Shakugan no Shana II - Episode 21 Discussion / Poll
 

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I can't wait for next week already, and I just finished watching this weeks...
So looks like a "big thing" will happen next week, yeay! Though it makes me very curious as to how they plan on ending this season.

This week was also good. Yoshida was of some help, Wilhelmina awesome again, and some Shana being like Shana for the first time in a long time. It's funny how drastically the animation quality changes between the action scenes and the daily life scenes. >>;

Yes, at last screenies are up! Screens :O. Here's hoping I can watch it on nico soon enough ;)

I can't believe I dropped my jaw in seeing Wilhelmina wrapped up in those ribbons of hers and I don't know why.

Judgin from the screenshot (and since the blog says so as well), it looks like the fight with Sabrac is over in this episode. I see dere Shana on lower right though, wonder what happens. (yell for confession, though it most likely isn't that)

And from that blog as well, this screenshot made me laugh... :heh:

SHAKUGAN NO SHANA II THE END

okey, that's not true. but i can say that the episode is the most amazing ever in this anime - although last episode is amazing enough. this episode may be a very good episode if as a final episode.

very good balance on the following:
drawing style (generally over the standard althougt it can be even better)
BGM (especially the scene playing OP1 of SnS 2)
script (very satisfied on the story include battles, tactics, teamwork / relationship between characters and love, a little bit daily life, nice reference to the original story)
Special effects of battle scens (almost perfect for the one on B part)

the one that may not really good enough is episode 22 will be a nice episode about boys and girls (and one of the guardian) , and what they (planed to) do in the Christmas eve. it should be an end but a begining of the original ending of SnS2...

Finished watching and holy crap that was awesome. It looks like Sabrac is defeated (though he may come back, who knows) and everyone is like "thank god it's over". Really feels like nothing else is left, but of course we know that something big is happening soon enough :heh:. I'm not going into the details too much, but this episode was truly about everyone working together and wtfpwing Sabrac at his own game. A really good ending to his appearance.

Well, they went at it. Is this the peak or is there something left?

Too bad Margery's character development turned out to be a bust, but at least Sato got to sound kinda cool. Well, I guess the main point of this episode was the battle against Sabrac, which was all very fun to watch. Throwing in the first opening really made this feel like the final battle of the series.

Speaking of which, there's 3 episodes left, and I can't help but think that everything going "back to normal" at the end of this episode (urusai urusai urusai included. >_>) is a sign that whatever the anime's got planned, everything's about to go terribly wrong. Still, This kind of build up and release is what makes SnS SnS, so even relationship material on it's own would be welcome after the Sabrac fight.

Would people mind using spoiler tags?

So, how did Shana kill Sabrac?

^ lifted a huge chunk of the city and obliterated everything with a big fireball

No offense, but don't you think that putting those novel spoilers here will catch the attention of the moderators?

Yoohoo~ stop with the novel spoilers~

Haven't seen the episode yet, but knowing Yuuji wasn't the one to beat Sabrac (is he even dead? It's supposed to be impossible to tell) earns an instant 6 score from me, with further deductions depending on the quality of the episode. That's horribly disappointing. :(

I've got to say, after the outrageously bad Zero no Tsukaima II, I think J.C. Staff is starting to show themselves off as incompetent. They squeezed the entire Sabrac fight into just two episodes, and they're going to combine all of volume sixteen into two as well and end with a cliffhanger (lame!). Considering the inane harem love-triangle bit from earlier, this anime has, on the whole, is failing.

I also must ask; where's the budget? :eyebrow: Almost every episode in season I had big fights, a strong mix between good quality art and animation. This whole season seems to put more emphasis on the OP artwork and the bad singing than the actual content of the episodes; both Sabrac episodes and Margery's flash-back seem to be the only ones with any serious battles, and that's only like five total...compared with, twenty two or so from the first season? :|

If Yuuji doesn't 8:52 up to GAR status by the end of the show, I'm have to consider putting J.C. Staff on my black-list.

Anime viewers don't know this.
The anime only shows

Oh wow... I feel sad now

Without even watching this episode yet, I'm going to go out and try to defend J.C. Staff on this one.

I'm forced to agree that Zero no Tsukaima II was just outright outrageous and completely disappointing. No excuse.

However, when you're taking an unfinished series and try to adapt it into an animation, you're just bound to have trouble. Look at the fan response J.C. Staff received from Season 1. With a huge increase in popularity and satisfaction comes with a huge price - the pressure to keep those fans satisfied. And with only eight of the 16+ novels covered, there is no excuse not to have a Season 2.

How long did it take to produce Season 1? Personally, I don't know. But what I do know is that with the large amount of fan response and the pressure that came with it, J.C. Staff was locked into a situation where they must develop a second season within less than a year. The result is as you see here: a decent but below-expectations anime with some pretty awesome highlighting moments but an overall rush job.

Can you really blame J.C. Staff for being "incompetent"? Probably not. The decision to have a second season was necessary. Did it need to be only a year apart, I definitely think not. However, with Shana's large fanbase (as evidenced in the many Saimoe contests that I analytically cover), it's not exactly easy to say it will be one season and done, especially with the cliffhanger left at the end of Season 1. There's the force that gives off the pressure.

And it's not like they had a clear direction of where they were going: the novels have yet to be finished. However, one could argue that there was enough content to create a second season.

With the limited amount of time they had to work on SnS II, they first have to prepare some sort of backup story. That's where the Fumina Konoe arc comes in. Although it does play a part to the Season 1 ending arc with Hecate synchronizing memories and such, everyone, myself included, says that this was taken to far. This is rather justifiable. Let's say Fumina doesn't exist - that no "filler" arc existed at all. Given their budget that they would have saved, they may or may not extend arcs to have a longer span of episodes and improved on the qualities. But what if the Sabrac arc finished in episode 18 and they aren't prepared to come up with the most climatic arc to close out the final six episodes? That, in my opinion, is much worse than what J.C. Staff has presented us with.

And when dealing with the budget, last I checked, Shana 1 didn't have a Naruto or Pokemon primetime slot - rather, it had a post-midnight slot. If you think about it, many high schoolers who are anime freaks would probably be in bed right about now getting ready for school. TV ratings weren't high at all, so the budget was low to begin with.

Sure, it can be much more improved. But what choice did J.C. Staff have? Who anticipated that Shakugan no Shana would have as much success as we could have seen? If I recall, there wasn't a Shana subforum when Season 1 aired. Heck, I don't think there were that many Shana novel fans that watch anime in general. Given how this played out at the end of Season 1, I really don't see an alternative solution in this case that can be played out better than it can now.

Actualy IMO if they took longer then 2 episodes to show the Sabrac battle I would of been pissed as the battle in the novel 14 wasn't that long ether.

The battle in novel 14 is comprised entirely out of text and pays no correlation to time whatsoever (unless it states minutes, seconds, etc.), so I guess you can argue that it deserved to be longer. Of course, then the battle itself would just be a violent version of the Fumina arc.