Shakugan no SHANA

Information of Anime

Yuuji Sakai is just your normal high school student.  One day, he noticed the city turning dark & the people around him have stop as if they were frozen.  Monsters appear out of nowhere & started to devour blue flames within the people.  Shocked & confused on what's going on, the monsters noticed him being unaffected by the environment they set up & took interest in him.  They believe he's a Mistes.  Just as he's about to be devoured, a girl with red hair & flaming eyes appeared & saved him.  This is incident started to confuse Sakai & questions his existence.

Storyline (CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Below is a summary of the storyline I've seen.  This section does contain some spoilers.  If you haven't seen the series yet & don't want to be spoiled, skip this section.  If you want to know the story & want to see how I viewed it, read on.

The story involves the relationship the red haired Flame Haze girl & her partner Alastor, the king of Gouka who lies in a pendent around the girl's neck, & Sakai.  Sakai learns how the two worlds, Earth & Guze are connected to each other & the duties that the Flame Hazes do to balance the world & how Torches play an active role to the Earth.  Because he is dead, Sakai has a Torch in him but it's a special one called Mistes.   Mistes are powered by a Hougu & his is the Reiji Maigo, the most prized Mistes.  Together with the Flame Haze girl who he calls Shana, they fight monsters called Guze no Togara.

From this point on, we see how Shana is training Sakai for battle so he can help her & Shana learning human emotions.  A new Flame Haze named Margery Dow & her partner Marco appears as well as different Togaras & Rinnes.  We also get to see how Kazumi Yoshida tries to confess her love to Sakai with Shana interrupting them most of the time.  Shana doesn't know why she does it & what Sakai means to her.

At the midway point, we see Shana's past on how she became a Flame Haze.  Here we meet Wilhelmina Carmel for the first time & will return later in the show.

After the flashback, the love square between Shana, Sakai, Yoshida, & Hayato Ike.  A new Flame Haze name Khamsin Nbh'w & his partner Behemoth, come to the city & take Yoshida has their guide.  Here, she finally learns the truth about the city & Yoshida.  Finally, everyone knows who's involved in the fight against the Togaras.  To make matters worse, Shana thinks that distance between her & Yoshida is getting wider & wider.  As this happens, Wihelmina returns to Shana.

Seeing changes in Shana, Wihelmina is determined on her mission on destroying the Reiji Maigo which bothers Shana.  Learning who it is, Wihelmina hunts down Sakai as he plans to leave the city.  As Wihelmina tries to kill him, Shana saves him.  Seeing this Wihelmina decides to put her faith in Shana's choice.  Before Sakai leaves the city, he stays to see if the feeling he got was a threat; which it is.  The threat was a portal that allowed the Balle Masque base to enter into the world.  As a result, Sakai gets captured.

With the capture of Sakai, Hectres uses her powers to create a power of existence as it brings Balle Masque down to Earth.  Because this will result in a highly unstable balance between both worlds, Shana is still fighting against herself on what to do as she & Wihelmina enter into battle.  Joining them is Margery from the outside.  With the Flame Hazes fighting each enemy, Shana goes after Hectres.  Meanwhile, Sakai questions himself as Hectres is synchronized with his thoughts & feelings.  He breaks free from her by telling her that his feelings isn't her's.  With Shana freeing Sakai, he tells Hectres that she is empty as she was from the beginning when she tried to take his', which cause her to break down.  With the power of existence being too strong, the city starts to break apart.  In order to save the city, Alastor needs to be summoned.  But it would cost Shana's life due to the large amount of energy required.  However, Sakai joins her & the city gets restored.  But, the enemies escape.

Now the city is saved & Shana survives the summoning of Alastor as she had enough energy to stay alive.  As the credits roll, we see the cast living their lives as always & the four way love square battle continues.  At the end, we see a notice that a Shakugan no SHANA movie is in production. 

My Personal Review

Shakugan no SHANA is an interesting anime show, but quite confusing at the same time.  It can hinder your enjoyment of the series a bit.  One thing to note is how the show uses graphical violence.  It's not extreme as most of it is focused on the Guze no Tagaras.  One scene however has Sakai cut nearly in half on his upper body which may disturb some people.  However, there isn't any blood involved.  Later in the show, it gets a bit brutal with blood flying around at times.

Animation

The drawings are unique.  It's something I haven't seen for a while.  Shana's eyes looks like the eyes of a female loli character.  Big, wide & sharp points on the eyelash ends.  The designs look similar to Gad Guard's, but more in a cute way.  So cute, it's hard to believe that the show contains some pretty violent stuff.  Even the Guze no Tagaras look pretty unique.  But the drawings are clean.  It's not my style, but it's pretty attractive.

The backgrounds have that eerie feeling as well when the world is put under a spell.  But most of the time, it's not drawn too clean.  It's pretty blurry at times & the lines aren't too sharp.  The tones are good though.  It gives off some effect of the buildings & structures.  Also, they don't mess up together with the characters.

The animation movements are smooth.  Although the fight scenes are pretty interesting to watch some times, it's pretty much eye candy.  The movements look pretty natural to me & there isn't any distortion or breaks that I noticed.

Sound

The sound effect are ok.  Nothing too silly, mainly natural.  The volume level is about right since I didn't hear any fuzzes.

The seiyuus here aren't too bad.  But I can't get use to Shana's voice.  The seiyuu, Rie Kugimiya, doesn't seem to fit well with this character.  Although she has done a lot of voice acting for male characters, her voice isn't strict or cold enough to match Shana's character.  Every time Shana tells Sakai to shut up or acts almighty to others, it just doesn't sound right.  It took some time for me to get use to it & I managed to accept it.  In fact, it got better & better along the way.

The music is symphony based & isn't too exciting to listen too.  It didn't help establish a mood while I was watching it.  The first opening & ending theme songs are more techno/upbeat based.  I like the opening theme more than the ending one.  I haven't heard any of the second themes yet.

Story

The story is very confusing at the start.  It was hard to understand how the Torches work in balancing the world.  Also, the disappearing memories part.  It took me a while to figure out how the system works.  I understood it better by watching than listening to the explanations from Alastor.  I'm not sure if it's due to the translations or me not understanding at all.  You really need to grasp this theory in order to enjoy the show or else you will be watching nothing but pointless actions & scenes.  However, it felt hard to buy into the creator's ideas.

A good part about the story is how it's written overall.  It has a nice pace & develops the characters well, especially Shana.  Very well done as we see Shana, as well as Wihelmina, developing emotions.

As the ending, it's not bad.  It tied up the plot nicely.  However, the movie may complete the anime series since the enemies escaped.  But I was happy with the ending nevertheless.

Overall Conclusion

Shakugan no SHANA is a pretty good anime.  I actually held out from watching this anime when I had the first episode & it's was pretty much a mistake on my part.  Personally, I recommend this anime for people that like to see some action & deep storylines.

Shakugan no SHANA gets an 8.5/10 from me.  The show is quite deep & well written.  Nice character developments & interesting fight scenes.  However, the beginning is a bit confusing.  If you can't get it after four or five episodes, you can be lost easy.  Also, the idea about it seems a bit too loose as in creating whatever you want.  However, as you go deeper in the series, you will understand more about it.  Also, the plot wrapped up very nicely with a good ending.  Next up, the movie.

Last updated on January 16, 2008