We get a recap of several important events from the first season, but something seems off. Yuuji is one of those people who bitches when the anime deviates from the source material, and he notices the Matrix-esque nature of the situation. Little clues like the Sakura petals in September, and the inability to visit places for the first time tip him off to the idea that he is stuck in a dream world. When Yuuji snaps out of it, he finds that he was only trapped for a matter of seconds by a “weak” Tomogara with horns, bells, and an umbrella, ella, ella.
GiggleBellHorns just appeared out of nowhere, and has a tiny Power of Existence, so Shana easily cleaves her in two. As Shana and Yuuji continue on their way to school, Yuuji forgets that his whole dream adventure (I hate when that happens!), and then asks Shana what words she said to him before she activated the Tempa Jyosai. Everyone is embarrassed that Yuuji can’t remember Shana saying, “Yuuji, let’s have a threesome with Kazumi,” so Shana makes something up. When they get to school, Shana and Kazumi continue the cold war, and Satou shows how completely whipped he is.
I have to give credit where it’s due, because this was a fantastic first episode. Even though a large portion of it was recap, it was brilliantly incorporated into the storyline. It was like the series had never stopped, and just hit the ground running. Yuuji got to be kinda cool this episode, even if nothing came of his detective work. I highly doubt that GiggleBellHorns is dead, because I have watched enough Naruto to know that that was just a shadow clone and the enemy was just using some simple genjutsu on Yuuji. It was funny how Yuuji ended up being like “Damn, I feel like I am stuck in a recap episode gone wrong…”
The rest of the episode had pretty much all of the good parts of the first season, especially with the complicated love situation. I was happy to see Shana and Kazumi return to their cold war, and it seems that Satou is trapped in a really bad relationship with Marjorie now. There was a lot of Shakugan no Shana terminology tossed around again, but fortunately I remembered all of it from the first season. Everyone important got just enough screen time, and I liked both the OP and the ED. I also liked the pacing in this first episode unlike the first episode of last season, which was just confusing. However, a lot of moments are really hard to take seriously (basically whenever Wilhelmina or Hecate appears) now, due to all the Shana-tan omakes.
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5 Comments
Was Alastor coughing or guffawing? That was hilarous!
Quite a few people seemed to think it was boring but I agree completely with you that it was a great way to do a recap while keeping the momentum going.
Needs MOAR Evil Kazumi!
I hope to see more action from Carmel and Margery this season. :p
LOL Yuuji knows what’s up. For real.
If gigglecakes was already dead, this would be the most worthless episode set up ever. Yea, I think everyone knows she’s still alive ;P.
Take the characters seriously? Why would you do that! All I need is Wilhelmina’s ~de arimasu!
xD
Oh my lungs…the pain…
You can’t kill off Mea! She’s gonna be the best thing that ever happened to this show! :P
wow!so cool naman ung shakugan no shana
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[...] fun first episode. Agree completely with Kabitzin that it was a good way to recap and build up momentum at the sam time. The love triangle (soon to [...]
[...] with Zyl and Kabtizin on this. Despite what some may put off as a fillerish recap, ep 01 is, imho, an excellent [...]