First Impressions / Shakugan no Shana

Summary:

Inside the giant twister that had suddenly appeared during the festival, Yuuji finds himself face to face with Pheles. Fearful that she’s going to erase him because he has Johan inside of him, Yuuji screams and lets his power flare up as she touches him. This leads to a fuuzetsu covering the school grounds, but the problem is that it comes with the silver flame. Margery sees this and immediately reacts by changing into her werewolf form, her mind completely dominated by revenge and the urge to kill. When Wilhelmina notices, she tries to stop Margery with her ribbons, and Alastor subsequently urges Shana to let Wilhelmina handle Margery because Pheles is more important. Shana arrives inside the twister just as Pheles is about to use her power to draw Johan out, and she manages to rescue Yuuji and temporarily put him out of danger. Pheles responds by having her special shoulder-pads suck up the twister winds, and she uses those winds to seemingly teleport around so that she can catch Shana off-guard.

Nearby, Keisaku and Eita emerge from the rubble and nearly get stomped on by Margery as she tries to get free from Wilhelmina’s ribbons. After Keisaku finds Kazumi, the three try to figure out what’s going on, and Keisaku realizes that the silver flame isn’t from the person who initially attacked because he can spot that person’s flame color elsewhere. With Margery now rampaging through the crowds of people who are frozen in place, Eita tries to get her to stop, and he watches in horror as an explosion incinerates and shatters Ogata’s body. Keisaku tries to reassure Eita that it’s okay since they can repair everything because they’re inside a fuuzetsu, but Eita is now overwhelmed with shock. Meanwhile, Shana continues her fight with Pheles and notices that Pheles is moving slower. Pheles is distracted because Margery has now reached Yuuji and is trying to kill him with energy blasts, but his ring fortunately protects him. Pheles eventually steps in between her and Yuuji, but this is quickly followed by Wilhelmina and Shana jumping in between Pheles and Margery, and Shana manages to knock Pheles out so that Wilhelmina can restrain them both.

With the battle over, Shana knows that she has to clear things up, but she isn’t sure how to say what she needs to say. It is actually Keisaku who shows up and reveals that he knows that it was Yuuji who put out the silver flame. Keisaku goes on to ask Margery if she really thinks that Yuuji is the Silver that she’s been chasing after, and he reasons that she’d be destroying a clue by destroying Yuuji. Despite hearing this, Margery continues to struggle from inside the binds of Wilhelmina’s ribbons. It’s not until she sees Eita start crying over how Ogata was caught inside the earlier explosion that Margery returns to her senses. After Keisaku accuses her of having understood all of this, Margery reverts back to her human form and stays silent as Marchosias urges her to think things over after she essentially just threw a tantrum in front of Eita and Keisaku. Margery ends up asking if Yuuji isn’t a Tomogara and isn’t the Silver, and though Shana vouches for Yuuji not being the former, Alastor says that they’ll need to investigate further about the latter. That still leaves Margery wondering what the heck Yuuji is, and after Yuuji declares that that’s what he personally wants to know too, Margery briefly engulfs him in flames. These flames don’t hurt Yuuji though, and after seeing this, Margery walks off.

With Pheles still restrained, Wilhelmina then questions why she referred to Yuuji as Johan, so Pheles reveals that Johan is inside the Reiji Maigo. It seems that Johan was mortally wounded in a fight with a hitman name Sabrac, and Pheles had placed Johan inside the Reiji Maigo in order to save him. She had been searching for Johan and has now found him, though Wilhelmina wants her to let them investigate the Silver angle for a little longer before they rescue Johan. As for Margery, she surveys the damage from the rooftop of the school and wants a drink. Carrying Pheles with her, Wilhelmina then comes up to thank Margery for stopping earlier and reveals that they’re going to use Yuuji’s power of existence to repair everything. Pheles also tells Margery that the current Reiji Maigo is strange because it’s not supposed to put out silver flames. This leads to Margery realizing that the Reiji Maigo is like an egg that Pheles put her lover in, with Yuuji being the egg’s shell, and Pheles then wonders if the silver flames are due to what Johan had shot into the Reiji Maigo. After remembering what Lamies had said about meeting the Silver when the right time comes, Margery helps Yuuji with the restoration of the school.

In the aftermath, everything returns to normal, and Yuuji gets a chance to speak with Kazumi to check if she’s okay. Having earlier felt how far away Yuuji was, Kazumi now declares that she’ll do her best to catch up no matter how far away he is from her. Tanaka meanwhile gets a tearful reunion with Ogata, and though she doesn’t understand why he’s acting like that, she hugs him back. Watching over the festival with Wilhelmina, Pheles says something quietly to herself, and elsewhere in town, as both Konoe and her butler look out a window, Konoe also says something.

Preview:

First things first: in case anyone was wondering, no new OP/ED yet. I haven’t heard anything specific about if there will be new ones or not, but it’s technically still early if we look at when the second set for the first season appeared (episode 17 for the OP and episode 15 for the ED).

Anyway, this was the most highly anticipated episode for me so far, and it didn’t disappoint. I thought the first half was a crazy rush of adrenaline with how it had all the characters fighting in a multi-way battle and Ogata getting blown away in a fairly violent manner. The second half was heavy on story and finally revealed how Johan got into the Reiji Maigo. It also seems whatever Sabrac put into the Reiji Maigo at the last second is what causes the silver flame, though it’s not clear exactly what that was (or perhaps even who that was).

The short of all this is that the episode has made me excited about watching Shana again. I’m very curious now to see how the silver flame aspect of this plays out, and there’s still the lingering question of how Konoe fits into all this, especially given her brief appearance at the very end of the episode.

47 Comments

  14. I have a bad feeling about this… It seems that next episode will be zero action again?

    You saying there weren’t such action-less episodes in between action episodes in season 1?

    Tokkan
    Reply

  26. Ogota died within the Zone, and using Yuji infinite energy they were able to fix everything.
    Margery did as she is the best spellcaster of all them. They were able to calm her down at the end. Anyone that though Ogota was going to die was dreaming.

    golthin
    Reply

  27. Finished watching it, but I guess since they had extra power of existence from Yuji they were able to fix the stuff that got broken before the fuzetsu activated, since you can do anything with POE if you have enough of it. At first from the last episode I thought Pheles would have a ruthless attitude and be the antagonist for a couple eps but I guess not. Pheles in a cradle, still she’s hot :p (just had to say it). I wonder if Konoe and her butler saw what happened inside the fuzetsu, even though previously we were shown that Konoe couldn’t move inside one. Since I would expect them to take that precaution at first since she was being suspected by everyone else but now that Konoe has been established as a normal human being in the eyes of everyone that the precaution could have been removed.

    Knowngni
    Reply

  29. A bit of deviation from the light novels to say the least Show Spoiler ▼

    capoexecutor
    Reply

  36. No, Ogata is still alive. She only took fatal injury but since it was in a fuzetsu, she was restored using existence from the Reiji Maigo.

    Tanaka and Keisaku, however, won’t be able to look at Margery the same way ever again, which means Margery might be booted out of the Satou residence.

    capoexecutor
    Reply

  42. Is anyone else thinking that somehow that Sabrac assassin guy might have already killed The Silver and when he put whatever he put into the Reiji Maigo before it disappeared…it was actually a part of the Silver? That would explain the silver flame, but eh…who knows. That would be a total letdown for Margery to find out that the Silver was dead. All her searching for nothing. Anyways, that’s just what I am guessing, I’m probably wrong tho…LOL

    JRyan2K
    Reply

  43. Is it me, or did anyone else notice the slight flaw made in this episode?
    We know Keisaku and Eita are able to move in a Fuzetsu because of Margery’s Jizaiho right?
    And since season one, whenever a Fuzetsu is erected, we always see blue insignias surrounding them. However in this episode, it was missing.

    SnooSnoo
    Reply

  44. Sorry for double posting.

    Continued: It could be because its Yuji who casts the Fuzetsu this time round though.
    We’ll see in the future, I’m sure Yuji won’t become the de facto “Fuzetsu in-charge”

    SnooSnoo
    Reply

  45. Well it has been a long time since something this serious has gone down. Forgot that torches only come up if their power of existence is eaten or used up. So since it was just a very serious injury the Yuji reserves could be used to fix her like they could be used to fix buildings. Though still seeing that kind of thing would be a shocking sight.

    FlareKnight
    Reply

  46. Is anyone else thinking that somehow that Sabrac assassin guy might have already killed The Silver and when he put whatever he put into the Reiji Maigo before it disappeared…it was actually a part of the Silver?

    Show Spoiler ▼

    Dav
    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *