Shakugan no Shana: Season 3 Part 1
(
TV) (2009)
Shakugan no Shana: Season 3 Part 1 Blu-ray features mediocre video and great audio in this enjoyable Blu-ray release
Shana and Alastor, Lord of the Crimson Realm, continue to do battle with the Denizens, who are trying to steal the Power of Existence from mortals. In the last battle, Yuji is revealed to be a mystes, a "torch" of nearly unlimited Power of Existence. Since the Denizens want to capture Yuji and use him to upset the balance of the Realm, Shana resolves to protect Yuji. Yuji then vows to join Shana in her fight.
For more about
Shakugan no Shana: Season 3 Part 1 and the Shakugan no Shana: Season 3 Part 1 Blu-ray release, see the
Shakugan no Shana: Season 3 Part 1 Blu-ray Review published by
Jeffrey Kauffman on
March 9, 2013 where this Blu-ray release scored
3.0 out of
5.
Starring:
Josh Grelle, Kristian Ayre, Tabitha St. Germain, Cherami Leigh
»
See full cast & crew
Shakugan no Shana: Season 3 Part 1 Blu-ray Review
Is this the end?
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, March 9, 2013
The final season of
Shakugan no Shana gets off to a visceral start with a literal bang. The huge battle that
brought the second
season to a close is recapped, and we are smack dab in the middle of what almost looks like trench warfare from World
War I, albeit with
huge mutant dinosaurs and a number of other elements that are distinctly out of this world. But then this long running
franchise, with which
I've some celebrated issues, does something quite remarkable: it retreats from the trenches (so to speak) and gets
back to the one
singular element that it has too often forgotten in its manic adventures through the years: its emotional core, one that
is built around the
feelings of friendship, loyalty and family (whether or not that family is defined as blood relations). One of the reasons I
vastly preferred
Shakugan no Shana the
Movie's
redacted story line to the actual series' more drawn out depiction of the same events is that it pared things down to
their absolute minimum
(at least for the most part). And one of the things the feature film did so very well was to give Yuji's shock at seeing a
friend simply
disappear before his very eyes some quite affecting emotional heft, something that quite frequently got buried
underneath the nonsense of
the series' more tangent filled approach. Ironically, that's the
very element that gives the start up to the third
season its own brand
of emotionalism, and in this case it may even be more affecting, for the one doing the disappearing this time around is
none other than Yuji
himself. Suddenly Shana is partnerless, and rather amazingly, she becomes an at least
relatively vulnerable
character rather than
the epithet spouting
tsundere which has been her calling card for the previous seasons. The opening arc of this
third season of
Shakugan no Shana is in some ways the best thing this series has ever done, finally (some would emphasize
that as
finally)
investing the characters and story with some real feeling and depth.
ADR Director Alyssa Galindo makes no bones about being extremely confused by
Shakugan no Shana's third
season, since she hadn't been associated with the show before. For those of you curious about some of the backstory
and other elements in this franchise, you might want to glance over our previous coverage of the many
Shakugan
no Shana releases:
Shakugan no
Shana: Season 1 Blu-ray review
Shakugan no
Shana: Season 2 Part 1 Blu-ray review
Shakugan no
Shana: Season 2 Part 2 Blu-ray review
Shakugan no Shana
the Movie Blu-ray review
Shakugan no
Shana S: OVA Series Blu-ray review
There's an unexpected poignancy to these opening episodes that is distinctly at odds with the kind of noisy, silly ambience
that filled up a lot of the first two seasons of the show. I mentioned in a somewhat different context in my
Shakugan no
Shana: Season 2 Part 1 Blu-ray review how some episodes in that season reminded me more than a bit of
Tenchi Muyo in Love 2, and
that same feeling swept over me again in these opening episodes, especially since (and this is no major spoiler) we soon
find out Yuji does indeed exist, but is in a different dimension, rather like Tenchi in the aforementioned movie. The
separation of Yuji and Shana sets up some interesting dynamics in this early going, especially since Shana is rather upset
when so many people have forgotten that Yuji ever existed (this is obviously a call back to Yuji's similar feelings about Hirai
in the first season of the series).
One of the infuriating things about
Shakugan no Shana is its over arcane terminology, which is bandied about with alacrity and can
lead to some serious eye rolling. And so unless you're completely conversant with the series' mythology, my saying that Yuji aligns with Bal
Masque or that his sojourn into the realm of Crimson Denizens has revealed a startling truth about the true nature of his being. Part of
what's so frustrating about all of this is that in a very real way the series really doesn't
need all this high-falutin' verbiage to get its
point across. The relationship between Yuji and Shana is what is key, whether they're battling demons or facing the trials and tribulations of
"everday" life.
There are some fun subplots that unspool during the first half of this (supposed) final season. I still continue to be fascinated by Margery,
the hard drinking older woman who does not suffer fools gladly. Margery gets her own fairly major arc in this season which, as this first
volume comes to a close, may actually result in a fair degree of happiness for the character. Meanwhile, yet another epic battle awaits
Shana, but there's little doubt about who will end up victorious.
Shakugan no Shana: Season 3 Part 1 Blu-ray, Overall Score and Recommendation
Fans of
Shakugan no Shana know a lot of the series is given over to battles, but the most salient conflict
I've experienced is the
slow war of attrition I've gone through with this sometimes frustrating show. And guess what? I think the
show is winning. I found
myself drawn into this third season with unexpected ease. While the series still has an annoying tendency to traverse the same rut it's been in
before, this third season gets off to a fantastic start with Shana and Yuji being separated. If things don't quite sustain that level of interest,
there is still plenty going on in the background that longtime fans will enjoy. Unfortunately this new Blu-ray continues with the underwhelming
visual quality. Fans will no doubt easily overlook that shortcoming (or, if not
easily, at least with a certain degree of tolerance), but I still
recommend that newcomers get to know this franchise through the movie, which distills a lot of information into a readily digestible form.
