I was all set on not expecting too much from the last episode. I was extremely happy to see that this episode was a lot better than I had anticipated. It was a lot of fun to watch in my opinion. It’s not the ideal ending by any means, but I’m satisfied with the ending. I will elaborate on why this seemingly incomplete ending made me content in a bit. One minor disappointment was I thought there wasn’t enough Vilhelmina in this episode. Although now that I think about it there would never have been enough Vilhelmina. Possibly one of my favourite scenes in this episode was when Shana prepared to sacrifice herself and Yuji calmly goes with her. I would have been perfectly happy with an ending where Yuji and Shana disappear completely after that scene. As I mentioned a while ago I was happy with the ending even though there were still many unresolved issues. Hecate and the others were able to escape in time so Shana wasn’t able to stop them for good. It just means things are still left open for a second season. I have not heard any news of a second season, but we do see at the very end that a movie is in the works. It seems unlikely a movie will be able to wrap everything up so I’m hoping for a second season.

After finishing all 24 episodes I feel that this was a pretty unique series. The story and concepts used were pretty uncommon as far as your regular anime series goes. The art for the series is very nicely done as well in my opinion. To complement the art they used good seiyuus. The amount of filler episodes were kept to a minimum which is a good thing for this series. There really isn’t a whole lot of complaints I have about this series. I would have liked to see a few characters better developed, but overall it wasn’t too bad. In retrospect, I liked how this series was focused more on the story and relationships rather than on the fighting. This series may not be for everyone, but if you want a unique story with interesting characters and a little action on the side then “Shakugan no SHANA” is for you. Taking everything into account, I thought this was a pretty solid series.

Luckily, this episode was a lot more fun to watch than the previous episode. If the second-to-last episode wasn’t any good I would have been pretty worried. One of the things that made this episode so entertaining was Vilhelmina. Watching her in action was enough to make me not dislike this episode. The eyecatch for this episode was great. It was just too bad Vilhemina was so small in that picture. I thought having Margery help Shana and Vilhelmina was a good thing to include because it felt like they almost wrote her out of the series completely. Shana has worked out her feelings and is no longer concerned with not knowing what he wants to do Yuuji. Knowing how she feels about him is all she needs right now. It’s good to see how far Shana has come along in terms of character development since the first episode. With one more episode to go I can only hope for a satisfying ending to this series.

What the Tomogaras are trying to do finally becomes clear in this episode. Hecate finally has more of a role this time around. To be honest, I didn’t find this episode particularly good considering there are only 2 episodes left. I just expected more to happen at this point in the series. It wasn’t a complete waste though since we do get development. Plus there were some pretty nice scenes with Vilhelmina as well. Of course there was also the conversation between Kazumi and Shana right before Shana leaves with Vilhelmina. It probably would have been more meaningful if it happened earlier, but right now I don’t really care for what Kazumi has to say now when there are bigger things at risk. Overall, I’m sad to say I was a little disappointed.

This episode pretty much prepared the setting for the final confrontation of the series. Yuuji was all set on leaving town, but it doesn’t look like he has a choice anymore. Shana is still confused as ever about her feelings for Yuuji. I was kind of hoping to have a more solid relationship going by this time. I guess I can always hope for something to come about at the end of the series. Near the end of the episode we see Shana get seriously wounded. It was a pretty intense scene except I think it was ruined when they showed a perfectly fine Shana in the preview. There’s no way they would kill off the main character right now, but I would rather have had them leave Shana out of the preview.

There were a fair amount of scenes with Vilhelmina in it so this episode gets lots of bonus points for that. I must say I’m disappointd to see Yuuji continue to not realize his actions are hurting Shana. He’s pretty blind not to see that bringing Kazumi back to his place is a bad idea. At this point I just hope he will redeem himself sooner or later. Yuuji has finally made up his mind that leaving town with Shana is for the best. Unfortunately, soon after Vilhelmina finds him and is on the verge of destroying him. Shana is struggling between her duty as a Flamehaze and her feelings for Yuuji. It’s going to be interesting to see Shana stand up against Vilhelmina.

The story itself for this episode wasn’t great at all. It felt like it was something from a kids show where the villain gets blown away at the end. What made this episode good was the dialogue between the characters and the development of various relationships. Now that everyone knows about one another the interactions between the characters is very likely to change. It will be interesting to see how it will differ from the way things currently are. There’s now even more tension between Shana, Kazumi, and Yuuji. Previously it seemed like Yuuji only had his eyes on Shana, but there’s a possibly that has changed. Personally I’d like to believe Shana is just misunderstanding the situation with Yuuji.

I’m just going to get it out in the open right away, Shana is awesome in a yukata. This is the first time we see Shana cry. Seeing Shana cry has a completely different effect than seeing other others cry. With her kind of personality it just comes as a shock to see her break down like that. I like how they added that scene in because we really get to see the kind of changes emerging because of the time she spends with Yuuji. On another note, I knew Margery had quite a package, but I didn’t think she rivaled Matsumoto from “Bleach”. I swear they just increased them in size in this episode. Kazumi mustered up the courage to use the item on Yuuji and the truth hit her hard. A new character started stirring up trouble as well in the midst of all this relationship chaos.

The new opening song for the series is by KOTOKO. As far as recent opening songs go, this is one of the better ones. I don’t feel it is as good as some of KOTOKO’s other songs though. Things pretty much continued from the last time before the flashback episodes. I didn’t think the day would come when Shana wanted to learn how to make a bento. It was too bad we didn’t get to see her try to make the tamago-yaki. As for actual plot development, a new Flamehaze by the name of “Kamshin” shows up in this episode. He reveals the truth about the world to Kazumi, which should add an interesting spin to the story.

This is the last episode of Shana’s past. They pretty much just wrap up a lot of the loose ends from the previous two episodes. Not everything was resolved, but enough of it was to enjoy this last flashback episode without wondering what was happening. We find out Shiro’s identity and the truth behind Tenmokuikko. I personally found 3 episodes to be one episode too long for flashbacks. It was nice to get the backstory and whatnot, but I think they could have condensed it down to 2 episodes. With 3 episodes devoted to Shana’s past, I wish they had more scenes with Vilhelmine.

There is a new ending song starting from this episode. I thought it was a pretty decent song, but I’ve only listened to it once so far. We continue on with the story of Shana’s past and how she became a Flamehaze. Things were pretty confusing by the end of the previous episode because not much was explained. We get a few explanations in this episode so things are starting to make some sense. To my surprise, the being that looked like a samurai turned out to be an invincible Mystise named Tenmokuikko. Shana’s flashback doesn’t end with this episode so we’re likely to get even more answers next week.