Stop me if you’ve heard this one
before: a world of magic and monsters exists alongside our every-day
world, but most people are unaware of it. The Magic World is full of
both dangers and wonders. One day, our main character, an average
person, is introduced to the supernatural truth that was hidden from
them, encounters a magical figure who will act as a mentor and/or
guide to the new world, and ends up getting embroiled in life and
death affairs to which others are ignorant. Often, the main
character will quickly or slowly come into some special power of
their own that makes them highly significant in the magical world
when they were a nobody in the human world.
If you wanted to stop me at any point
in that, you might have encountered Urban Fantasy at some point.
Urban Fantasy is a hugely popular genre
in anime, and while it isn’t instantly recognized by most in the
West, it’s pretty hugely popular here too. Technically, the
Masquerade (a term derived from the Urban Fantasy role-playing game
“Vampire: the Masquerade”, referring to how normals are kept
ignorant of supernatural dealings) isn’t required for a work to be
considered Urban Fantasy – the strict definition is that fantasy
elements (like magic and monsters) exist in a setting that is very
much like the modern world, or at least urbanized indicating a
certain level of modernity and society as opposed to the classical
fantasy that exists in a quasi-medieval setting. If you’re
pretentious, Hispanic, or marketing to the literary community, you
might get to call it “Magical Realism”, though there is something
of a continuum or spectrum of expectations between literary magical
realism on one end and teen paranormal romance on the other.
However, settings that have a
Masquerade are perhaps the most common, popular, and expected of
Urban Fantasy settings. They have a lot of expected tropes and a
solid formula. Masquerade Urban Fantasy is probably a little less
cookie-cutter than Isekai Harem or anything the Lazy Harem Checklist
would apply to, largely because there’s a lot of delta in how
threatening as opposed to wonderful the hidden magical world is, but
it’s still common for works like this to stay in a comfort zone that
gets very familiar.
Shakugan no Shana, at least in its
first season (which is what I’m addressing here), does largely stay
in the Masquerade Urban Fantasy Comfort Zone… but it totally owns
that Comfort Zone. It’s a show that checks almost every box it could
on the Urban Fantasy checklist, but goes on to prove why those check
box items are such popular and long-lasting moves.
Our newcomer to all things supernatural
in this show is Yuji Sakai. He’s everything you’d expect: A fairly
normal person (or so he thinks), generically kind of a good guy with
strong principles that he can stand on when interacting with the
supernatural, and ultimately an item of great interest for the
supernatural world. The specifics, however, get a little more
interesting. He’s still basically the type where he’s the MacGuffin
that all the supernaturals want to possess, but the ways in which his
world works and how he’s challenged as a person by those facts make
his experience one worth watching.
Specifically, the magical side of
things in Shakugan no Shana is among the more hostile magical
realities you’ll find in Urban Fantasy. Beings called Denizens
(Denizens of the Crimson World) prowl the world in secret, seeking to
consume the “power of existence” of humans, which is very
naturally existentially fatal. In order to hide their crimes,
Denizens leave a tiny amount of power from their meals behind. The
last dregs of power of existence create Torches, hollow imitations of
the humans that used to be real that will eventually run out of fuel
and fade from reality in a process that causes non-initiated humans
to forget that the Torch (or its original) ever existed. Memories,
even physical records like photographs, are destroyed or altered, and
when a Torch burns out it doesn’t matter who they were, the world and
everyone in it simply does not care: loved ones, even family, even
someone looking right at them or touching them as they disappear…
if they don’t know about the Crimson World, they can’t remember
anything about those taken by it. What’s more, most of the Crimson
World dealings take place within a spell effect known as a Seal, that
freezes time for the ‘mundane’ world and allows any damage the
mundane world takes (other than existence consumption) to be undone,
further leaving people ignorant to the potentially city-wrecking
supernatural battles taking place under their noses.
There are those who fight back against
the predatory denizens: superhuman (or ex-human) fighters called
Flame Hazes dedicated to hunting down and destroying denizens that
eat people and make trouble, empowered to be able to manipulate Power
of Existence and fight back against the Denizens by making pacts with
otherworldly beings that seem to be of the same origin and make as
Denizens but of a different political faction, choosing to protect
humanity rather than eat it.
The thing is, Yuji Sakai (as we know
him) is a Torch. Now, he is a fairly special Torch: his shell body
contains a magical artifact, Midnight Lost Child, that restores his
wellspring of Power of Existence every night, meaning that he doesn’t
have to worry about fading away in the conventional sense. He does,
however, have to worry about the fact that pretty much every hostile
Denizen we encounter (including a number who show up solely for this)
would love to crack him open and take that thing for themselves.
From Yuji’s perspective, his first encounter with the magical side of his world is as such: the world around him stops, a gigantic monster (A Rinne, a sort of magic servant used by Denizens) appears and begins to feed, and then it notices he’s still moving and comes for him. Yuji is rescued in the nick of time by the arrival of a new challenger: the Flame Haze who will come to be known as Shana.
Yeah, she’s not technically named that
at the start of the season: she’s the Flame-haired Burning-eyed
Hunter of the Nietono no Shana, and she doesn’t have a human name.
Yuji supplies “Shana” as a proper name for her when she reveals
this, and though she’s not initially happy being named without her
permission, she does take it up. Shana’s starting lack of a name
helps to highlight one of the core issues addressed by Shakugan no
Shana as a whole: What does it mean to be ‘human’? In a spiritual
sense, Yuji isn’t. As Shana is fond of saying at the start, he’s
just the leftover scum that remained where a human was killed. On
the other hand, he clearly has thoughts and feelings, and a human
life. He has friends and a family, and operates like a human.
Shana, on the other hand, seems to be basically human. It doesn’t
seem like Flame Hazes age (given that we meet several who are
centuries old) so it’s not totally clear what applies to Shana after
her contract was formed, but she’s made of flesh and blood and has a
metaphysically human-like existence… at least moreso than a torch.
But Shana, to start out, makes a kind of poor human and an excellent
living weapon against the Denizens, because she’s disconnected from
most of the social and emotional aspects of humanity, living apart in
her kill-or-be-killed world.
So which one of them is a person that
matters? The basic audience response is, of course, that both of
them are, but the universe they live in has more nuance to it. To
the regular world, only Yuji is a person: Shana doesn’t exist, and
only starts interacting with Yuji’s life when she inserts herself
into the role of a different Torch by absorbing her last scraps of
power. To the magical world, only Shana is real by default – Yuji
might be able to walk and talk but because he’s a torch it doesn’t
matter much. Of course, Shana doesn’t seem to quite rate herself as
a full person the way the folks she protects from the shadows are
people.
The show is smart enough to not exactly
dwell on this matter, but it is one that Shakugan no Shana keeps
coming back to, what it means to be a Torch for Yuji or especially
what it means to be a Flame Haze.
As far as plot goes, the first season
has several arcs, that mostly follow the same pattern: Denizen causes
trouble, Shana and Yuji along with an ever-expanding cast of friends
take down the Denizen. However, it’s worth repeating that these are
arcs; each Denizen that appears and is defeated has weight and scale
to it, they aren’t just throw-away monster of the week sorts of
things. The first foe, Hunter Friagne, threatens to devour the
entire city Yuji calls home by using an insanely over-complicated
ritual spell and, being a collector of treasures, comes after Yuji in
the meantime. While dealing with Friagne and the next few
supernatural incidents of great threat, we learn more about Shana and
the Flame Hazes by meeting such figures as Margery Daw (a Flame Haze
driven, especially, by a burning hatred of Denizens… and also
alcohol) and Wilhelmina Carmel (Shana’s Flame Haze mentor) who show
us different sides than Shana did. Yuji’s friends also get dragged
into the mess as a pair of delinquent types become Margery’s
assistants and Yoshida, a girl with a crush on Yuji, is recruited by
another Flame Haze to help undo magical distortions that all the
supernatural battles had caused in town.
To be honest, while there is good stuff in every arc and sub-arc of the show, most of it is character development rather than the construction of a broader, overarching plot. We see how Yuji becomes more of a fighter at heart. Make no mistake, he’s still totally unready to defend himself by the time we make it to the end of the season, but the spirit is there and he puts himself on the line to help Shana secure a win many times. And we see how Shana (unlike a certain other Rie Kugimiya character I’ve talked about before) legitimately softens over time, and comes to appreciate Yuji Sakai rather than seeing him as a disposable object. We even get some good scenes out of some of the inhuman beings. For instance, the Denizen known as Corpse Collector Lamies stands out as an ethical sort; he harvests power of existence, yes, but only from torches that are guttering and ready to fail, a scavenger whose deeds have earned the respect of the more moderate Flame Hazes. On the other side, Flame of the Heavens Alastor, Shana’s pact partner who’s normally only seen as the amulet she wears, seems to have an interesting and detailed past and more nuance to his existence than simply acting as a voice of reason for Shana.
The final two arcs, though, do have a major plot. The first of the two concerns a Denizen known as Dantalion, or the Mad Professor. He acts very much like a stereotypical mad scientist, and although his machinations are very dangerous, the Flame Hazes who fight him off agree that his experiment may have no greater purpose or farther-reaching ambition. However, this turns out to not be the case when the Bal Masque shows up, with a plan set up by Dantalion. The Bal Masque is a group of Denizens; their first member introduced is Thousand Changes Sydonay, who acts as a mercenary henchman for one of the earlier fought denizens and learns about Yuji and his treasure through that encountered, but the organization as a whole, and particularly the three members at the top (Sydonay, Supreme Throne Hecate, and Judge of Paradoxes Bel-Peol) end up serving as the default main antagonists of Shakugan no Shana for the remainder of its run.
The arc in question sees Yuji kidnapped and used as a vessel to allow the Bal Masque to gain unlimited power by wiring him up to Hecate, basically with the goal of creating something akin to a power-of-existence black hole, where the energy is so dense it collapses in on itself – a kind of cool concept even if what they intend to do with it seems fairly arcane. The struggle to get Yuji back pits Shana and her allies against some of the most dangerous foes they will ever face, and the battles engaged are high tension and visually spectacular, culminating in Shana invoking her dangerous forbidden technique (which is never used again because it could very well kill her any time she does it) to manifest Alastor in his full form for a brief time… and damn is it awesome.
The action in Shakugan no Shana, as a
whole and not just referring to this last arc, is some of the best in
anime. It has its static “People talking about the strength of the
attack they witness” moments in some fights, but mostly it tends
towards fast, flowing, and impactful in a similar way to the action
in, say, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, and the dynamic mix of
superpowers and martial arts is similarly as good. At its heart,
Shakugan no Shana is mostly an action show. For an action show it
has great character and a surprising amount of brains, but it can’t
forget its origins, and does those elements extremely well as it has
to.
All in all, I rate the first season of
Shakugan no Shana at an A. It really is what you WANT to see out of
this actiony Masquerade Urban Fantasy affair. I suppose you could say
that it plays relatively safe, and you wouldn’t be wrong, but if
that’s the worst criticism I can level at a show, the show in
question is typically in a good place. The action is great, as I
just talked about. The characters are great. There are loads of
them, but they all have their own struggles and are more or less
realized. The story is great. It’s mostly episodic, but each
episode feels weighty and meaningful, so that I can totally imagine
being satisfied with any particular contained story. It uses almost
every tired Masquerade Urban Fantasy move, but it uses them so well
that they don’t feel tired any more, like Shakugan no Shana took
those tropes and breathed life back into them. It’s a wonderful
show, even if it is one that lives firmly inside its box.
As a bonus, I’ll also briefly cover Shakugan no Shana the movie, because the Shana movie is an abbreviated retelling of the Hunter Friagne arc. A lot of things that lead into the rest of Season 1 and on are trimmed out, but as a whole cutting the story for the shorter running time goes well, and it still has most of the strengths of Shakugan no Shana as a whole. That said, it is a very mild abridgment of material from the show. I really recommend going on with Shakugan no Shana, and if you do there’s not a lot of point to the movie. It doesn’t add compared to what’s in the show at the same place but it can’t really be used to save you time over just watching the Firagne arc. I guess you could use it as a contained taster of Shakugan no Shana, but then if you want to go on you’ll have to watch the first arc all over again anyway since a lot of the elements dropped for the movie are the connective tissue that sets up the following arcs; you can’t just go from the movie into the other arcs of season 1 and certainly not into season 2. If you’ve already seen Shakugan no Shana the movie won’t hurt but… you’ve kinda seen the better version, even if it’s only a little better, so you won’t gain much either. It’s still probably A material in total isolation, but there’s really no reason to watch it when the show exists. Take from that what you will.