[Categories: Anime Reviews]
Shakugan no Shana 1-4: wake up, you’re dead
One hell of an opening line, that (it’s from Clever Sleazoid, heathens). Given that I’d dipped my toes into the Shakugan no Shana franchise via the feature film, I already had some idea of how our hapless hero, who as the above title suggests snuffs it in the first few minutes, meets our favourite flame-haired tsundere…and fantastical hijinks ensue. I’m sure every blogger and his/her mum has seen this TV version before I have but the R2 DVD version has just washed up on our rainy shores and at a reasonable price too. To be honest I don’t care much for extras so a cheap disc with a respectable episode count and little else is fine by me.
The premise? Yuuji is an ordinary kid with an ordinary life but gets caught up in a battle involving two factions of beings from the Crimson Realm who eat human souls and those who fight to maintain the balance of existence respectively…and winds up dead, only not. Swordplay, bright lights, pretty-shiny explosions, supernatural stuff and funny stuff, etc., etc.. I’m sure you know all that better than I do if the Shana title led you to this post so I’ll leave the synopsis there.
Whether it’s because my memories of the movie are fuzzy or whether there were actually some changes made, I don’t recall how lulz-worthy the teacher humiliation scenes of episodes #3 and #4 were, and was pleasantly surprised at how things like Hirai’s ‘fading away’ packed a punch too. I knew what was going to happen but that didn’t stop it being fun all the same. Inevitably more time is able to be spent on explaining what it means to Yuuji when he learns the nature of Torches and examines his reaction at greater length; like someone diagnosed with a terminal illness he goes through the denial and despair stages before trying to understand what’s happening to him and why.
Another point of note is that Shana refreshingly and gleefully gives the shoujo-friendly magical girl genre, one I’ve never had an interest in, a firm kick up the backside. Right from the heroine accompanying the hero at school to undergoing dorama-filled transformations when duty calls it’s typical fantasty high school fare but with a polished and shiny edge that’s somewhat refreshing; the battles however have a conversely shounen-orientated slant to the choreography and dialogue. I’ve already covered the whys and wherefores that makes a well-written tsundere awesome but suffice to say Shana herself is a fanboy’s dream and pretty hawt interesting from my analytical point of view too.
I hereby declare this activity to be called Window-Angsting
What makes Yuuji a cut above the typical Male Anime Lead however is that he isn’t actually a spineless loser - instead of screaming “Why?! Noes!!!” he confronts the strange girl who appears to be at least partly responsible for his predicament then, in a really quite potent piece of storytelling, embarks on an ultimately futile attempt to save Hirai’s memory immediately after coming to terms with what a Torch is and eventually becomes.
The first three episodes offer a neat examination of how Yuuji eases himself into understanding the weirdness of his new life (or lack of life thereof): his first reaction is confusion, his second is a hurried and ill-informed attempt to help someone else while the third time he is trying to save someone else in a more constructive way. When Ike is injured Yuuji commits an admirable act of self-sacrifice by offering what’s left of his life to save someone who is not yet dead and therefore able to be saved; in the face of another bizarre and terrifying manifestation of a denizen he tries to get his paralysed classmates out of harm’s way too. The fact that he’s being proactive and thinking about others first instead of cowering in a corner somewhere suggests that I’ll be rooting for Yuuji from here on in rather than making wisecracks about his lack of gar-ness at every available opportunity.
You’ve guessed it - my DVD drive has packed in again so I’m left trawling through Danbooru for SFW images instead of screenies. You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve seen…
Shana’s tsun-tsun side is all we see at this stage but I was interested to see her own stance on what Torches are and the idea that, if they inherit a particularly strong will, they behave in an unpredictably human way. We’re getting back to some profound ideas about how mortality is viewed from the individual’s and others’ perspectives again, complicated by the fact that Shana’s been around for who knows how long and that Yuuji is an innocent bystander who’s fallen into her own battleground. This gap between two people from two different worlds, who are experiencing aspects of one another’s worlds for the first time, is I think what will make Shakugan no Shana a rewarding viewing experience…and not just because of the tsunderisms and freshly-baked melonpan.
Posted on May 31st, 2008 @ 12:03 am
THE ULTIMATE BAIT AND SWITCH, GET READY FOR IT.
Posted on May 31st, 2008 @ 11:40 am
Despite being a confident, highly trained killer, Shana is about as old as she looks; about 12 then. I’m sorry, but there’s no get-out-of-jail card, marked ‘all characters are 18′. It’s into the slammer for you, sonny!
Her real age shows in matters of love, and of course, makes her more cute when she gets dere-dere. This of course futher proves your point about the interesting charactor interactions.
Posted on May 31st, 2008 @ 9:25 pm
@digitalboy: Duly noted. I’m guessing I ought to prepare for filler segments, then? Damn. Just as well the DVD discs aren’t too expensive!
@Teeif: Objection yer honour! Nothing written in strikethrough is intended to be taken seriously!
Lolicon jokes aside, the character-driven side of things is what’s keeping me interested…when you’ve seen one anime fight you’ve seen them all really so the combat thing isn’t nearly as interesting to me as the after-effects that it has on the characters involved.
Posted on May 31st, 2008 @ 9:53 pm
no, no filler. Just a slope constantly downhill
The first 6-ep arc is awesome. And then the next one is weak and leaves ou thinking ‘well, it’ll probably pick up again soon.’ And then there’s a little flashback arc which makes you think ‘okay, it’ll pick up again after the flashback’ and then next thing you know, you’ve finished the show, you’re wondering why you can’t remember the last 8 episodes, and you’re still thinking ‘well, it was really good in the beginning, right?’
When I finished Shana, I recognized that it was terrible, but for some reason I still liked it. It wasn’t until the second season that, only 4 EPS IN, I came to completely and utterly hate it, because it totally reverts back to like episode 14 of the first season like nothing happened.