STORY
Don't be deceived by the intelligent beginning. I thought I was going to witness an excellent story and drama just from the opening. It quickly became boring, lame, and confusing. It evolved into just another of the partly romance, partly action stories, with both aspects being underdeveloped, flat. If I had read a paragraph summary of the show then it would've been just that much more boring (ruining the only part of show) it was one of the few redeeming things the show has, that concept...
It has uninteresting dialogue, repetitive battle scenes, and slow execution. They bring in some sort of awkward romance story that isn't really fulfilling or moving. So this series basically becomes a horribly cliché and contrived romance with absolutely no progress in any meaningful direction. The actual story development with the baddies, romance and all that is REALLY cliché. Neither the story nor characters are worth it for watching this series. The action was actually boring to me, the ones I saw anyway...
It's best summed up as a sword girl + generic male lead fighting to save the day. They came up with some 'intricate' plots but really they aren't that impressive. The show tries to blur its simplicity with many terms and names. It's roughly about a boring and overly confusing and overly repeated plot about mistes, torches, flame hazes, guzes, balance of the world, etc... The whole thing is just confusing and I don't feel like it's my fault. There's not enough explanation yet there's so much confusing, boring dialogue
there was this ONE SCENE that I thought was the ULTIMATE EXAMPLE OF WHY it's so...manipulative and impudent at the same time. it also is one of the biggest/annoying problems in new anime that I canNOT STAND.
So they show Shana changing and they show her taking her panties off (lol)
But while she's doing that she's talking about all that mumbo-jumbo and that mumbo-jumbo made no sense.. AND AND because I have yet to thrown in the towel even though the signs are huge that the show is shit, I re-watch that scene. orz OTL I realize it really doesn't make ANY SENSE. it's like they're trying to cover it up with this weird loli fanservice which doesn't do much for me. Have her say shit that makes no sense which they are apparently deluded that the viewer will take in as really too complex and deep or whatevers to comprehend if she takes her undies off while she says it. Was this in the ep I dropped it? PRObably. this is a really bad tell-tale sign that this anime is a piece of popular overrated shit.
talk about trashy, and just plain insulting. i'm sure the loli otakus went crazy over that scene but i didnt...
CHARACTER
As episode after episode passed, I just felt horribly unsatisfied without any character development.They lack any sort of sort of dimensionality: unconvincing voice acting, dull dialogue, no development. Everyone else besides Shana is merely "devices" to make things a bit more intricate and to help push the "story" on. Characters are basically given whatever set of feelings and goals and repetitively do the same action. Nearly all of them are meaningless and replaceable. The male lead is not very appealing and can be easily forgotten. Shakugan no Shana is blessed with Shana, a cute character, but that's it. Shana is the only interesting character and even so she's not THAT interesting. Shana is clearly "loli" which doesn't make me like her any more BTW but hey if you're into that sure…
The enemies are just enemies, it's like they exist only because the anime needed them. They don't explain their background all that much, they don't have motives really, boring, possibly annoying, same old same old, in other words I couldn't care much... From the 1st ep I just thought the baddies just weren't that "cool" but then again I didn't get to see/meet the other baddies I saw in the opening so who knows. But I doubt it...
ANIMATION
I loved the artwork. It's what made me want to watch this in the first place. Though I did find the animation itself to be a little ordinary since I've seen other anime that look like this. It's normal production quality of recent anime. Basically as much as I like the artwork, I can't watch for that
Sound
One department Shana does quite well at is music. Its theme songs are very good and even fits in with the series with the lyrics. As far as voice acting, I couldn't help but feel that some characters weren't sounding too convincing. That could simply be due to the poor execution of the characters and storyline, consequently damaging the mood of the scenes.
There are better anime of this genre out there fo sho. Shana never really passes more than an average/below average show. I would recommend that you watch the openings, because they look awesome and all that & maybe the firsrt couple eps if you just wanna know what it's about but I can't fathom watching all 24 eps... Overall, a show with huge potential that fails to live up to its hype.
do yourself a favor and watch SLAYERS NEXT!! (watching slayers next twice is more enjoyable than watching shana once lol) instead of this anime. it has a girl with red hair too lolz... no but seriously it's actually funny and the serious parts are really good too (this anime is cool... in short while shana just gets lamer and lamer). seriously the characters actually have souls and the story is actually cool (I have this thing against fantasy anything but I love this fantasy anime) and the background music kicks ass and so does the op/ed and the seiyuu. It's better in every single way except maybe animation but I personally prefer slayers next animation to shana animation personally. it's on HULU!
www.hulu.com/the-slayers-next
