Shakugan no Shana III (Final) – Episode 23

I’m going to start sounding like a broken record, but again, if you haven’t yet voted in the poll at the end of my spring impressions post, please go do so. I’m not expecting a huge vote count since this is the first time I’m doing it and I don’t exactly have a massive audience, but I want to make sure I get the votes that I can. If it turns out there’s some silent crowd that wants me to watch something, but they don’t vote, then they’ll end up being disappointed that I’m not watching some show they like, or writhing in agony for them.

So I’m getting this episodic out at a decent time, to make up for the double episodic I posted last time (which still came out pretty late). I’ll also most likely be getting the last episodic out pretty early, since it’s the last episode. I was also originally going to combine my coverage of the last episode with a review for the season, but eh, Shana deserves a review post of its own.

So, as I suspected, a lot happened this episode. I was already greatly amused at the start of the episode, with Yuuji giving a creepier version of the smile the last episode ended on.

Well, looks like more than just aspects of Snake’s personality changed after his first failed attempt at creating a new world. You’d be pretty silly to not learn from your mistakes, after all. Especially if you’re a god.

I guess it also makes Snake extremely lucky that the host of the Midnight Lost Child was willing to work with him. Then again, it has been a long time since Snake tried to create a new world. For all we know, he managed to escape that Abyss place and just waited for the right person to help him with his goal.

Though speaking of the Midnight Lost Child, I was half-right about my prediction. They definitely exploited it in order to help with Xanadu, but not in the way I expected. I thought they were going to use it to solve the Power of Existence problem on Xanadu, but instead it was used to make sure it could be created.

While on the topic, I also think I can explain what they were talking about with exploiting the Midnight Lost Child. I could be wrong or oversimplifying it, but it made sense to me, so oh well.

Basically, the Midnight Lost Child is powered by distortions of Power of Existence. As we know, eating humans is a big cause of these distortions. However, you can also think of it as basically “messing around with Power of Existence”. Now, using up Power of Existence can be considered a distortion, too. The Midnight Lost Child fixes this distortion at midnight in a sort of “balancing the equation” sort of way by returning the lost Power of Existence. The way the Professor and Snake exploited this, was that they sort of enhanced the distortions in the world (think what Lamies did with Yoshida a few episodes ago), and then somehow linked them to Yuuji/Snake. This way, the Midnight Lost Child would let out a massive surge of Power of Existence in order to try and fix these distortions.

I think that explanation makes more sense in my head then when I try to write it down. I hope it isn’t too confusing.

As a side note, it also explains why they traveled all over the damn place throughout the season.

The God of Guidance/Balance also showed up to talk to everyone in the world. It’s kind of nice we finally got a female god, though she really didn’t do much other than talk. But supposedly her influence is massive, so in a way she’s the strongest of them all.

She didn’t show up to talk about Xanadu, though. As we saw through Rofocale’s eyes earlier, she came to talk about this… thing that Pheles and Johann created. Turns out it isn’t a new Treasure or anything, but a new life or existence. Judging by the conversation Shana had with Alastor, it sounds like Pheles and Johann are making… a baby. I guess by being a Mystes and a Crimson Denizen, you can’t just take the fun way of making kids, but you need to combine your existences into one or some crazy shit.

Wonder what this means for Margery and Keisaku if they want to have kids?

You also need a huge amount of Power of Existence, which will be provided due to the big ruckus from Xanadu being created. Other than that, I’m not sure about anything else, since that was really the only information that was given so far. We don’t even know if the shiny jar is the kid, or if that’s some kind of egg. Perhaps the last episode will shed some light on the matter.

*Insert Stairway to Heaven joke here*

I don’t actually have much to say about this, I just thought it looked perty.

Well, actually, no, I can talk about how the “Don’t eat humans” clause remained intact.

Snake was slightly confused as to why the Crimson Denizens were willing to leave this intact, and wasn’t sure who influenced them. It could have been the Flame Haze; the God of Guidance/Balance, Shaher; or Pheles and Johann.

Honestly, I think it was a bit of all of them.

The Flame Haze made clear what they wanted from Xanadu, since they were willing to compromise, so that was probably what put the idea in the Crimson Denizen’s head in the first place. Pheles and Johann showed that Crimson Denizens and humans could coexist, or even love each other. And Shaher was the voice of God, confirming that what Pheles and Johann did was not an abomination, but rather something to be cherished and celebrated. With all of these factors, it’s hard not to see the Crimson Denizens willing to make some amendments to Xanadu.

The Crimson Denizens are probably as tired of the fighting as the Flame Haze are. After all, not every one of them eats humans out of pleasure, they mainly did it out of survival. There’s probably other, more arduous ways to keep themselves alive that they’ll have to make use of.

Snake finally separated from Yuuji, so now I don’t have to type Yuuji/Snake all the damn time anymore so now Yuuji is back to his “normal” self. They had become fond of each other due to the time they spent together, but alas, Snake’s duty is done, and Yuuji seems to have something else he needs to take care of (whatever the hell it may be). Yuuji also sounded much more like his normal self than he has before at any point this season. Much less serious and ominous. Not that it’s easy to host two beings in one body, but I think it’s mainly just because now that Xanadu has been created, a huge burden is off his chest.

The question now is how strong Yuuji is without Snake. He’s still the host of the body, so theoretically, he still has that insane amount of Power of Existence that was gathered, but there was definitely a lot that was used to create Xanadu. Plus, the Midnight Lost Child was spinning awfully fast. Maybe it was too much power and went supersonic and obliterated itself.

Thinking about it more seriously, he probably does still have a good chunk of Power of Existence left, but he probably won’t have access to any of Snake’s moves. That means no use of Silver or his hair whip.

Interestingly, Sydonay also decided to stay. He made it sound like it was repayment for helping them, but I think he’s still depressed over losing Hecate. He’d rather help Yuuji out with whatever it is he needs to do rather than go off and live all alone.

In a fashion that left most likely many people weeping manly (or normal) tears, Khamsin’s time was up.

I said in my last post that I never really thought of Khamsin as much other than “the cool old guy”, but when he was in danger of dying it made me realize that I liked him and didn’t want him to die. I chalked this up to assuming he was just never going to die, so I was never too invested into his character. This was pretty much confirmed when I saw him in the preview for this episode, still alive. Because then when it revealed that half his body was already fading away, my heart sank.

So it’s only fair a spend a small bit to talk about Khamsin, right?

He was never really violent, and has pretty much always been about maintaining balance. The word “aggressive” probably isn’t even in his dictionary. He’s pretty much always done things for other people, even if it never had any real benefit for him. Back when he first became a Flame Haze, he hunted down the Monster in order to protect the King, even though the King didn’t like him. And then when the King and everyone else forgot about him, he still hunted down the Monster. At that point, as he said, it was more out of love than anything, but still.

I suppose that now at least he’ll get to see the Monster again. And this time, he can leave knowing that he won’t ever be forgotten. In a way, that probably means more to him than anything else he could have accomplished.

I know I said it back when Sabrac kicked the bucket, but it really fits Khamsin more than him:

Good night, sweet prince,
May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

Only one episode left. I’m excited to see how this ends, but depressed that it’s coming to a close.

Lets go out with a bang, alright?

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