Anime Review: Shakugan no Shana I

This next anime is one suggested to me by Hikachan the same friend who suggested to me the show D.N.Angel.  Needless to say, I was skeptical when deciding to go and watch the series because of this.  However, watching through the first season, (though the different seasons are split into different series), I was proven wrong.  This anime was very interesting and now I am taking many suggestions from this friend to watch in the future. So, here is my review of Shakugan no Shana I.

An anime adaptation of the manga of the same name, the show came out in 2005 and ran for 24 episodes each around 24 min long.  The show had a great reception in Japan being attributed as being better than the the manga it was based off of. 

The series premise is that in the world, every person has something called power of existence.  This power of existence allows humans to exist in the world and live our normal lives.  However, there are beings from another world that want to use the power of existence for their own personal goals.  They are known as Guze no Tomogara.  They, in most cases have supernatural powers that make them large threats to mankind, erasing people's existences to take their power.  There are fighters known as Flame Haze, who has made a pact with a Guze who wants the world to be in balance.  They combat the Guze no Tomogora and fight for the sake of humanity.

The plot starts out with a boy names Sakai Yuji who is going through the phase of wondering what he is going to do with his life to make his existence meaningful in the world.  On his way home from school that day, all of a sudden in the town square it gets dark and everyone around him freezes still.  Then a giant doll looking creature appears and starts eating the humans around him.  He is able to move somehow and tries to run away.  Then a girl with flaming red hair and red eyes appears with a sword and chops the doll in half.  He talks with the girl and she reveals herself to be a Flame Haze.  She goes on to explain that the doll he had just encountered was a Rinne, a creature who serves the Guze no Tomogora.  She also replaces the people that had their existence eaten already with small flames that grow into the people that once were there.  They are called Torches and are small remnants of the people that used to be alive.  They eventually die out and disappear, but it happens slowly so as to not upset the balance of the world.

Shana then tells Sakai that he is in fact a torch and that the real Sakai Yuji died long ago.  The only reason that he was able to move when everyone else was frozen was that he was a Mistes, a special rare Torch that holds an item inside them.  Realizing this to be her telling him that he will disappear one day, he tries to talk to her and find out more about her and what is going on.  This is the first part of the series and they explain almost everything that you need to understand in the series in a fairly short amount of time which really works for it in that it then gets right back to the main storyline.

The second part of the series goes in two parts, the first being that it touches a lot on the building relationship between Shana and Sakai as they grow closer after Sakai asks Shana to train him so that he can help as long as he can before he disappears forever.  The second is when another Flame Haze comes to the city and it explains in the show, but apparently, although they share the same goal, Flame Haze aren't the types of people to work together and many times they get into fights with each other when they are close.  As we get farther into the series a few more villains come around each with their own goals, and during which time a feud between Shana and another girl from school who likes Yuji start to fight over him without Sakai having any clue at all, this is where the drama comes in.

Let me just say first, I was very impressed with how much they packed into the 24 episode season, the story arcs didn't last forever and things came and went fairly quickly in order to keep the show at a good steady pace.  Also, the drama part of the show went really well too, Shana having the drive to never lose added to the back story used to show how she was never shown how to love when she was trained to be a Flame Haze causing here to question herself because of the feelings that she was having, and yet couldn't fully understand.  And the drama wasn't too forced, you knew it was there but it wasn't like D.N.Angel where the drama was always shoved in your face.  You got to see how people's relationships changed with each other along with having the good action packed scenes that we all know and love.  It had a very good balance to it between fighting and drama.

This show always has you thinking about something, whether it be the plot, the characters, the drama, all of those things were added into the series and they transitioned back and forth between them all quite nicely, and at one point used them all at the same time, one example being when the girl who likes Sakai from his school finds out about him being a Torch and how she deals with the shock that the boy she loves isn't even alive anymore.  The different aspects of the show blended together very well and I thoroughly enjoyed watching the first series of this story.

As a whole, the show is really good, and though I am not always for the drama and the cliche love triangle  when it comes to the drama, it was written and used really when when it came to how it effected the main story especially when it came to the relationship with Sakai and Shana, since constantly through the latter part of the series they are fighting together as a team against the Guze.  On the action level though the choreography of the fights were great.  Some of the better that I have seen and it wasn't too overkill, creating that nice balance between action and character development. 


The series is definitely worth seeing and although I am only done with season 1 I now have high expectations for the other two seasons.  If you want a really good balance of action and drama, then this is something worth checking out.

Final Rating: 8.9/10
Total Episodes: 24
Recommended Watching Format: Japanese Dub with English Sub
Most Reliable Streaming Site: www.nwanime.com