Shana: Volume 4

Introduction

It's edging ever closer to Halloween as I write, and thoughts inevitably turn to what's spooky and creepy and not of this world. It's a natural question at this time of year, what would creep you out most? Would it be ghosts and ghoulies, spooks and spectres, zombies, banshees, vampires, werewolves, psychopathic mad scientists and their aberrant creations? Or could it be underage incestuous twins? You know sometimes I wonder just why the press picks on Japanese animation so much… There's not a lot else you can say about the current villains in Shana, except that the only redeeming feature is that they are actually supposed to creep you out, and they succeed beyond the creators' wildest dreams. You can tell when someone's watching volumes 3 and 4 of Shana, by the regular utterances of "Ewww!" from the viewer.

Shakugan no Shana tells the story of high school student Yuji Sakai, and what happens when Shana enters his life. Shana is a Flame Haze, whose purpose is to fight the Denizens of the Crimson World and the Rinne they send to do their bidding, and stop them eating the lives of the people in the real world, who remain blissfully unaware. She isn't always successful, which is where the Torches come in. The balance of the world would be destroyed if people suddenly started vanishing, so Shana creates Torches to take the place of the dead, short lived replacements who eventually vanish from the world, along with any memory of their or the original's existence. When Yuji walks into the wrong place at the wrong time and dies, it's the start of a really bad day for him.

When last we left Shana, she was in dire straits, sucked into a nightmare realm, and imprisoned by some weird vicious plant, while the incest twins taunted her and prepared to take her sword. The story continues with the four episodes on this disc from MVM.


13. Declaration Of War Behind The School
Tiriel and Sorath have Shana at their mercy, and with her flaming sword, the Nietono no Shana, they will be unstoppable. Shana gets a stomach churning education in the wrong kind of kissing, while Yuji races to save the day. Luckily for him, he runs into the other Flame Haze, Margery Daw. While Margery still isn't operating at full strength, coupled with Yuji's abilities to locate the weak points of the twins' spell, it's only a matter of time before they prevail. However they haven't counted on Sydonay, the twins' Denizen bodyguard.

14. A Great Person
Shana wasn't always a Flame Haze, but that's all that Yuji knows about her, that and she adores melon bread. It's time for some flashback episodes. A toga-clad Shana battling an animated skeleton in a rustic setting isn't what it seems. It's training in the Palace of Heaven's Road, a realm that floats in the skies, unseen by the people below. Shana is an orphan who happens to show great proficiency as a potential Flame Haze, at least that's what her mentor Wilhelmina thinks, and why she rescued her when she was a child. Wilhelmina has her doubts though, and she believes that Shana is hiding something. It's why Shana is constantly evaluated, and why she constantly tries in vain to defeat Shiro, her skeletal sparring partner. But the Flame Hazes aren't popular among Denizens, and two in particular search for the Palace of Heaven's Road. Orgon and Vine plan to follow Wilhelmina back from a shopping trip and find the hidden fortress that way. Their plan seems about to come to fruition when Wilhelmina decides to get some melon bread for her young charge, but at the same time, Shana finally gets the drop on the skeleton, and then all hell breaks loose in the Palace of Heaven's Road. Meanwhile, an armour-clad figure is wandering the streets looking to pick a fight.


15. The Day The Flame Was Born
Keeping the Palace of Heaven's Road secret is no longer a concern, and the Denizens are soon on their way to take out the Flame Haze in training before she has a chance to complete her contract with Alastor and become The Flame-Haired Burning-Eyed Hunter. They have no idea what they are getting into. The events taking place above the city have been pre-ordained, and both Wilhemina and Shiro are fulfilling promises made long ago. At the same time, the armoured figure is revealed to be Tenmokuikko, an awesome Mystes that has eternally been searching for the ultimate foe in battle, and has dealt with any Denizen that has strayed into his path with brutal finality. As havoc rains down on the Palace of Heaven's Road, it's finally time for Shana to fulfil her destiny.

16. The Flame-Haired Burning-Eyed Hunter
Sealing the pact with Alastor means revealing those secrets that Denizen and Flame Haze have been keeping from each other. Shana has to understand the legacy to which she is committing herself and must do so wholeheartedly and without reservation. With that pact sealed, she will become the ultimate Flame Haze, although she doesn't have much time to come to terms with her new powers, as Tenmokuikko has found his ultimate foe in the newborn Flame Haze, and he attacks with his sword, the Nietono no Shana. Should she best this foe, one final test awaits her.

Picture

Shana gets a nice 1.78:1 anamorphic transfer. The image is clear and sharp, and the transfer is impressive, showing just a few of the typical NTSC-PAL telltales. There is the slight judder during pans that is evident, but that's it. The character designs are simple but memorable, and the animation is vibrant and effective, blending CG and traditional 2D animation with what has come to be typical anime style.

Sound

You have a choice of DD 2.0 English and Japanese, with optional translated subtitles and signs. It's a surprise to see an action show forgoing the chance to show off its surround goodness, but the stereo tracks are effective enough with discrete placement of effects. The English dub is Ok if you like that sort of thing, although I didn't find it to be the best dub in the world. The opening theme is a toe-tapper, and now that I've started to like the Eurobeat end theme, the show goes and introduces a ballad to end the show with for the second half of the season.

Extras

The extras follow on in the vein of the previous volume. This time the trailers are for The Utena Movie, and the forthcoming Daphne In The Brilliant Blue. Most of the trailers we do got are usually just the textless credit sequences for the show in question, very rarely do we get a proper, from the ground up, trailer. For Daphne, the cheapness reaches new depths, as they haven't even bothered removing the credits. We also get a Production Art Gallery that is a 1½-minute slideshow with character designs and line art.

You'll also find another Naze nani Shana video, which lasts 4 minutes. In it, chibi-Friagne and Marianne answer questions about the show, although it does turn into a mutual admiration exercise. I sincerely hope that Sorath and Tiriel never show up in one of these Naze nani featurettes.

The disc is finished off with the second textless ending sequence.

Conclusion

Shana hits its mid-season slump in this fourth volume, but fortunately it isn't the nosedive that some series take, rather a small period of coasting on neutral. Reviewing this fourth volume is a case of preaching to the converted then, as there's nothing here that will pull in new viewers at this point in proceedings, while fans of the show will need no urging from me to lay down their money. This disc offers 25 minutes of skin-crawling 'Ewww-ness' then takes us down memory lane to tell us how Shana got to be a Flame Haze in the first place.


We have to deal with the incest twins Tiriel and Sorath first, and as we start this disc, they have Shana at their mercy, or so it seems. Sorath wants the Nietono no Shana for himself and is calculated and sadistic about how he achieves it. Of course dear sister Tiriel is supporting him all the way, and with Shana restrained in a ringside seat to their antics, she gets a face full of the wrong kind of affection. Of late, the closer she has been getting to Yuji, the more she has been considering the subject, and kissing is becoming something more than just an abstract activity for humans. All of a sudden she's jealous of Yuji when Yoshida shows an interest in him, and before this latest crisis began, she was in the middle of a row with Yoshida over Yuji. Regardless of their kinship, Shana realises that the sort of affection that the twins have is cloying and destructive, and she becomes extra motivated to defeat them. Yuji gets to play a part in the battle, his innate talents as a Mystes help him locate the weak points of the twins' spell, and with the aid of Margery Daw, he's no longer a powerless bystander. There's also growth for Margery too, who gets her mojo back in this episode, and discovers that she doesn't need to be fuelled by hate to be a Flame Haze. As all this is going on, it's the twins' bodyguard Sydonay who proves to the be the most interesting development, as in the heat of battle, he chooses the better part of valour, and it's revealed that he's working with another group altogether, one which will probably play a bigger part in the episodes to come.


Then it's to the flashback episodes, as we learn how the little orphan girl became a Flame Haze. There's very little to say about these three, except to say that they suffer a bit from prequel-trilogy-itis. We already know that Shana is a Flame Haze, so obviously she survives to the end of the story, and we have to hope that the story offers something interesting enough to make watching it worthwhile. It does in the end, but you have to get past the futility of introducing characters that probably won't make it to the end of the episodes, let alone appear again later in the show. There's also the absence of Yuji to consider, as Shana is built around the unpredictable relationship that has developed between the two. Without Yuji here, it's as if the show is at half strength, and it doesn't have the same emotional hook to it. Fortunately there is more to this story that just the academic interest in Shana's origins. First, we see more of that group of Denizens that we saw Sydonay in contact with at the end of the previous story. Second, Shana's mentor Wilhelmina is an interesting character, and their relationship a sweet one. Wilhelmina is a sort of butt-kicking Mary Poppins, and her gentile nature contrasts well with Shana's fiery demeanour. Hopefully we'll get to see her again in the show. Finally is the reveal of what becoming The Flame-Haired Burning-Eyed Hunter actually cost Shana. Shana is shown to have had an isolated and sheltered upbringing, her rescuers have in effect brought her up to be a Flame Haze, and when she enters into the contract with Alastor, she has nothing to give up. For her, life is defeating Denizens, and making the ultimate sacrifice when called to, and it's understandable that she signs on the dotted line. But now that she has met Yuji, and is developing feelings for him, all of that has to be re-evaluated. She's now seen what the real world has to offer, and the later episodes should see her past come into conflict with her present.


The fourth volume of Shana offers some more entertaining episodes, yes, even the one with the creepy siblings, so it should be an easy purchase for fans of the series. The flashback episodes do feel a little thin without Yuji in them, especially when evaluating the disc by itself as opposed to the series as a whole, but it does look as if some of the flashback story will have a part to play in the latter third of the series. Shana may not be cutting edge, groundbreaking anime, but not every series has to be. Sometimes, some middle of the road anime is just the thing, and Shana is very good at what it does.