Shakugan no Shana: Season 2 Part 1 Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		1.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		2.5

Shakugan no Shana: Season 2 Part 1 Blu-ray Movie Review

Can you have déjà vu while you’re already having déjà vu?

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman December 17, 2012

Shakugan no Shana is one of those properties that often seems cobbled together from a laundry list of other properties, but which despite that derivative quality has attained a perhaps surprising level of popularity among anime fans. As was mentioned in the Shakugan no Shana: Season 1 Blu-ray review, the series has elements of several other manga, visual novel, videogame, and/or anime offerings, combined with that kind of labyrinthine vocabulary and terminology that seems to be de rigeur in many anime nowadays. Shakugan no Shana frankly just kind of left me cold in its first season, which to me anyway just seemed like a tired, even boring, rehash of plot tropes I’d seen a hundred (maybe a million) times before in other, better shows. So color me at least a little surprised to have had a relatively higher interest level in at least the opening arc of this second season’s episodes. Part of this interest may have been due to the kind of serendipitous fact that I had just watched Tenchi Muyo in Love 2 Blu-ray review (available in the Tenchi Muyo!: Movie Collection), where Tenchi becomes trapped in a dreamlike state fostered by a long ago love of Tenchi’s “grandfather” Yosho. Something at least a little similar happens in the opening episodes of this season of Shakugan no Shana, when this series’ hero, Yuji Sakai, finds himself ensconced in a trance by an evil Denizen (there goes that terminology thing again). Now some may say (quite rightly, in fact) that this is just further evidence of how derivative (intentionally or not) Shakugan no Shana can be at times (even a lot of the time), but there was something undeniably cool about how the series plopped Yuji down in this dream state and left him to his own sometimes dimwitted devices to figure out what was going on.

Maybe plopping Yuji down in an alternate reality is the key to making this series something at least a little better than middling, for once Yuji snaps out of his dream state and we’re back to Shana with her tsundere ways screaming and yelling at Yuji for being asleep, and yet another battle with a nefarious Denizen, things perch precariously over the cliff of no return, where we simply get a lot of elements we’ve seen before, not just in other shows, but in Shakugan no Shana’s first season as well. Those who love this series will no doubt find nothing wrong with that approach (with a “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” rationale), but for those who are (like I am) largely immune to Shakugan no Shana’s charms, this second season can be awfully laborious going a lot of the time.

Even big fans of Shakugan no Shana are on record as stating the love triangle that became a focal point of the series’ first season was tiresome at best, and unfortunately not only is that element continued in this opening half of the second season, it’s actually made worse by yet another girl showing up in Yuji’s life who lights the fire of jealousy in Shana. In fact, after the dream arc is quickly dispelled (no pun intended), we get a kind of weirdly retro little arc where Shana attempts to develop her “domestic” side by learning how to make lunch for Yuji, since he already has another girl named Yoshida providing that service for him, something that of course Shana isn’t very happy about. Things get even more complicated when a girl named Fumina Konoe enters the mix, especially since she bears an uncanny resemblance to one of the villains of the series.

Shakugan no Shana continues to kind of ping pong back and forth between predictable clichés including some shōnen elements, which admittedly are kind of sweet some of the time (Ike’s relationship with Yuji is particularly well done in this second season, helping to offset some of the annoying love triangle-plus plot machinations that take up way too much time). And then we get the supernatural forces at work, with Yuji and Shana attempting to defeat various evil Denizens, something of course they’re never quite able to do, something else that may wear on less patient viewers. Some anime that have this same basic plot set up make the mistake of having their hero (or heroine) vanquish the “bad guy” in every single episode, but Shakugan no Shana seems to almost go out of its way to take the opposite tack, having Shana and Yuji make their best attempt, often winning the battle, but never quite coming out on top in the overall war. (Of course, there might not be a series if that were to happen.)

By the time this first half of the second season winds down, there’s a certain hopefully unintentional irony on display. The final episode, part of what might be called the Pheles arc, finds several characters dressing up like characters from The Wizard of Oz as part of a street carnival. But these characters, and the show itself, is about as far from a yellow brick road to a wondrous fantasyland as might be imagined. This is one anime resolutely stuck in a drab, featureless Kansas where every day is a carbon copy of the one that came before.

Shakugan no Shana: Season 2 Part 1 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Shakugan no Shana: Season Two: Part 1 is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of FUNimation Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. Much like Shakugan no Shana: Season 1, this is a pretty underwhelming looking upconversion that suffers from pallid color a lot of the time, overall softness and much more omnipresent banding than was evident even in the first season. Line detail manages to rise to decent levels when objects are drawn in extreme close-up, but generally this is a fairly uninspiring high definition presentation that will do little to win new fans to the franchise, at least from a purely visual standpoint. It's really too bad, because Staff has done some rather nice animation with this series, with some extremely good character design and some attention to detail (note how often little falling objects like leaves or even embers fill up the background of scenes).

Shakugan no Shana: Season 2 Part 1 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Shakugan no Shana: Season Two: Part 1 features an English dub presented via a Dolby TrueHD 5.1 mix as well as the original Japanese language track delivered via Dolby TrueHD 2.0. Both of these tracks offer very good fidelity and some very appealing dynamic range, especially in the battle sequences. Dialogue is cleanly and clearly presented and the voice work in both languages offer some really good performances. Surround activity is most forceful in the battle sequences, as should probably be expected, but occasionally discrete foley effects will populate the side and rear channels from time to time.

Shakugan no Shana: Season 2 Part 1 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Episode 1 Commentary features Chris George, ADR Engineer, as well as voice actors Cherami Leigh and Josh Grelle. George confesses to being new to the commentary game, but Leigh and Grelle are old hands at this sort of thing, and they kind of guide him through, even though he's the putative "host". There's some good info here about voice work and some technical aspects of crafting an English dub for an existing series.


• Naze Nani Shana II (SD; 17:27) includes:

  Why? What? Shana Ask Anything Question Box: More

  Why? What? Shana Ask Anything Question Box: Keepers

  Why? What? Shana Ask Anything Question Box: Outlaws

  Why? What? Shana Ask Anything Question Box: Silver



• Shakugan no Shana II DVD Commercials (SD; 00:48)


• Shakugan no Shana II Promo Videos (SD; 4:27)


• Shakugan no Shana-tan Begins (HD; 3:59)


• Shakugan no Shana-tan and Yoshida-Fumina Konoe Strikes Back! (HD; 9:05)


• Textless Opening Song "Joint" (HD; 1:37)


• Textless Closing Song "triangle" (HD; 1:32)


• U.S. Trailer (HD; 00:30)


• Trailers for other FUNimation Entertainment Releases

Shakugan no Shana: Season 2 Part 1 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

My hopes were actually relatively high as this second season got underway, but by the time the twelfth episode rolled around, I was at the "get on it with, already" stage, not a good sign when you realize this first volume of episodes only gets half way through the season. Even longtime Shakugan no Shana fans may be massively disappointed with the video quality of this release, which in some ways is even more problematic than the first season's less than stellar presentation was. However, the audio is very good and the set does come with some okay supplements.