I finally finished it.

Shakugan no Shana was one of the first shows I watched, back when I first started watching anime. I liked it at the time. It had a unique setting, one quite unlike anything I’d ever seen before (this was like, the third anime I watched or something). It had good shipping potential and cool fight scenes. It had good shipping wars. I liked Shana’s personality, and had never seen anything quite like it before.

Now that I’ve seen a lot more anime, I’m less impressed with the original. But it still has a soft spot for me.

Still, the series kind of fell apart in the second season and never recovered. That whole thing with Hecate transferring schools was the start of the downward spiral. I lost interest, but eventually finished the second season a couple of years after it aired.

The third season started off pretty strong, with Yuuji turning into Darth Vader. But then I slowly interest. At this point, there are way too many characters. I couldn’t care less about most of them, aside from the ones in the original series, much less remember who they were. All the people in the picture above fought extensively in the final battle: I have no idea who any of them were.

The plot is even more confusing. Since it’s been about seven years since I saw the original series, I wasn’t entirely sure what was going on for most of this season. Yeah, probably no one to blame for that but myself. But they sure don’t make it easy to understand. They throw out made-up terminology like nobody’s business, and talk about these characters who’ve barely shown up at all like they’re important. Plus everyone seems to have five different made-up names which they choose from at random.

Shana herself became more tiresome as the series went on as well. Less tsun-tsun and more dere-dere. Got annoying real fast.

• Storytelling – D – No clue what happened.
• Voice – C – Cool setup, although they use way too much technobabble.
• Characters – C – Who are these people? The ones I know are fine though.
• Attention Grab – D – It took me a year to finish for a reason.
• Production – B – Looks fine.
• Overall – C-

Recommendations – Zero no Tsukaima, Kaze no Stigma