Shakugan no Shana III/Final - Episode 1

To start off, I knew this came out this month, but had no clue it was so soon! I absolutely love Shakugan no Shana, it was the first anime I willingly watched subbed and for that has a special place in my heart. I was really looking forward to this season and the first episode was most certainly not a let down! This review will contain spoilers of the episode, so do read at your own risk.

dat animation

This episode starts out with one of those "This is what's gonna happen near the end" kind of moments. It shows an Evil Yuji and Shana fighting, Yuji saying he will save her. It's at this point I figure "Oh hey, cool. I already knew this would happen from the trailer. I can't wait to see how Yuji ends up evil." But, to my surprise...things happened a little differently.

This smile.

Shana explains the situation...remember that big smile on her face at the end of Shakugan no Shana II? The Smile that gave us all hope that Yuji chose Shana, the joy we all felt, awaiting another season seeing them together...Forget that. That smile was short lived. VERY, VERY short lived. Yuji was there. But then he was gone. He disappeared, you know as torches do. At this point, my mind was ready to shut down at the thought that I didn't get my YujixShana happy ending...But there was hope, Yuji might still exist.

We're given a nice new opening, I personally think the openings from the first season were still the best, but the new opening was nice, it's greatest asset being the beautiful animation in it. The old characters are all introduced in the episode; from Wilhelmina to that chick Tanaka liked. Yoshida was more bearable in this one episode then she was throughout the entire second season, which was also a plus.

Not to mention, we were given a half-naked Shana within the first 10 minutes.

We find out various things in this episode, well not really, other then the Yuji ordeal we just find out Satou is heading over to Outlaw, not a whole lot happens, in all honesty though I probably could have cried during this episode given how sad it was; not in a bad way. Nor was it really that sad at all, actually..It was more just the atmosphere it was giving due to that of Yuji being gone.

During the ending (Which is much better then the opening, might I say) we find out that Yuji is now evil and is currently leading Bal Masque, but is he really evil? He says he is going to save Shana at the beginning of the episode. Only time will tell, as this season continues to unfold.

I'm not sure if I'll be doing episodic reviews for every episode of this series, but I will most certainly be doing a full-series review once it's done. Go check this episode over at Commie.