Shakugan no Shana III (Final) – Episode 16

And now back to Shana episodics. Previews for the rest of the shows I’m watching for Winter will be out (hopefully each day) over the next few days. Not sure if I’ll be able to get posts out on the weekend though. It’s going to be one end of the spectrum or the other: either I’m going to get pretty much no posts out this weekend, or I’ll have so much time I’ll be able to write more than one post a day if I want to. We’ll have to wait and see what happens.

In other news… well actually I don’t have any real life news for today. The first real week of college is nearly over, but that’s about it. I could mention I have my first Calc II quiz tomorrow, and I’m already preparing my corner for when I have to retreat to it, but yeah. So I guess lets get straight to the post.

So we got some nice down time this weekend, after a ton of action-heavy episodes, which was nice.

What’s not so nice, is that I actually don’t have much to say. Almost the entire episode was each character going over their motivations for fighting, which doesn’t leave me with much to analyze/comment on without regurgitating what the episode already told you. And lets face it, nobody really wants to read what they already know.

Instead, lets just skip to the few parts that I can put a few quips down for.

Right now I’m pretty interested in our two lovebirds here, particularly Sale (or Saree, or however his name is spelled).

He made a comment that he wants to fight since he’s one of the Flame Haze not made from a desire for revenge, but rather because he’s an “artificial” Flame Haze, and he doesn’t want his maker to go to this new world filled with Power of Existence.

Judging by context clues, that means that his maker is a Crimson Denizen, and I’m pretty sure the only one psychotic enough to actually create a Flame Haze would be the Professor of the Trinity. So now I’m curious as to how this came about. Why would the Professor create a Flame Haze? I mean, I wouldn’t put it past him to do it purely out of shits and giggles, but I’m curious if there was a bigger motivation behind it.

We also have these three guys, who we have no idea who they are (unless I’m completely forgetting something from a previous season).

At first I thought they were the other Gods of the Earth/Motherland, but the preview for the next episode showed that isn’t actually the case. So then who the hell are these guys? And what was with that possessed mailman that showed up? Seeing as a sandstorm kicked up and the female voice, I’m tempted to think it was Pheles, but I have no idea why she’d need to see them. She said at the very beginning she wasn’t going to do anything else unless Yoshida used the pendant (OH GOD YOSHIDA PLEASE USE THE PENDANT. SOONER THE BETTER), so I don’t even know.

And then there was the cameo with Yuuji’s dad.

I think it was more than a simple cameo, though. It seemed more like it was showing that Shana was leaving her last connection to humanity behind. Not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, more like a “her destiny will no longer have her seeing them ever again”, I suppose. Or something like that, at least.

But yeah, that’s about it for this episode. Despite not having much to talk about, I still obviously enjoyed it. It looks like this episode is setting everything up for the last run. We only have 10 episodes left, at most.

…Now I’m sad. Having no more Shana to look forward to will definitely leave an emptiness in me, but hey, at least it’s going out with a bang.

P.S. Son of a bitch, I forgot to comment on what Yuji/Snake said at the end about initiating the plan in Misaki City. A Maelstrom of Warfare, indeed (or whatever title it was given).

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