Sequels are simultaneously some of the
easiest and hardest things to write. On one hand, it’s hard to live
up to ‘the original’ in a lot of ways. People will look at the new
sequel and automatically compare it to what came before, so there’s a
higher than average bar set for the sequel. On the other hand, a lot
of the legwork you’d normally have to do is already done, and if
you’re continuing on with a story the first one was clearly good
enough that you have a strong backbone to build off of. Sometimes
you can even make an acceptable if not good sequel by just doing more
of the same (particularly if you have an episodic premise that can be
arbitrarily extended… much like Shana, in theory). It’s usually
better to innovate and expand, but some properties can just get away
with giving us more of what we liked to begin with.
Shakugan no Shana Second… does not do
that. And it suffers for it as a sequel. It falls into that
firsthand trap where, aside from its own merits, it just doesn’t hit
the same high notes its predecessor did, and presents to us a
degraded product, lesser in just about every way. How much lesser?
Let’s take a look.
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