Lucent said:
Plus, I generally don't care for shows with heavy anti-war themes (unless the characters first go through the horrors of war firsthand and actually have valid reasons to think like that). Not to say I'm all for killing my fellow man, but I've seen so much anti-war speech that makes no sense that I have a natural aversion to listening to it.
SPOILERS: THIS ENTIRE POST IS NOTHING BUT SPOILERS. IT IS ABOUT THE PROFUNDITY OF THE ANTI-WAR MESSAGE IN SAIKANO. MIGHT AS WELL READ IT THOUGH AS I SERIOUSLY DOUBT ANYONE ELSE ON THIS FORUM WILL WATCH THIS SHOW. ESPECIALLY SINCE LUCENT APPARENTLY ISN'T GOING TO WATCH IT. IT IS FOR HIM THAT I AM POSTING THIS, BY THE WAY. AS FOR THE REST OF YOU JUST READ IT AND GO BACK TO WATCHING A MEDIOCRE SHOW LIKE ROBOTECH OR CHOBITS. OR DON'T, I REALLY DON'T CARE ANYMORE.
In episode nine there is a great earthquake and Shuji's childhood friend Akemi dies because there are not enough doctors or medicine for all of the injured...because all of these doctors and all of this medicine has been diverted to help the war effort.
One of Shuji's friends, Atsushi, joins the army in order to protect the girl he loves, and to get revenge on the people who bombed Sapporo. While he is joking around with some fellow soldiers, they hear what appears to be sound of beating drums, and assume that it is a marching band. Later Atsushi asks if "Hana (a female soldier) is still on patrol." And one of the soldiers answers that she died. The drums weren't drums at all, but gunfire. The soldier then adds, "She joined the war because she lost her boyfriend in the Sapporo air raid...it's a shame that she couldn't even take one of them with her."
This causes him to think about whether he can really protect anyone in a war. Shuji even told him before he enlisted in the army that you don't go to a war to protect people, you go to war to kill, and then asks Atsushi if he can kill for this girl he loves.
Well, later on Atsushi and another soldier are sitting down and the other soldier notices that Atsushi has this picture of the girl he loves taped to his helmet. He takes the helmet from Atsushi, saying that he "wants to kiss it" and starts running around as Atsushi tries to get the helmet back like two children playing (an accurate description). There is a bombing and a shell tears a huge hole through the other soldier's stomach. He merely says "Sorry, Atsushi, here's your helmet back" and hands it to him before blood spurts out and hits Atsushi on the cheek.
When Atsushi looks down at his helmet, he notices that there is a hole in it right where the picture is of the girl he loves.
The helmet symbolizes a soldier's protection. At roughly the same time that this is happening the girl that Atsushi loves has died in an earthquake not from the enemy, but because of the lack of medicine and doctors due to the war. Atsushi dies not long after this. It was impossible for him to protect anyone, and he never killed anyone in the war. His death was entirely meaningless.
In the end the world comes to an end because the weapons being used are apparently so destructive (we only get subtle hints in the dialogue as to how destructive the war is, particularly when Chise says that the other side of the world is entirely devastated, both the people and the planet) that they can disrupt the magma convection currents, causing earthquakes and tsunamis. We're talking destruction on a scale far greater than that of even Nikola Tesla's infamous death ray.
According to Chise in the final episode, the higher-ups on both sides of the war knew that a huge earthquake was going to shake the entire world, but they just couldn't stop fighting at that point and band together to survive the disaster. Apparently the interiors of every continent is so devastated by thermonuclear war that the only livable space on the planet left is in coastal areas (this is my personal theory judging from the dialogue clues which are VERY subtle). So, when a giant earthquake causes tsunami's everywhere, humanity is wiped out entirely.
Episode thirteen contains one of the most bizarre end of the world sequences ever seen in anime. It takes place overlooking the sea, with the world's last sunrise that man will ever see taking place on the distant horizon. Huge shields/traps manifested by Chise's weapon system cover the entire sky, moving themselves to cause jet fighters to crash into them and also shielding the Hokkaido town from missiles and bombs being fired at it. We get the sense that the Hokkaido town that Shuji and Chise live in is one of the last peaceful places in the world, especially since Chise says in volume one that "This place is only peaceful because I am here. There is no peace anywhere else." So to see a blood-red sky, jet fighters exploding everywhere, an earthquake shaking the town and finally a tsunami wiping everything out is quite an amazing viewing experience.
The ending is very metaphorical. Shuji wakes up in a desolate, barren landscape covered with what appears to be snow. There is no life of any sort anywhere. While crying over the fact that nobody is there, he starts digging into the ground until he finds the rock that he was standing on before the world came to an end. Etched into it are the words "Shuji and Chise First Time Chise *heart* Shuji" which Chise wrote into the rock only hours before the destruction of humanity.
Shuji turns his head to look up at a hill where one of the "shields" that Chise manifested in the sky is sticking up out of the ground and pointing towards the sky. We can assume that this is what remains of Chise. Shuji stumbles towards the massive object, and begins hugging it and crying, talking to Chise, asking her if she felt any pain, if she was lonely, and saying that he finally kept a promise to her. Then he looks up in the sky and sees an orb of light descending diagonally from the sky.
And then I can not tell you about the rest of the ending, except to say that it is very open to your interpretation. As I see it, Chise is no longer alive, but she lives inside of Shuji's heart. The end is very poetic, including lines such as "Remembering all we did, carrying our sins with us, we will live in atonement until death, because I'm her's, and she's mine, even if our time together seems like just a moment, we'll be together, we'll live" and "The sound of the end of the world, I heard it as Chise's heartbeat. Our voices, and that of the world, raised in its final love song. We will love. We will live."
Every time I see the ending I feel like crying. The last time I watched it, I did.
To me, this stuff is very profound. And it's no wonder, as the manga-ka Shin Takahashi supposedly actually studied the psychology of teenagers in war situations to flesh out his characters. At least this is what I've read from an article reviewing the manga, which I'm soon to get.
To Lucent: I don't see why you would have an aversion to anti-war messages. I mean, of all cultures in the world, the Japanese have the BEST anti-war stuff. Their modern culture was pretty much born from the ashes of the Hiroshima bombing.
