First Impressions / Shakugan no Shana

Summary:

When Shana shows up one day at the Sakai home to learn how to make a bento, Chigusa is more than happy to teach her, but she wonders if something happened since Shana looks so urgent. It is of course due to how Kazumi has been making Yuuji lunches, and this hasn’t made Shana very happy. Shana didn’t go to Wilhelmina because the maid can’t cook, and in fact, she is out training Yuuji instead. However, Wilhelmina is unable to concentrate on the training because of the cooking thing and nearly strangles Yuuji with her ribbons. After Yuuji manages to free himself with his own power, Alastor explains that Yuuji’s power of existence has grown far bigger than before due to the incident with Hecate and the fountain of existence. Meanwhile, the Bal Masqué have taken up temporary residence in a castle because the Seireiden’s repairs require time. Sydonay is heading out to do something, but he warns Bel Peol first not to do anything strange to Hecate while he’s not around.

On the way to school, Yuuji asks Shana why Wilhelmina suddenly became the person he was training with, and instead of telling him the truth, Shana claims that it’s so that he doesn’t get used to training against the same person. She and Alastor then explains that Yuuji has as much power of existence in him now as a Lord of the Crimson Realm, and their training is so that he can control this power. At lunchtime, Kazumi gives Yuuji another boxed lunch, and Shana eventually works up the courage to give him the one that she made too. Shana’s turns out to be filled with melon bread because she had burned what she was trying to cook this morning, but Yuuji happily eats it anyway. The problem is that he now has to finish off two lunches, and this causes him to get sick by the afternoon. Both Shana and Kazumi accompany him to the infirmary, and Shana takes the opportunity to tell Kazumi not to bring anything for Yuuji anymore. Shana doesn’t know when she and Yuuji will have to fight, so it’s bad for them if he is in such a state. Even when Kazumi offers to decrease the amount of food she brings, Shana insists that it’s better if it’s just herself who brings Yuuji lunch.

Unwilling to simply take this, Kazumi points out that Shana’s being unfair. Kazumi likes Yuuji and puts her feelings into the lunches she makes, and she feels that this has nothing to do with fighting. Shana, however, feels that Kazumi doesn’t understand. Shortly after this exchange, Shana senses a fuuzetsu nearby and wakes Yuuji. Kazumi seems to want to go with them, but she ends up just telling him to be careful. Shana and Yuuji then fly into the fuuzetsu and find a pile of burning osprey decorations, just like from the festival. When the professor’s airship suddenly appears too, Yuuji realizes that he’s inside a dream again. As if to confirm his suspicions, both the airship and burning pile disappear, and everything around them turns a shade of purple. Yuuji checks to see if Shana is real by pulling on her cheek, and he painfully finds out that she is because she punches him in the stomach. He then comments on how it’s weird that they didn’t wake up as soon as they realized it was a dream since that’s what happened to him last time.

As he and Shana run through the city trying to find their opponent, Yuuji suddenly stops because he’s realized something. They had already been in the dream back in the infirmary, and he learned last time that people can’t say anything that the dreamer doesn’t know. Despite this, Kazumi had acted in a way that both Yuuji and Shana weren’t familiar with, meaning that this dream has to be Kazumi’s. The two of them eventually find an unconscious Kazumi being held up on a large structure and being guarded by someone dressed like a court jester. This Tomogara introduces herself as Mare and explains that they’re inside her Gemeinde – a world created from their mental pictures. What Shana had defeated yesterday was just a mystes that Mare was controlling using her hougu called Papagena. With Mare refusing tell them what she’s up to, Shana suddenly notices that Bel Peol has appeared, so she instructs Yuuji to go wake up Kazumi while she herself fights. Mare tells them that everything inside her Gemeinde happens according to what she wants, and she’s not going to let any of them wake up.

Yuuji tries to make a run for Kazumi anyway, but Mare prevents him from reaching her. Despite being hurt from fighting Bel Peol, Shana tries to help him by launching a fire blast at Mare, but it doesn’t even faze her. This causes Yuuji to get suspicious, and he quickly figures out that they’re still not facing the real Mare. In actuality, Mare is inside of Yuuji trying to get at his Reiji Maigo power, but right before she reaches it, it flares up and expels her from Yuuji’s body. An injured Mare figures out that this was the Unrestricted Method called kaikin, and she warns that if she dies, the Gemeinde would close, but Kazumi wouldn’t wake up. The world around them is now starting to crack and crumble, so Yuuji rushes up to Kazumi and tries to wake her. She opens her eyes after he yells her name a few times, and the three of them wake up together back in the infirmary. Yuuji immediately thanks Kazumi and is impressed that she realized it was a dream, but Kazumi says that it was because he was there and because she wanted to see him.

After Yuuji falls unconscious from fatigue, an embarrassed Shana tells Kazumi that she should be careful with the lunches because it’d be bad if this were to happen again. Hearing this, Kazumi suggests that she’ll make one half a lunch for Yuuji from now on. Shana returns home later that day to tell Alastor and Wilhelmina about the kaikin, and it leads to Wilhelmina realizing something. Meanwhile, Margery – who has been drinking too much all this time – admits to Marchosias that she has a bad feeling. At school the following day, Yuuji’s teacher introduces a new transfer student, but both Yuuji and Shana notice her resemblance to Hecate.

Preview:

Mare ended up being a pretty disappointing villain (not too surprising since she was originally from the video game and not the novels), but at least the Bal Masqué are on the move again. This episode also produced some very nicely animated fights and introduced the kaikin concept, so I wouldn’t consider it wasted. I suspect it’ll lead to more development about the Reiji Maigo, especially since Wilhelmina already seems to know about it.

Of course, the most interesting part came at the very end of the episode with the appearance of Hecate at their school. Well, someone who looks like her anyway and who will probably be voiced by Noto Mamiko. Aside from the fact that this gives them an excuse to put Hecate in different outfits (school swimsuit anyone?), this would at first glance appear to be a trap or plan of some sort that involves getting her close to Yuuji. That seems a bit too obvious though, especially considering how Yuuji and Shana already recognize her, so I’m curious to find out what Bel Peol (or whoever is behind this) is really trying to accomplish. There’s that man in the preview I don’t recognize, so maybe he’s the one behind this.

59 Comments

  9. Poor Yuji…one of the many casualties of bad heroine cooking in anime.

    Hecate attending school with Yuji and Shana? I can already hear the fanboys squealing like girls… ^^b

    Third pic of the preview: Who the heck?…..nawwww, it’s not Yuji’s dad….is it?….the hair-style looks the same, but he didn’t have that kind of evil look in the novels…

    Shinji103
    Reply

  11. Damn, im starting to feel bad for Yujj, becuase he is together with a maid that wants to kill him, is the center of a “love conflict”, are together with a girl that wants to cock something for him but cant make anything and now one of the main enemys also come to the school. Poor Yujj, life sure is hard.

    (Not sure about all the things)

    DarkReign
    Reply

  16. meh

    So far I haven’t seen any “Second Season” in this anime. They have been recycling the story from the first part, adding some new animation and, well that’s about it; nothing new. Shana II so far has been a huge disappointment and this episode doesn’t help either.

    M.K
    Reply

  18. MK: I don’t see as much ‘recycling’ as focusing on a major plot point: the Reiji Maigo itself. EVERYONE wants a piece of it. For different reasons of course, but that only means that you’ll see Ball Masque again and again and again in the future, ESPECIALLY if they’re following the novels (they aren’t in this arc, since Mare is a game-only character).

    Myssa Rei
    Reply

  23. It may LOOK like another recap, but no one knows anything unless they’ve seen the episode itself. If one has been following the story closely enough, we should know that despite some reused scenes, the story’s advancing, though not through the route of the novel yet.

    Owaranai Destiny
    Reply

  48. This is dumb…I’m dropping the series. The fact that they’re developing Yoshida Kazumi as a more powerful contender seems to me as a non-substantive attempt to to retard the progress of Shana and Yuji’s relationship just because they have to go through a second season…it seems as an unnecessary dragging out of the whole relationship. If anything, I find the sequel much less exciting and quite unanticipating. Afer this episode, I don’t expect anything fruitful to happen between Shana and Yuji even when we progress towards the end of the series. It’ll probably end with another “guessing game”.

    shakugan no shana
    Reply

  49. i don t understand why, the guys here wanted something to happen between yuji and kazumi… Well there ‘s no love-triangle to start… just watch the first two episode of this season and watch yujii reaction when he re-think about what happens in seireiden at the last moment. when he ask Shana and she said it s nothing important, he thought what was he hoping for… And more recently in episode 2, watch yujii reaction when kazumi give him a bento and when shana give yuji her “pan-bento”… u’ll see that the relationship between shana and yuji is set 🙂

    Well well this season will be fun to watch because of the power up Yuji and reiji maigo 😀

    Ryo007
    Reply

  50. Um… you’ll drop the series because they reversed what was done at the end of last season, even though they needed to do that to continue on with the novel storyline? … alright. I don’t really think it’s going to matter that much. I’d give the series a few more episodes before doing something that hasty. Yes, I know it’s a sequel. A sequel is still a new series.

    Tokkan
    Reply

  51. Found a preview of episode 3 on youtube. Hecate gets help from Matake Ogata with the sport cloths, and that made me think if Hecate is a little clumsy or hopeless in the real world, or just anything else. Could be fun though.

    DarkReign
    Reply

  52. I doubt very much that we’ve seen the last of Mea (Mare, w/e), especially since she was featured so heavily in the promo material. I certainly hope we’ll see more of her anyway.

    It seems like the anime is setting up a merging together of the game and novel plotlines, which would be epic, since then we’d have Shana, Hecate, AND Mea all at the school together.

    Good stuff, I’m excited to see the show go into the cooler parts of the novels’ main plot. ^o^

    0rion
    Reply

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