The episodes starts out with a flashback of Margery Daw’s first encounter with the Tomogara with the silver flame. This Tomogara kills everyone in sight and Margery herself is quite bloodied up. It’s a more detailed event of what caused Margery Daw to become a Flame Haze and why she holds a death grudge against the silver flame. It also points out that she was a human around medieval times. She wakes up from the flashback dream to drink some more.

Over at Yuji’s training spot, he is training against Wilhelmina. Her wrappings transform into the large baby Rinne that he encountered when he first met Shana. The sudden reappearance throws him off guard, but he is able to block the attack. Sato observes the fight and walks away with frustration and envy. It’s another developing situation for the series involving Sato’s obsession to get stronger.

Alastor tells Yuji that it’s about time he started to learn how to cast a Fuzetsu. Later that night, Wilhelmina’s research into Yuji’s Reiji Maigo leads her to a name: Pheles. The next day, she packs up and tells Shana she’ll be gone for some time for more research. Pheles is still an unknown at this point, but it’s safe to assume that Wilhelmina knows something about Pheles.

Back at Margery Daw, Sato returns home and requests to be trained to get more power to follow Margery Daw. Margery tells him he would die if that were to happen. This leads to a flashback story of Margery Daw in the 1950s in New York. It starts out with her doing battle wih a Tomogara with a clock for a face called Anna Berg, which is also written on his clock/face. She is ambushed by Metamorphosis during the fight. She’s incapacitated, but Anna Berg decides to not kill her and instead move on to his plans.

At this point, I’m surprised Metamorphosis doesn’t just finish the job knowing the dangers of keeping Margery alive so that she can return to fight again. Villains and fiction at work here. OH well. Back to the episode.

After the two villains leave, Margery recuperates and has a change of wardrobe. While changing, a young boy runs up to her while the Fuzetsu is still up and sees her without any articles of clothing resulting in him receiving an off-screen beatdown for having come into such an awkward situation. Turns out he is a Flame Haze by the name of Yuri. As Margery narrates, she explains that Yuri was a strange one because he didn’t have it in him to kill Tomogaras. She even hints at a great battle in Europe between Flame Hazes and a group of Tomogaras calling themselves the Revolution. Margery is in America to deliver a message to a Flame Haze called Eastedge regarding the topic.

I wonder if that topic will be touched upon again. It could lead to an interesting side story. A war of Tomogaras and Flame Hazes.

Eastedge requests Margery to train Yuri for a while. For his own sake, I guess. Yuri explains how he was on an immigrant ship that got attacked by a Tomogara. He was knocked off the ship, and there he made a contract with Valac to become a Flame Haze. From this, it is obvious that he is not a good candidate to be a Flame Haze for his large compassion for saving human lives. Margery feels that he lacks the properties for the job and tells him to go home while she goes on to face Anna Berg at the Empire State Building.

Overall, this was a decent episode. I would say that they are moving the story along even though it’s mostly a flashback story. At least it’s not another wasted episode like the last four episodes.

Alright, one more useless episode to get through. Sorry, but the last few episodes have been pretty bad. This episode would make it the fourth “filler-like” episode. That’s a month’s worth of useless episodes. So let’s speed this one up too.

Turns out, Ike scheduled a theme park outing with the group so that he could eventually get some alone time with Yoshida on the ferris wheel. He has everything planned out, but all his plans go awry.

Long story short, he leads everyone to a giant maze and pairs everyone up to have a race to see who makes it out first. The only notable part of this whole episode is this one part where Shana and Sato are paired together. Sato takes the chance to ask Shana if he could become a Flame Haze. Another instance of his willingness to become stronger. We don’t find out Shana’s answer nor his reason for wanting to become one though. It’s a quick 15-second scene.

Ike and Yoshida end up exiting first and convinces her to go on the ferris wheel with him. Unfortunately, he has a bad case of motion sickness. The ferris wheel in the past did not give him motion sickness, but he fell victim to it this time. And.. that’s about it for this episode. From the previews, it would look like things are getting back to what the series is about: Flame Hazes battling Tomogaras. Finally, I say. Finally.

Before I begin with this episode, this is yet another craptastic episode. So I’m just going to do a speed summary.

Basically, there’s a surprise test for the next day and the usual cache of characters decide to get together for a study group. Shana isn’t sure of showing up and holds off on her decision. In the end, she shows up anyway.

They do some studying and some eating. Ogata and Yoshida bump into Margery Daw since they’re at Sato’s house. Margery gives them some love advice and everyone goes about their way. Yoshida shares the advice with Shana as they are frienemies.

By the end of the episode, Shana and Yoshida have started to accept Konoe a little more as they consider her as more or less harmless. With that, Shana returns to training Yuji.

That’s all I can say about this episode. It was really just that useless. Just another episode to progress the adolescent emotional mindsets of Shana and Yoshida. The next episode is pretty much the same too.

This and the next two episodes plus the previous episode were so useless, it took me out of the rhythm of reviewing the episodes as they came in. The series finally picked up on the storyline, so I’m trying to catch up.

Alright, so this episode begins with Yuji training with Wilhelmina and showing signs of improvement by dodging one of her attacks. This is about it for anything related to the true essence of the series genre.

Next we see Shana and Wilhelmina ready to eat dinner. Alastor questions Wilhelmina’s choice of food (Cup Ramen). She explains it’s the most efficient of sustenance, despite Alastor’s critique on the need for variety. Shana decides to take a bath instead and in the process gets into an argument with Wilhelmina.

The next day, Yuji goes to pick up Konoe. He’s invited inside the mansion by the butler. The mansion is dark and there’s no one there except for the butler and Konoe. It’s like a horror movie waiting to happen. At school, both Shana and Yoshida are starting to feel the emotional strain due to Yuji’s attention to Konoe. Ike pulls Yuji aside and hints to him that he needs to be more considerate to the others around him. Somehow, I’m starting to get the aching feeling that this show is becoming more and more like a school love drama. t(>.<)t

Fast forward through the episode… Wilhelmina wants to be a better cook and bumps into Yuji’s mom and gets help from her. Then throw in a scene with Margery Daw that has nothing to do with anything. Then return back to Wilhelmina who introduces a cooked meal to Shana. It’s not that great, but Shana accepts it because she’s aware of the effort Wilhelmina put in to making the meal.

Overall, this episode was pretty useless. Had nothing to do with anything. I understand they are trying to push the tension that Yuji causes by giving too much attention to Konoe, but just get on with it. This is horrible.

Shana and Yuji start off the day walking Konoe to school at the dissatisfaction of Shana. Apparently, it’s originally not his duty to walk Konoe to school, but he volunteered to do so to save Yoshida the trouble of going out of her way. Then fast forward to some rather unimportant scenes involving their classmates cleaning up the pool. Totally useless stuff.

Over at Margery’s place, Wilhelmina discusses her investigation on the Keeper of the Reiji Maigo. They mention Yuji’s training with Shana, which doesn’t go well with Sato, who has intentions on wanting to get stronger so he could travel around with Margery, but cannot find any way to go beyond his human limits. This is evident the next day while they are at a new restaurant where Sato challenges Yuji to an eating contest. Slowly, but surely, something tells me Sato is going to acquire power by some means. He’s somewhat of an x-factor character that can lean either to the side of good or to the dark side.

After their eating session, Konoe suddenly disappears from the group. Yuji decides to look for her, but Shana does not want to. Probably due to her negative emotions towards Konoe. She decides to head home, and Yuji fails to talk her out of it, so the two go their own ways. A typical love-hate relationship between the two as always.

Yuji eventually finds Konoe somewhere saving a bird from a cat. Yoshida sees the two and starts to feel a little jealous. Shana
being upset at the whole thing sends Wilhelmina to train Yuji instead of doing it herself. The next day, Shana and Yoshida avoid eating lunch with Yuji and Konoe and instead share each other’s company on the rooftop. This is like an example of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” kind of thing. This also reminds me of Onegai Twins where the two girls make a pact with each other to support each other until the guy chooses.

Overall, I hated this episode. All slice-of-life and doesn’t really touch upon what the show really is, which is sci-fi action.

This episode continues off from the previous episode with the new transfer student who looks like Hecate. Shana quickly summons forth a Fuzetsu to freeze up the area to get a better look at this look-a-like that goes by the name of Konoe. Though the real Hecate would not have been frozen in the Fuzetsu, Konoe actually is frozen. Shana pulls her sword out and is not ready to let her guard down. Konoe is assigned a seat in the back, but stops at the desk next to Yuji. The more you look at it, the more it would appear that this girl is more than meets the eye. Her unfamiliarity with public school life gives Yuji no choice but to help her out, which churns the wheels of jealousy with Shana.

At Margery Daw’s place, she detects a Tomogara nearby. She’s not worried though as she points out there are three Flame Hazes in town. Even Yuji is able to detect the Tomogara, but Shana’s not worried either. She’s more concerned with the apparent Hecate doppelganger. Yuji decides to get help from Margery to see what she thinks about Konoe. Margery gets to the campus and casts a spell at her, but it goes unnoticed by Konoe. That’s good enough for Margery to assume that Konoe is human.

After school, Shana and Yuji are still discussing what to do. Yuji also notices that Shana is radiating a lot of her power and he fears the Tomogara will notice it. Shana suddenly tells Yuji to go home as she heads off elsewhere. We find that Shana is off to meet up with Konoe in an isolated area. She casts another Fuzetsu and the Tomogara appears immediately.

Turns out this Tomogara is new and rather weak. He’s no match for Shana. To heal his injuries, he targets the frozen Konoe for energy. Yuji catches up with Shana and tries to save Konoe before her existence is eaten up. Shana blocks him to see how Konoe would react. She doesn’t do anything and Shana kills the Tomogara. This was to test whether or not this Hecate look-a-like is really human, which in the end, shown that she is indeed human. Back at Bal Masque, they hint that something shady was done.

I don’t even know what to make of this episode. My only comment is that if it were up to me, I would have just obliterated the look-a-like. End of all the speculations and the unknown factors. But since it’s a show and one can’t just go and kill those not proven to be guilty, by default they have to wait until they know for sure what’s going on. There’s obviously a reason for all of this happening. If I were to guess, I’d say this Konoe is some kind of instrument to get close to Shana and others before finally making an attack. That’s how I see it. Otherwise, it would be a pretty weak attempt at making this “action” anime into nothing but a harem romance show. >_<

The episode starts out with Shana trying to learn how to prepare lunch for Yuji via Yuji’s mom because she’s jealous at Yoshida bringing food for Yuji. Here we find out Wilhelmina can’t cook if her life depended on it. Meanwhile, Wilhelmina helps Yuji in his training to better use his powers. She’s distracted that Shana doesn’t want her help in learning how to cook and she her distraction is taken out on Yuji. From that, Yuji is able to demonstrate that he has much more power than before (namely, last season). And from last season, his temporary synchronization with Hecate helped to expand his energy/power capacity. At least they’re making it so that he can defend himself instead of just being a liability. Over at the bad guys’ headquarters, Bal Masque is rebuilding their floating castle. Metamorphosis heads out on an undisclosed mission.

At lunch, Shana stuffs a bento in front of Yuji to counter Yoshida’s bento. Although I was expecting to see some kind of lunch that she failed to make for him, it turned out to be a bunch of melon breads jam packed into the box that uncompresses themselves after Yuji opens the box. Forced to eat both lunches, Yuji passes out during class. The comic relief and the love triangle themes so far in this series are here, but not so much in regards to what the real plot of this season will be. The show needs more Flame Haze ass-kicking and less slice of life drama.

While the two girls argue over what’s best for Yuji at the nurse’s office, the enemy from the previous episode takes the opportunity to put Shana, Yuji, and Yoshida into a dream state. Yuji remembers what’s going on. His realization doesn’t break the fake reality. He pinches Shana’s face to make sure, resulting in a counter punch to the gut and a possible sword slash from Shana. Anyway, Yuji deduces that Yoshida needs to realize it’s a dream as well. They get back to her, but she’s unconscious and the Tomogara, named Mare, is there waiting for them. Of course, cocky bad guys always say stuff like “she’ll never wake up”. Though, you know that’s not true at all. Anyway, Shana in the meantime is busy fighting the memory of one of the Bal Masque personnel and not doing very well. Though these people are supposed to be quite tough, one would think that Shana be a lot stronger than this.

While standing around being useless, Yuji takes note that Shana’s attacks have no effect against Mare. He also takes note that Mare inhabits the bodies of Mystes to do battle. From that, he determines that Mare is inside him, as he’s a Mystes. Mare goes after the Reiji Maigo inside Yuji, but upon contact, she is ejected out of Yuji, fatally wounded. She references that there is a “Keeper” attached to the Reiji Maigo before she dies. Yoshida wakes up right before Mare dies and all three are returned to their reality. Upon hearing about this Keeper, there are rumblings from Alastor all the way to Margery Daw. And as a final shocker, the end of the episode introduces a new transfer student who bears a striking resemblance to Hecate. Obviously, this is going to be the driving force for the next several episodes before anyone finds out what’s really going on. On a personal note, I don’t see the resemblance. Not without that oversized hat that she’s always wearing. I guess I’ll just have follow along with the story.

Shakugan no Shana second season. I’m excited. Again, the opening is by Mami Kawada; not bad at all. The episode starts out with a mysterious female character with a staff with several bells attached. Then we’re brought back to the main character, well, male main character, Yuji and through him we’re reintroduced to all the other characters from the first season. Shana, of course, makes the final appearance of the cast of characters as she is escorted to school by Wilhelmina.

Seems like the usual formula for most shows, which is to quickly reintroduce all the important characters really quick so people can go.. “Oh shit, he’s back, and so is that guy, and her! I remember that character.” And all that good stuff. It’s a good way to smoothly transition in to the show.

As Yuji reflects on the events from the battle against Bal Masque, he quickly realizes that events happening in front of him already happened before. It’s confirmed when the first bad guy reappears. I thought it was the Shana movie all over again. Anyway, only Yuji realizes that history is repeating itself and no one seems to notice. After school, Yuji tries to find help through Margery Daw but he realizes he’s stuck within a certain amount of available environment. It’s hard to explain while trying to keep down on the amount of text, so let’s just say he was going nowhere.

Throughout the episode, Yuji slowly begins to discover that what people are saying appear to be limited and are unable to produce anything dynamic. He reasons that everything is driven by his memories and what he knows and therefore he’s in a world made from his mind. The epiphany snaps him out of his dream and he finds himself being yelled at by Shana for spacing out during a live battle.

Yuji looks up at the Tomogara that Shana is fighting, who is the one who put him in the dream state. Shana finishes her off with ease, but obviously the enemy has ulterior motives. After the enemy burns up, Yuji loses all memory of what just happened to him. They proceed to school and Shana exhibits her trademark triple Uresai’s before the rest of the cast show up at school as well. I knew that was coming, it was just a matter of time considering that line pretty defines Shana’s tsundere character.

As for the ending theme, it was alright. The first season of Shana had ending themes that I didn’t particularly like. Many liked them, but I didn’t. This time around, the ending song is also performed by Mami Kawada and so I don’t mind it at all.

Overall, this was a decent episode. It was a good revisit on the main characters to see what has changed and what hasn’t. No true indication as to what this season has to hold, but judging from the opening sequence, there seems to be a new antagonist character who has some kind of love interest in Yuji. Bal Masque is obviously still around and I don’t like that because it’s going to end up like the end of the first season. Come on, bring in some new enemies.

Sola Episode 13 Review

I was slightly let down with how this series ended. The apparent bad guy of the series was the one who got another chance at life while the other main characters were sacrificed.

Continuing off from the episode 12, Matsuri hesitated for a second and failed to land a direct hit on Aono. Though Matsuri should have been fatally wounded at this point, she was still very functional as she proceeded to clean up this mess.

More fighting starts and Aono gains the advantage with her more dynamic origami powers. Yorito sacrifices himself to protect Matsuri, and Matsuri takes the moment to kill off herself to give Aono a mortal life again. Somewhat reminiscent of a vampire who’s been granted another chance at life.

The second half of the episode was what I consider a waste of time. It was just ten or so minutes after the events. Mayuko and Takeshi continue their love-hate relationship and Aono befriends Mana and Koyori and the three go back to what the series was really about: enjoying the sky. How boring… In the end though, like most anime when it comes to the death of main characters, they always leave a sign that the main characters are not quite dead yet. In this case, a pair of tomato juice cans on a bench table.

Anyway, this series would have been better if it just ended on the 12th episode. Just keep things open for interpretation. But no. Didn’t happen that way.

Sola Episode 12 Review

The episode starts out with a flashback of the original Yorito and company in the cave. They make plans on how the three of them are going to leave the area on their own. On a side note, I just like how they reveal Matsuri’s behavior of kicking things when they don’t work properly as having existed all the way back then. What doesn’t make sense is why there is a well inside a cave.

On the rooftop of Aono’s house, Matsuri is requesting that Aono let go of Yorito and let her take him away. For some reason, this felt like getting a marriage blessing. Matsuri challenges Aono to a final battle for Yorito and runs off to the battleground, which happens to be more rundown, abandoned city areas.

Yorito and Matsuri are inside a movie theater and pretending that they are watching a film. As Aono shows up, Matsuri explains that she intends to defeat Aono and erase Yorito from existence. The two begin their fight. I must say, this episode had a very big fight sequence. At least half of the episode involved Aono’s paper attacks and Matsuri’s distenegration techniques and sword swinging.

Throughout the episode, there are several flashback scenes revealing how Aono came to be a yaka. Matsuri was lonely, and so brought her back to life to keep her company. It would appear that Matsuri is atoning for her mistake.

Aono pins Yorito to the wall with her powers to await for Matsuri’s downfall. There he does some trash talking about how Aono created him so she could easily control him, unlike the original Yorito who I assume fell in love with Matsuri and didn’t show as much sibling affection towards Aono.

More fighting ensues as Matsuri flings Aono through a concrete wall! If only there was more of that during the series. Matsuri gets a clear stab at Aono afterward, but it turns out that was a fake Aono. Aono fabricates a knife out to kill Matsuri, but Yorito pulls himself off the wall and tackles Aono to the ground. Yorito clutches Aono in a death grip and signals Matsuri to go for the kill.

It did appear at first that Matsuri was headed towards that direction until a film starts rolling inside the theater. The film depicts a blue sky. At that point, Matsuri stabs herself with the sword. Takeshi explained to her that putting her life in the sword and projecting it to another yaka would turn that yaka human. She walks over to Aono with the sword and the episode ends with the sword thrusting downwards.

What an episode. If the series ended here, I think it would strike a similar chord of that of the Sopranos series ending. One more episode to go. Hopefully, it’s not some boring episode used to tie up loose ends.