Forum - View topicREVIEW: Shakugan no Shana III (Final) episodes 1-12
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The American Average
 Posts: 645 Location: Jehuty |
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holy crap totally forgot about Shana III guess I have 12 eps to watch.
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BigOnAnime
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 1256 Location: Minnesota, USA |
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Personally I find this third season to be an absolute disappointment, it gets a 6/10 from me currently at best. I greatly enjoyed the first two seasons (I used to be really into Shana nearly 3 years ago.), but this one, it's just not anywhere near as good.
A few things to note on availability, FUNimation probably is simulcasting it as they know many probably watched season 2 fansubbed (Because they were impatient people.), and they probably would have loved a legal way to watch the series as fast as possible. Also, they have season 2, it's just they haven't been able to receive materials due to the Geneon Universal merger of Japan, hence why lots of Geneon stuff is out of print currently here. |
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Bastille
 Posts: 70 |
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It's a shame JC Staff has screwed up the story to the degree they have so far. At the start of S3, I found myself having to pass around a rather lengthy post I wrote up explaining what happened in the novels in order to clear up the confusion regarding what had happened to Yuji.
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RyanSaotome
 Posts: 4210 Location: Towson, Maryland |
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My big problem with the 3rd season so far is lack of Shana. I watch this series for her, not all of these random flame hazes I don't really care about. Fortunately it looks like second half will have a lot more Shana.
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The American Average
Posts: 645 Location: Jehuty |
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@ ShanaFan852
judging by your name I'm gonna believe you. 
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Ermat_46
Posts: 743 Location: Philippines |
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* The first half of season 2 gave spotlight to the side characters like Ike, Chigusa (Yuuji's mom), Keisaku, and that red-haired tomboy, but come season 3 and all of them were discarded. That gives a feeling that the whole first half of season 2 come into waste.
* Yuuji's sudden change in the first episode anime might appear as ass pull to some viewers. As far as the spoilers are concerned, it was foreshadowed early in the novels (as early as Khamsin Arc). It was the result of the writers omitting a seemingly irrelevant detail early in the novels. |
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Bastille
Posts: 70 |
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Well, given that the first eight episodes of the second season were original content that almost everyone hated, it's easy to see why it was ignored afterwards. JC Staff can't handle the source material without screwing it up and their limited interactions with their own additions were even worse.
I place heavy blame in how JC Staff handled everything post-Sabrac fight, at the very least. |
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drdr48
Posts: 360 |
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Well, to be completely honest, even though I was really invested in the first few episodes, now I find this season to be... kind of boring.
There's some cool action, yes. But the pace feels slow for some reason. It's like all the FUN was sucked out from the show in this season. The story is a bit confusing and hard to keep track of. There are also too many characters to follow. Trying to follow on everything that's going on feels exhausting. Watching it is excruciating. |
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pachy_boy
Posts: 1341 |
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It's been a long time since I've seen Season 2, but I didn't think it was a problem at all. It was all part of the story, particularly since in that setting they were dealing with one of the villains' shadow-doubles.
Yeah, that was a real surprise. Up until that point, it was an interesting change in pace to see two boys help out this woman but seem to only have feelings of admiration for her.
Watching Yuji as a villain, I get the same feeling that I get from the "villain" from Kurokami. It's really early to tell, but perhaps there's something more complex and intricate up Yuji's sleeve that'll be revealed later on that'll explain his actions, that perhaps the second series didn't quite cover. Either way, I'm intrigued and fixated on him and Shana having to face off each other. One of the things I really like about this third season is that while for a time Shana does get captured and held prisoner, it still doesn't quite fall into the tough-heroine-turned-damsel cliche found in most similar series. As a refreshing change in pace she plots her escape and waits for the right moment--even though she still gets helped by a rescuer, who in this case is her fiercely loyal tough-as-nails maid and not a man as is traditional--and in the end she jumps right into business and action leading her group as the bigger war takes place. When one thinks about it, it's really amazing that they bothered to finish up this story, as opposed to giving the usual treatment to most light-novel adaptations by merely covering the first couple stories. I never would've quite expected this series to head into an epic, LordoftheRings-level finale, but it definitely has me hooked and I'm more than looking forward to seeing it all the way through to the story's conclusion. |
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Yttrbio
 Posts: 3674 |
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Considering how ridiculously over-the-top conflicts in Shana have been in the past, seeing spoiler[formation battle, siege weaponry, and the like] felt completely wrong. Somehow, spoiler[thousands of Flame Hazes and thousands of Denizens going at it] feels incredibly muted in comparison to what we've seen before.
On the topic, the design of the Denizens has transformed from the subtle creepy not-quite-humanness of the first bunch we saw to generic monsters from your favorite JRPG series. I was not particularly happy about it. I was a huge fan of the first season, but the things I liked about it, (the independent, dominant personalities of the main characters on both sides, the blunt honesty of the Denizens' goals, the general WTFness of it all, the social challenges of adapting to a foreign world) have completely vanished into a very conventional "good guys vs. bad guys" story, centered around a plot element pulled out of thin air. Bastille, do you have a link to that post? |
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Ryu Shoji
Posts: 676 Location: Cambridge, United Kingdom |
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As a note - FUNimation do have the license to Shakugan no Shana II, S and the movie. If I remember correctly, all three were due out in 2011, but due to Geneon being involved in a merger or something, FUNimation didn't receive the materials in time. I expect the original intention was to release them before the third season started airing.
As much as I am loving this series, I do feel like we are missing out on something that the novels probably explained - I haven't read the novels beyond the first 2 (due to me only speaking English), but it still feels like something is missing. This makes me even more resentful that Viz Media cancelled the light novels after the first 2 (and then they had to cancel the manga just after finishing the Margery Daw-Lamies arc didn't they? 9.9). I just hope that season 2 onwards getting released starts a spike in Shana sales that leads to the novels being picked up again, or FUNimation include a booklet or something in their future physical releases explaining the gaps. Once the series had started and I stopped questioning who all the new characters were, I really started to like the pace. It's not super fast, it has the slow rising tension that a pre-"war" arc needs. It's that build up that has me hooked - especially as the first episode teased us with a Shana-Yuji final showdown. Even their confrontation in episode 12 was quite epic; to me it shown how much Shana had developed as a character since the beginning. Also, seeing Sophie one-shot Decarabia needs to be mentioned. Just because it's a nun lightning kicking a giant serpent in the face. Another thing I found humorous was, whenever I heard The Snake of the Festival at first, I'd think of Sōsuke Aizen from Bleach. |
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Megiddo
 Posts: 8360 Location: IL |
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One of the largest issues I have in season 3 is time. Would it kill them to state directly what day it is? How long as it been since Sabrac's defeat in season 2? How long had it been since spoiler[Yuuji 'disappeared']? Setting is the absolute basics of storytelling, and I'm not sure whether to put the blame on the novels or JC Staff for the lack of description for when things are happening.
That said, this season has been pretty awful for me. Not quite at the first half of the second season, but still really close. Again, I'm not sure whether to blame JC Staff or the novels. For instance, in the review Theron mentions that there are a bunch of new Denizens, which is true. Where the hell did they come from? Did they just *poof* into existence? Why was it that only the Trinity was there to defend against Shana and Wilhelmina as they were trying to take back Yuuji at the end of the first season? Or, even worse, why is it that after the leader of Bal Masque gives the exact order to all those Denizens to "defend Seireiden" while he and the Trinity are away, the very first farking thing that they do is launch a pointless strike all over the world that only serves to leave Seireiden practically defenseless? Or why was it never mentioned (that I can recall) that spoiler[simply by yelling really loudly, Shana can for some reason summon Tenmoku Ikko]? Repeating again, I'm not sure whether to blame the author of the light novels or JC Staff, but season 3 has been garbage writing piled upon garbage writing. There has been stuff (like that mentioned above) that shouldn't even be accepted in fanfiction. Personally, I am not surprised in the least that otaku are not purchasing this. Season 1 and 2 sold around 10k copies per vol and season 3 barely pulled off 3k. That's a massive drop in sales. I bet a lot of otaku don't like the stupid 180 turn that this season did. |
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Yttrbio
Posts: 3674 |
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For that matter, why are they part of Bal Masque? Why do they care about any of this? There's some kind of order-giving hierarchy here, but why, and where did it come from? In the first season, all the Denizens had their own goals, and they worked together only when there was something they wanted to gain from it (except for Sydonay, I guess. What did they pay him with?). But now, they may as well go by "nameless loyal minions A through Z." |
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silencer226
 Posts: 302 |
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Season 3 has been an up and down ride for me. Season 3 has taken a completely different path from the first two. I think Yuji's new design looks completely rediculous, and the deep voice certainly isn't working for him in my opinion.
Probably my main annoyance was the lack of Shana, it took 3/4 of this first half for her to do anything substantial, and that was basically spoiler[breaking out of her imprisonment]. It feels like a rushed mess so far, the action I enjoy but as far as story goes I don't know what to say. But admittedly I still enjoy watching it to see what will happen. And before I forget, the introduction of these new Flame Hazes is pretty lame (I knew about Sophie from the manga viz released, had small story about her in it), how am I supposed to care about any of these characters when I don't know jack crap about them!? Sure reading a novel I'm sure you got the details, but for people who are just watching the anime, this is like some kid writing a story and adding in characters out of nowhere. |
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Ferian
 Posts: 162 |
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Mostly answering megiddo, but also some earlier points.
I'd mostly blame J.C.Staff for everything, though some questions can be cleared up with simple logic. The appearance of new characters is quite an obvious point: the world is a big place. The denizens that have been scattered all around have now gathered to fight a war. Before season 3, they were all over the damn globe so is it really such a surprise we haven't seen them? As for why have they gathered, if you are patient enough, you might actually notice that Yuuji is pretty much their GAWD. That is why they care, too. Before Snake of the Festival appeared they had been separated, with only the trinity and those directly under their command actually stationed at Seireiden. They lunched the strike all over the world to force the Flame Haze to form a defensive line. Seireiden is completely hidden from view, and they wouldn't even be able to find it if it weren't for Tendoukyuu; they'd just know the general location based on the presence of the God Gate. Keeping the enemy at bay and forcing them to form a defensive line seems to me like a better strategy than forming a defensive line and thus pretty much giving away that there is something important going on that needs to be protected. (No one at Seireiden expected for some Flame Haze to actually be able to locate God's Gate). If seireiden wasn't wrecked from the inside, Sophie and company wouldn't even find it, ever, except for maybe by blindly bombarding the whole area. Also, I think Shana didn't spoiler[summon Tenmoku Ikko by "yelling really loud, but by wishing for power.] Not that that matters much, as we haven't been told of that possibility. Also, the second season of Shana came out in 2007, 4 years ago. That's above the short memory of otaku, and probably the main reason for the drop in sales. The biggest fault of this season, I'd say, is Yuuji's unexplained fusion with the God of Creation. It's far better explained in the novels, where he pretty much went Yandere over Shana, with a strong protection quality, a "ready to kill anyone who hurts her" mentality, and bursts of rage from time to time. (One of those was actually shown in season 2, though watered down when he was used to lure Shana into a trap and killed off... what were they called... eh, whatever, the denizens around him with sword, flames, and his bare hands). So now he's prepared to follow the Snake's plan because he's sure it will create a better world for Shana, one where she doesn't need to fight for all eternity. P.S. Despite its flaws in storytelling, this is the best season of Shana thus far for me. I actually care more about these characters I know little to nothing about than about any of the school life stuff that the first two seasons were filled with. Oh, right, and Rebecca is cool. She has a straightforward personality, and that kind of character is the best choice when you don't have time for prolonged character establishment and development like was the case with, for example, Margery and Keisaku. |
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