Original Title: 灼眼のシャナ
Genre: action, comedy, drama, fantasy, romance, supernatural
Length: 24 episodes (completed)
Synopsis: He had thought his normal days would last forever, until they were ended abruptly by an encounter with a girl with red hair and eyes. He named her Shana.
Not long after he enters high school, Sakai Yuji’s normal days come to an end. He sees something bizarre on his way home: people are frozen in a strange fire, and a monster that looks like a large doll is attacking them. Just when he’s about to be killed, a girl in a dark cloak wielding a large sword appears, and slices the monster in half. Although Yuji survives the strange encounter, the girl informs him of a desolate truth: ” ‘You’ don’t exist anymore.”
She calls herself a Flame Haze who hunts “Guze no Tomogara”; intruders from another world. She explains to him that he is a “Torch”, a substitute of Yuji whose “existence” has already been devoured. She also told him that he is a special Torch, “Mystes”, which contains a precious item in it. When he looks at his chest, he sees within himself a faint flame, just as she said.
It is in this way that his eternal struggle alongside the girl begins. (Source: AnimeNfo)
Yes I know. This came out around year 2005 thus it is quite late for me to write a review about this. However, seeing as to how this anime is one of my all time favorites and I have not written anything about it as of yet, I might as well write it now since I re-watched it last week. The show pretty much started as what was written in the synopsis and thereafter, it revolves around both Shana and Yuji. What makes this series great is it’s cast. Therefore this time, I will just talk about the characters as a lot of you would probably know that the art, animation and soundtrack is good from the various blog reviews. The characters I will be focusing on later will be Shana, Yuji and Yoshida since these 3 form a major part of the romance.
Character development is one of the key things in this anime but let me warned you it is very slow as it was probably intended to be developed more in the second season. Everyone has screen time, even the side characters. It was pretty confusing at the start when a whole chunk of new characters were introduced and the jargon they used did not help much, especially if one were to missed the explanation. It got a lot better though when the anime start showing us the history of several characters, in particular the various Flame Haze which helps us to understand the characters a lot better.
Development for Shana was great, we get to see her grow and develop feelings towards Yuji, albeit a bit slow since this is only the first season. Shana is also the defining character that introduce me to the term tsundere. Some people call her annoying but after watching a lot more animes with tsundere, I’ll say hers is very mild. She has some sort of a warrior pride and since no one can actually help her (except in theory) with emotions such as love, well, you get a little lost sheep in the form of Shana. Other’s criticise her for being ‘weak’. Well, what can you expect when you are still a (13-14 year old?) trainee and you are force to go into the battlefield due to unforeseen circumstances. It is not like she is a master of swords or a master of fire right? Thus, cut her some slack.
Yuji was all right in the first season since he did not really do much, save for having intuition and foreboding. He has shown that he can analyze the situations well and come up with strategy to turn the tide. His good trait is his kindness but sweet mother of god Yuji, your kindness can actually cause a lot of damage emotionally to other people and it clouds your judgement as well. Being a gentlemen does not equate to being kind to any girl but I forgive you since you are only 16 and you have a long road ahead of you. Aside from that, Yuji is surprisingly calm despite knowing the truth about himself. Like Shana said, he is weird in a sense the other Torches who knew the truth will either feign ignorance or go into despair. He accepts his fate willingly and after knowing why he is a special Torch, he decided to help Shana for better or for worst.
Yoshida is one character I don’t hate but I can’t seem to like either. After re-watching, I assumed that she likes Yuji when he ‘save’ her that one time from the PE teacher but seriously, I feel like she is just intruding. I apologise to those who like her but the reason probably stemmed from that one time she called Shana a cheater. I mean seriously? Does she even know what cheating means? Just because Shana gets to spend more time with you Yuji but acts cold and ignorant towards him in front of others, that constitutes as cheating? Oh please. I have to give credit to her though for having to actually confess but no more than that, even if her cooking skills are superb. Well, that’s it for now. I shall write about season 2 next time.
I shipped these two~
