Series Review: Shakugan no Shana F (2/10)


Instant summary: Yuji joins the sworn enemies of Shana and wages a war against her and all of her kind. (What?!)

Don't worry if you think that you've missed out something; the series did briefly touched on the events that happened between the last season and this, but there are no other anime in between. I heard you're supposed to read up on the novel to find out the reason of the sudden change in story direction, but well, the producers doesn't seem to care whether you know or not.

I should note that that instant summary sums up 90% of what the show is about. The whole of SnS Final is one huge, lengthy, drawn-out war with many battles spread out across the 24 episodes. So effectively SnS is now a war anime. When I was told that SnS would warp up in this season with the cumulation of everything that the title was about, I didn't expect a war between the two factions in the story; and I certainly didn't expect the whole season to be about a god damn war. In fact, they pulled tons of new characters out of nowhere to increase the scale of the war, which includes fat nun whose ultimate attack is a flying kick. Fat nun ultimate flying kick. I'll let you digest that for a moment.

What about the original selling point of a normal guy fighting for his existence, the supernatural being that integrates into the protagonist's society, the relationship triangle between a human and the supernatural being, and the enemy that pops up every now and then? Sorry, the producers sent his regards; it says to go fuck yourselves.

And no, there are no plot twists and surprises or whatsoever. Every now and then they pull off a different form of I Am Not Left-Handed or Reason Worth Living For, but that's it.

You know what I always hated about SnS? All the jargon, complicated details, complicated character design, and all that theory about existence... none of which are what makes the show interesting, since they're there simply as a setup. And because of this war, we're introduced to tons of new names, abilities, history, etc of people we never cared about before this season. All to please the novel fans?

Okay, I'll actually talk about the story now. The whole idea behind the entire story of SnS Final is that Yuji is fighting for a cause he couldn't tell Shana, or to get her to agree. If I had just one complain about the show, it's that I don't buy that. Not only does the end not justify the means, I just couldn't see how it couldn't have worked out between the two. Even if it doesn't work out, I don't see how it would have worked out like this in the end, even if I ignore that fact that it's all too convenient for him to gain the power to do so. Right up till the end, I can't kick the feeling that the writer is just trying his best to come up with a convincing reason for them to fight each other (which failed). You think it's a happy ending? He just advertently caused the death of heaps of people.

(sigh)

Plot/Concept: ಠ_ಠ
Story Style: Good (Very good, actually)
Audio/Visual: Fair (never liked the color scheme of SnS)
Value: 2