+Art Style Fantastic
+Voice Acting Superb
+Latter Half of the Show Fantastic
+A Well Developed Story
+Fantastic Character's both Lead and Supporting
+Really improved of the first season
Cons
-First Half of the Season Slow Paced
-Could have been Seen as boring form the start
-Ending was a little anti climatic
-Similar to First Season, A bit predicable
My Opinion
Alright here goes nothing, i literally finish the second season of Shakugan No Shana maybe 5 minutes ago so this is as fresh as it gets. I reviewed the First season of the show not long ago and it didn't do all to great from me but well enough to make me want to move on to the second season. The second seasons starts with the same issues that plagued the first season, it was really slow, the pacing of the show was really poor but what i will say in defense of the show is that as you go on toward the end of the season you begin to understand why they spent so much time in the first half of the season developing the relationship between characters but you could have had the same effect and only took up 3 episodes rather than 12. It was that slow at the beginning i nearly dropped the show but my love for Kugimiya, Rie as a voice actor kept me going strong.
Alright i spoke about the slow pacing of the first half but once it hits the half way mark it goes 0 - 60 in two seconds. In fact to quote Marchosias (a supporting charater within the show) 'Damn all these things happening one after another. I cant keep up with it all'. That really does say it all. It goes from 12 episodes of filler and stuff that was really uninteresting to holy shit whats going to happen next, how did this happen, why is this happen. The latter half of the show is the saving grace of the show by a long shot. I feel like the show would have been better if A) it was a 14 episode season or B) they started the action around episode 6 and developed the action scenes a little more because they felt rushed at times and there was some much more they could have done if they gave themselves a little more time on the action.
As for the characters my opinion has really stayed the same from my first review, ill give you the short version, Shana is still badass, Yoshida, Kazumi adds that extra twist and tension to the show, though as i said before pretty predicable how that 'love triangle' is going to turn out. Now my opinion of Sakai, Yuuji has changed a little. He is still a very good male lead and he's easy to follow and get behind, but in season two we finally see some weakness from Yuuji which was good to see, the second season did a great job of bringing Yuuji to the realization of the scale of the job that lies before him. Its not like he has a simple walk in the part ahead.
Alright the ending don't worry i keep these spoiler free, talk about an anti climax. We see one of the arc's in the show end around episode 18 leaving 6 or so episodes to go, meaning that there is always something going to happen and its going to be big and you wouldn't be wrong. The previous episodes were action packed and filled with thrills, the last 6 episodes don't disappoint for the most part but again it just felt rushed. How it was going to play out was pretty obvious thanks to the 12 episodes of development we were forced to endure and it really just fell flat right at the end, i honestly though that the ending would be play'd out in a film or something because there was so much that could happen in the last 10 minutes of the show but nothing really super exciting happens. In the end it is all wrapped up with a semi neat bow on top, my reason behind 'semi' is there were a few unanswered question that i assume are going to answered in the third season. If the pattern stay's turn then i can already make out the outlines of how the shows going to finish and i haven't even started season 3 yet.
So the big question, Should you watch this show? My answer if you made it though season 1 and are questioning watching season two, Do it, just grit your teeth and get though the first half of the season because the latter half is well worth it. I give the first half of the show a lot of flack but the fact is it was sort of necessary to fully understand the edge but as i said it could have done with being shorter.
Hope my review was helpful
Murphy
