it. ^^;

So if I understood correctly, the past of Munto’s world looked a lot like it in terms of technological advancement. Then from out of nowhere (or from somewhere that’s yet to be explained) and started wrecking things with their huge amounts of powers. They then discovered the parallel world that Munto lived in, and created a link to it. Eventually though, they destroyed this link again when they became obsessed with their own powers, resulting in lots of destruction. In order to prevent this from happening again, I suspect that the outsider was born. This went fine until the strange evil guy who appeared in the previous episode appeared, and Munto tried to use Yumemi’s help to get rid of him, while Gntarl and his allies didn’t support his decision. At least, that’s what I understood from it.

One thing that worries me though is that the pacing still is as fast as ever. Even though this episode was a quiet one, it still rushed the history of Munto’s world through in less than half an episode, which was an especially bad sign for my hopes of seeing this series continue for more than thirteen episodes. Things really can go anywhere at this point, but if the creators do plan to squeeze the entire story in only one season, then the second half of the series is going to have to be consistently solid and excellent if it doesn’t want to end up the same as the very unfinished OVAs. This episode thankfully met those requirements, but but for this series it’s going to be a matter whether the big picture can deliver or not in the end.

As for the animation, I’m glad to say that now that the series has started its original material, the quality hasn’t gone down too badly. While things obviously look less detailed and impressive when compared to the first six episode, the creators thankfully still have lots of movement. Some details were lost in the process, but it’s better than just resorting to safe drawings with mostly still frames.