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Originally Posted by Malintex_Terek
Alright.
Let me start off by saying generally I hate fanservice. There are shows that are made for it, and I think it belongs there. Shana is not one of these shows. It is a rather serious story about a boy and a girl, it was never intended (in my eyes) to end up as just another harem drama/comedy, not unlike School Days or Ninomiya-kun (to name a few).
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I don't really see a harem - not since Konoe was absorbed back into Hecate anyway. Hecate herself is certainly no part of a Yuji harem... she's trying to kill him, essentially.
The Konoe section was a bit too long, with not enough action breaks in it - if they had just one fewer "slice of life" episode, and one more action-esque episode, I would have been perfectly Ok with it. Still, as filler goes, I liked it more than the sort of filler you see in animes like Bleach, and Dragonball Z
I guess that were you see "harem", I see "slice of life", and while I myself have grown to dislike harem anime, I do like slice of life anime episodes (in moderation - Shana overdid it for a bit).
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Since Shana involves a high school boy and love, it's natural to assume there would be some dramatic tension, but too much of the show's "uniqueness" is getting wasted by focusing on this harem stuff that's not going anywhere. How's Shana unique? Here's a summary of the premise in a single sentence:
One day, a young student named Sakai Yuuji discovers he is not only dead, but is permanently involved in a timless war between malevolent beings called Tomogara and Flame Haze, humans who have allied with Tomogara to hunt them.
How does this premise - a war of humans versus Tomogara - connect to slice of life highschool melodrama?? It only connects vaguely, through Yuuji and Shana and their dynamic; the whole uniqueness of the Shana series is being wasted by not being focused on.
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You're right in the sense that the main creative stroke and principal catalyst of both action and uniqueness in Shana is the fascinating war between the Tomogara and Flame Haze, with humans caught in the middle and typically abused or disregarded by both groups.
However, in any good war story, you don't lose sight of those individual and personal elements that make you care about the damaging affects of the war.
As Joseph Stalin said, one death is a tragedy while a thousand deaths is a statistic.
So, the most important thing for an anime with war in it to do is to make you really care about the characters... otherwise the broader drama and impact of the war itself is lost. If you don't care about these characters, then why would you care about the war?
One way to make people care about the characters is to show nice slice-of-life episodes every now and then - to show glimpses of the friendly and serene sort of life that the protagonists (and their supporting cast) are able to have when the war is at a low ebb.
I think that Shana Season 2 tries to take half of their episodes for this goal, and take another half of their episodes for focusing on the action, conflict, and violence of the war itself. Now, that ratio might be a bit too slanted towards "slice of life", but it isn't as bad a ratio as I think some people view it.
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What I'm saying is, for those harem episodes, if you took those episodes out of context and showed them to someone who had no idea about what the series was about, he/she wouldn't think of it as an action show. That person would think of it as a generic harem show with good art and average animation.
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I really don't get this harem vibe. For several episodes now, it's back to the love triangle, which isn't a harem.
And even the Konoe bit was barely a harem - with three girls seemingly interested in Yuji. In retrospect though, that was never a harem either, as Konoe wasn't a true Harem member in the sense of harem members given by Ranma Saotome's or Negi Springfield's or Tenchi Misaki's harem... but rather a copy of Hecate who was callously using Yuji.
Hecate might be moe, but that doesn't change the fact that she's a cold, selfish and self-centered antagonist, who'll gladly snuff out the life of an innocent teenage boy to achieve her goals. And honestly, Hecate might be moe compared to most anime villains, but she's no Osaka (Azumanga Daioh). If she's the most moe character in Shana than it's not a very moe anime (which I agree with you it shouldn't be).
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What I'm trying to get at is this huge involving plot is getting wasted on the harem stuff. It's connected to the fanservice in that Hecate, who is a beloved icon in doujin circles for Shana and was one of the most popular characters last season despite her short tenure because she was "moe", is getting screentime.
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I actually liked Hecate in Season 1 for her characterization... not her appearance. I found the concept of a sheltered antagonstic character starving for meaningful life experience, and perhaps what could even be called spirituality, fairly interesting. Now, Hecate has come across as increasingly evil and unsympathetic to me in Season 2, so some of that initial interest in the character has been lost for me. Still, Hecate remains a solid recurring Shana antagonist - she fulfills that role well, I feel.
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That's the fanservice - Hecate focus.
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I really don't see that. Actually, Shana Season 2 took a longer break from Hecate than I thought that they would. The Konoe arc, filler though it may be, made it very clear that Hecate would be the main antagonist of Shana Season 2.
I feel that the use of Hecate in Shana Season 2 has been downright judicious - they've used her
just enough to have her come across as the main villain of Shana Season 2, but nowhere near enough to make someone who doesn't already dislike her character to grow sick of her.
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Fanservice is pandering to people by doing something, either jiggling breasts, cooing or getting naked. It can also mean focus on a particular character (not just an item of said character), and Hecate, who has a rather small role in the novels compared with her anime incarnation. All of this is done at the sacrifice of the overall aesthetic of the story - substituting Sairei no Hebi for Hecate to fanboys will have an incentive to buy the DVDs.
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You really think that Hecate's moe factor is
that huge? Wow, the female villain is cute and all, but again, she's no Osaka in that department.
I can understand your desire to strictly limit the amount of moe in a serious anime like Shakugan no Shana, but I think that you're taking it to the point where you've developed a strong bias against a
good villain who
happens to be a bit moe. Hecate has served her
villain role fine, imo.
While I'm sure it's true that her popularity leads to them wanting to use her more, I don't think there's any reason to assume that they dropped the novel storyline just for the sake of her character.
Graphic Designer
(sorry but I haven't read the novel so can only go by what I see ^^). 
Well stealing yuji's haxx away, I wonder how the gang would react. I sense another epix battle (yay) which will wrap up everything nicely ~ besides the romance triangle ^^
