Quote:
Originally Posted by Malintex_Terek
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?  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. |
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.
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