Forum - View topicREVIEW: Shakugan no Shana III BD/DVD Parts 1+2
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Ryu Shoji
Posts: 671 Location: Cambridge, United Kingdom |
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I actually found myself siding with the Crimson Denizens in this season. I also wish the series explained to use who Hyakki Yakou are, what Sale and Chiara's relation to Dantalion is etc or even when Yuji started talking to the Snake of the Festival. But did they? Noooope.
I'll be ordering this season later this week, but I won't be watching the English dub - I tried with season 2 and it was awful and I couldn't even watch 5 minutes of the movie or S. I've also always disliked Greg Ayres in every role other than Fullmetal Alchemist. |
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Megiddo
 Posts: 8360 Location: IL |
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I have to laugh that the art/animation in this series got a B. It was one of the worst I've seen from J.C. Staff (animation-wise at least).
Anyway, I dropped this about 15 or 16 episodes in. It was a total mess and really embittered me on the Shana franchise. |
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getchman
 Space CowboyPosts: 9120 Location: Bedford, NH |
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I thought it was pretty clear that spoiler[Dantalion created Sale as an experiment but he deemed it a failure].
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RyanSaotome
 Posts: 4210 Location: Towson, Maryland |
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I'm a huge Shana fan but I felt the 3rd season was a mess as well. They introduced tons of characters randomly without any kind of development, and most of the series focused on them fighting battles I could care less about. The series was at its best when it focused on Shana and the smaller scale stuff.. but it went totally away from that in the 3rd season. |
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TarsTarkas
 Posts: 5826 Location: Virginia, United States |
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It should be safe to say, Yuji died when he merged with the Snake of the Festival. The 'creature' that wears Yuji's body now, is not Yuji. spoiler[Season one and two Yuji would never have endangered Shana, and betrayed his friends and allies.]
While they have mangled Yuji's character, I think Shana has received the shorter end of the stick. They have made her character weaker. Season three Yuji is not the man Shana fell in love with. spoiler[Yet she is his, despite his betrayals against Shana and her allies, the evil slaughter of Shana's allies, and the fact that he was willing to accept her death by his hands or his allies' hands, to achieve his goals.] If you loved season one and two Shana & gang, season three will leave you angry and hurt at the drastic character changes. So if you watch the final season, just pretend the Yuji you know is dead, and feel sorry for the fate of Shana. Personally, I think if they were going on this route, they might as well have rebooted the franchise. |
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Thatguy3331
 Posts: 1790 |
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I never really knew what exactly to make of season 3... on the one hand, it did indeed end the series and did it in such a way that I honesty didn't expect. on the other, I found it somewhat hard to care about half of the stuff.
The new characters felt like a bunch of last minute ingredients plopped into a stew and stirred up to hope for the better, and while I will admit to siding with the crimson lords during the middle of the season I still couldn't get entirly behind Yuji. He keeps saying its his own will and not the snake's but I really must have missed something because him suddenly turning to the dark side like that felt as though it came out of frikkin nowhere. While the Idea of Shana and Yuji being enimes was a interesting Idea I couldn't help but feel it wasn't quite executed quite well somewhere, though I'm no genius on how to write romance so I could be missing something entirly. Once it was all over I registered it as being over but I never quite felt satisfied. Its not like I want a reboot or Godforbid some GT-like BS, but I really felt like seeing the series end would be much more satasfying than I felt it was. |
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PurpleWarrior13
 Posts: 2025 |
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I've always been surprised this show lasted for about 80 episodes. That's quite a long time for an anime...
Doesn't Josh Grelle play Yuji now? Anyways, as I've said before, this is one FUNimation English dub I'm not fond of. Ocean set the bar really high with Season 1. Nothing is the same without Tabitha St. Germain's mysterious, no-nonsense interpretation of Shana. Cherami Leigh is usually a very good voice actress, but she just wasn't trying here... While Kristian Ayre wasn't perfect as Yuji, he was light years ahead of Josh Grelle, and Colleen Clinkenbeard basically just plays herself as Daw, and can't compare to Janyse Jaud. Like I've said before, the only performance I enjoy from the FUNimation cast is Kent Williams as Allistair... |
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getchman
Space Cowboy Posts: 9120 Location: Bedford, NH |
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eh, never really cared about the ocean cast. they were were good, but I have no lasting attachments to anybody, except maybe Paul Dobson as Alastor. Funi's dub sounds fine to me and I like how the majority of the new cast sounds similar to the old cast
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MadMan400096
 Posts: 266 Location: Chicopee, MA |
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Eh, I agree. I haven't heard the original Japanese version (I tend to prefer watching dubbed anime, unless the dub is absolutely atrocious, and I mean 4Kids One Piece atrocious), but I preferred FUNi's dub over that of Ocean's. Sure, some lines are flat, and Keisaku sounds like he just got castrated, but outside of him, the only voice I really liked was Janyse Jaud as Margery Daw, though Colleen Clinkenbeard was serviceable, too. I think my favorite out of the FUNi cast was Trini Nishimura as Rebecca Reed. Anyway, the show itself. I've finally finished the entire anime franchise and I have to say, I really enjoyed it. It wasn't without its flaws, of course. The second season had unbearably slow pacing, and this season actually had the opposite problem. While S2 spent waaaay too much time on the impact of Konoe, S3 threw all sorts of new characters, leaving us unable to focus on any one, and the story was rather complicated. Still, the amount of action and the character relationships, jumbled as they were, made it all worth it in my opinion. |
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Ryu Shoji
Posts: 671 Location: Cambridge, United Kingdom |
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I only found that out by looking it up on wikipedia. In the series, the most you learn is that Sale refers to Dantalion as spoiler[Dad]. |
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SilverTalon01
Posts: 2402 |
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Really? I think he was consistent. spoiler[He was trying to save Shana from her fate of endless fighting. Shana was only ever in danger from Hecate very briefly and Yuji stepped in. As it was explained, she is contracted to an actual god (like Yuji is in S3) and has far more power than anyone that would come after her (the trinity wouldn't, aside from Hecate's misunderstanding which she wouldn't repeat). Who else was endangered exactly? All his normal friends were protected by the barrier on the town. Its not like he was ever friends with all of those flame haze... He also prevented Margery from getting involved in the giant battle. Yuji was certainly not willing to accept Shana's death... he made it clear multiple times he was doing this to 'save' her. ] Not to say S3 didn't have shortcomings... lots of new characters with minimal introduction being a big one. |
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superdry
 Posts: 1309 |
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One of the problems with season 3 was the adaptation skewed heavily towards light novel readers (even then it crammed a lot into 24 episodes). I had to find and read summaries, sift through forum posts, wiki pages, etc. just to understand the stuff that was never explained. |
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TarsTarkas
Posts: 5826 Location: Virginia, United States |
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Yuji didn't want to kill Shana, as he supposedly was doing this to save her from her fate. But his overall goal to him, was more important than Shana. He did what he could to mitigate danger to Shana, but in a war where Shana was on the opposing side, anything can happen. Also if Shana was as powerful as you say, then there would have been no need to have season one and two as Shana would have slaughtered all those season's enemies quite handily.
Yuji joined the bad guys, thus betraying Shana and his friends. He waged war on his love and friends. Even Yuji as powerful as he was, cannot control everything. War has a life of its own. Yuji did put Shana and his friends in danger of losing their lives. Season one and two Yuji would have stayed by Shana's side and work to change her fate from that side with his friends and allies. spoiler[Instead he merges with the Snake of the Festival, joins the bad guys, and wages war against them.] |
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eyeofthetiger
Posts: 49 |
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Props to whoever did the soundtrack. I'd rewatch this season just for the kick ass bgm.
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Ferian
 Posts: 162 |
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Ugh... First of all, Yuuji never fused with the Snake on a mental level. They retained their respective psyches throughout the entire period of their cooperation. As such, your claims in an earlier post (which I'm too lazy to find and quote) that Yuuji's changed after merging with the Snake are nothing short of delusional. That aside, Yuuji is a developing character. Sure, much of that development has been cut out of the first two seasons because J.C.Staff staff has a bunch of morons on it. However, his tendencies towards extremism, especially where Shana is concerned, are nonetheless made apparent long before his contract with the Snake; so is his ability to see the forest behind the trees. Furthermore, he's been shown to make logical decisions most of the time and capable of being ruthless, even more so than usual where Shana is concerned. In the beginning, he had too little insight into the situation, too lacking in knowledge. However, by the end of the second season, he's logically concluded that the Flame Haze cannot end this war; listening to the Snake was the next best thing. In light of this, there is nothing unbelievable or even surprising in his ultimate decision to switch sides, for allowing the Denizens to win is the only possible way to reach any kind of closure, and by becoming their leader, he could have them win on his terms. Besides, with the Snake being essentially immortal, it was a choice between "join my cause and I'll let you have a say in things" and "struggle until one day you expire and Reiji Maigo transfers to a new vessel; at some point, I'll get to do this anyway, just without your input; and until then, the Flame Haze, humans, and Denizens will all continue suffering because there's no other solution, really - I've spent a few millenia pondering on the problem, I know."
I may concede the first season since that Yuuji differs strongly from his self later on. Back then, following Shana was all he could do, not having any power of his own. However, the second season... the second season is not a thing, period. They butchered the entirety of Yuuji's development as a character there. Anyway, season 2 Yuuji can already do much more than simply follow Shana. By the end of that season, he wants to do much more. He gains enough knowledge about the conflict to make his stance, instead of following the side that picked him up first. From my perspective, if it had been Hecate and not Shana to rescue him in the first episode (I chose to say Hecate because she had actual reasons to do so, with Reiji Maigo harboring her god), Yuuji would follow her just as well, offering her to feed on his existence rather than random people, coming to see the Flame Haze as unfair for simply deciding that the denizens had no right to exist and condemning them to suffer in the unhospitable Guze rather than search for a solution that would satisfy both parties, etc., etc. Jumping to the point, Yuuji's decisions in the first season are driven mainly by his lack of understanding of the situation and later a lack of power to truly make a difference. After gaining both, it's no wonder that his decision would differ from when he was drifting along with the stream.
Had Shana not been a newbie with little to no experience and no handle on her powers or even understanding of what those powers are - then yes, there "would have been no need for season 1 and 2 as Shana would have slaughtered all those seasons' enemies quite handily". However, she is all of that so those two seasons exist and have their place. By your logic, Shana is not powerful because she needs to work to become strong. I find that logic... lacking in logic, if you see where I'm coming from. In case you don't, there is a difference between simply having a lot of power (Shana in the first two seasons, Yuuji in the second season) and being capable of using that power efficiently (Shana by the end of Final, Yuuji throughout the entirety of Final). |
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