December 1st, 2009 
AstroNerdBoy 灼眼のシャナたんりべんじ
Shakukan no Shanatan Revenge Review
The Shakugan no Shana-tan series is hit or miss when it comes to content. Early on, these were pretty funny but over time, they’ve become less so. However, with Shakugan no Shana-tan Revenge, the humor levels go back up but ONLY if you have seen three anime series also produced by J.C. Staff, a couple of which had a major character voiced by KUGIMIYA Rei (Shana). Otherwise, you won’t appreciate this as much.
Let me get the other aspects of the episode first. There are a couple of classroom segments where Bel Peol teaches class about certain things that happened in Shakugan no Shana Second. These are interesting if you are really into the series and wanted a further explanation of Hecate’s ties with faux vessel in human form, Fumina, or if you wanted to know about the life Bal Masqué tried to create at the end of that series. The humor aspects come from someone remarking about how Bel Peol drones on or how in different segments, Yuuji or Shana end up sleeping during the explanation.
There’s a parody of delinquents and a rugby team which I don’t know if is another J.C. Staff production parody or not.
I didn’t get all of the frog references in most of the eye catches between shorts. Most of the characters show up in realistic frog costumes and wrapping up with Bel Peol in a snake costume with the members of Bal Masqué as super deformed in her coils. Weird. If anyone can shed light on this, let me know. ^_^
In my opinion, the real joy of this episode will be from those who are aware of three J.C. Staff titles — Hayate no Gotoku, Toradora!, and Toaru Majutsu no Index. I’ve never watched Toaru Majutsu no Index, but the character Index shows up as Index-tan and has a verbal skirmish with Shana-tan as Wilhelmina and Tiamat watch from behind a pole. There was an earlier Shana-tan episode where Tiamat’s lines are simply various seiyuu names and that tradition continues here by Index’s seiyuu IGUCHI Yuka gets mentioned. ^_^
I have watched Hayate the Combat Butler and Toradora!, both of which star KUGIMIYA Rei. The episode starts with Shana-tan having blond hair with Nagi’s twin tails from Hayate and I immediately had a huge grin on my face because I knew what was up. As Shana-tan does her normal going off on Yuuji’s head while insulting him, she lets a “Hayate no BAKA!” slip out and I laughed out loud. Yuuji asks who Hayate is and when Shana-tan starts talking about Comiket, I laughed again because that’s more of Nagi. Knowing that Kugimiya plays both Nagi and Shana makes the moment even more fun for me.
The episode ends with the Toradora! moment as the tiger-cat “mascot” that represents the character of AISAKA Taiga (also voiced by Kugimiya) is shown carrying the pendant that contains Alastor in her mouth. Again, I laughed out loud because I’ve mentioned how typecast Kugimiya can be playing tsundere characters such as Shana, Nagi, or Taiga. So kudos to her for being able to have fun with her previous characters and kudos to J.C. Staff for poking some fun at themselves.
There’s one wrong moment in the episode where for some reason, Kazumi is sitting on a dog while observing Shana-tan from behind a pole.
In the end, this latest Shana-tan release sees improved humor levels providing you are versed with certain popular J.C. Staff titles. Since the episode ends with the implication of more, I’d love to see a Shana-tan with Shana-tan squaring off against Nagi-tan and Taiga-tan. I’d also LOVE for J.C. Staff to pull out Hand Maid May since Kugimiya voiced the cyberdoll Rena-chan (though since they weren’t the main production company, that likely won’t happen).
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Most of this one went over my head, to be honest. The first time I saw this I hadn’t seen any of the referenced series. I did start watching Hayate no Gotoku a few days ago, though, so Nagi-tan was a lot more amusing the second time. (^_^) (And once again, I must thank you for the implicit recommendation of a series – Hayate has given me a few literal LOLs.)
I was kinda puzzled by Yoshida sitting on the dog, but didn’t think too much of it. The scene referenced by the last pic you posted, though (boom boom / BOOM!) … has me completely baffled. Was Shana-tan saying that Yoshida got molested a lot worse than we saw, was she completing a mind-boggling assessment of Yoshida’s AHEM! secondary characteristics, or am I just being too dirty-minded and it meant something else altogether?
I’d need to rewatch, but I think that in Shakugan no Shana-tan G, Shana-tan does the same joke. I didn’t write about it then but assuming I can bloody remember to rewatch this, I may remember the bigger reference behind the joke (beyond the apparent sexual references).
I think they should have a Louise-tan from Familiar of Zero since Rie is also the voice of that tsundere character and Satoshi Hino, who plays Yuuji, is the voice of Saito in Familiar of Zero. That would be hysterical for me.
@Anon — I hadn’t seen that series but was aware of it. Now that I see that J.C. Staff is involved and as you said, the main two seiyuu from “Shakugan no Shana” are the stars of “Familiar of Zero,” that does seem a good choice to parody.
I was really hoping to find something that would explain the boom-boom-BOOM joke, so I rewatched all the Shana-tans… but no dice, unless it’s a nuance in the original Japanese. The closest thing was Yoshida-san looking at Yuuji’s *ahem* fire of life (while an elephant trumpeted in the background), followed by her breasts spontaneously Gainaxing. Repeatedly. (X_X) Even the old ones had their beat-it-into-the-ground not-funny moments, I guess.
But I still agree in general about the older ones being better – to me, few things are as pure Crowning Moment of Funny as Yoshida mocking Shana’s “Urusai! Urusai! Urusai!” and then throwing her into a tissue box (though some of that may just be my love for Kawasumi Ayako).
@Anon: Oh, dear. That would be so funny, and yet so wrong. (^_~) It might still work if it were Nagi-tan saying this to Hayate… but I can only imagine Yuuji’s flabbergasted look when Shana-tan accused him of wanting to have sex with anything that moved, maids particularly included.
… thinking about it, my last post was wrong in one aspect: Yoshida-san’s “I’m going to kill her” at the end of the boom-boom-BOOM scene is part of a running joke in the Shana-tan OVAs. Usually, the joke is that the ridiculously sweet Yoshida goes completely creepy by saying it. In this case… maybe it’s just me, but it doesn’t seem too far out of line. ( ^_^’)
I’d forgotten about the “elephant on fire” joke from way back when. ^_^;
I guess I should try to score “Familiar of Zero” though I’ve got so many recommended anime to watch, it would be hard to squeeze it in. ^_^;;;
An extremely belated comment, after finally watching Toradora:
Now I know why you thought you’d seen the boom-boom-BOOM! joke before… it’s almost word-for-word from Toradora. (At the climax of this scene from episode 9. Poor innocent Ryuuji.)
I still don’t quite get it, but it’s hardly uncommon that a joke just won’t translate well. At least the fansubbers didn’t try to invent their own jokes instead, like some companies *cough* ADV *cough* do.
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Keeping it in one place rather than spam multiple old posts, thank you for the reviews of Toradora. It helps to at least find out ~why~ the last few episodes felt like AndThenSomeStuffHappenedAndTheyFinallySpatOutAllTheirHiddenMotivesAndThat’sTheEndBye.
Maybe if it’s successful enough, Tokyopop will someday publish the light novels like they did for Crest/Banner of the Stars? Without the full explanation, a lot of what happened seemed like complete character derailment – which is sad, considering how refreshingly real the rest of it felt.
It kinda reminds me of what happened to Kare Kano… I wonder if they also got told a few episodes before the end that they weren’t going to be renewed due to creative differences / budget / etc?
Glad you liked “Toradora.” I wouldn’t mind someone bringing the novels over, but as I understand it, light novels haven’t been a success in the U.S. Unfortunate.
(FWIW, the rest of the line was supposed to be …AllTheirHiddenMotivesAndThat’sTheEndBye. At least on my browser, it got eaten for being too long.)
Apparently there’s an ongoing fanslation project of the light novels here if you’re interested, though the little I’ve read of it so far seems a bit stiff.
Last random thought – if you liked Toradora’s emotional realism, you might like True Tears or Kashimashi. True Tears is even more realistic, but without nearly as much humor. Kashimashi is cheesy humor, but gets heavy doses of realism toward (but not at) the end.
I’ve heard of both of those but haven’t scored them. I need to win the lottery so I can watch more anime. *lol*
If you guys are wondering about the BOOM thing it’s actually from Toradora.
Thanks for the info.
[…] Well, since Shakugan no Shana-tan Revenge had Index-tan make a guest appearance, I’m not surprised that the crossover humor remains. So, Shana-tan gets channeled here […]