Yuji appears as a changed person. What is he after?
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Tanaka and Kazumi are astonished to recognise that the person with as much power as a crimson lord is Yuji.
The new Sakai greets Shana and Alastor demands to know who he really is. The new Yuji’s voice changes and says to Alastor that he’s surprised he doesn’t recognise him, but that’s expected as Alastor arrived later than him to this world. Margery and Wilhelmina appear and asks if this is still Sakai Yuji.
Yuji replies it is still Sakai Yuji, but that’s merely a name as his true name is different. He says that once they see his flames they’ll understand, and summons a dark Fuzetsu with black flames. He then reveals his actual body and says that he is now known as Snake of the Festival. His other name is God of Creation, someone who stands as Alastor’s equal.
But it seems that he was drunk on power and banished by the flame haze a long time ago. Without warning he attacks with a huge tornado of wind. Margery and Wilhelmina back off as Shana draws his sword and refuse to believe that this is Yuji.
Margery launches a surprise attack, combined with Wilhelmina they manage to pin him down and hit him with a barrage of attacks.
At the Haridan Kazumi knows that this is the real Yuji from the way Shana’s speaking about him.
Yuji is unharmed when he appears from the attack and pulls Shana up. He locks Margery and Wilhelmina up in a ball of silver and asks Shana to come with him but still with a confused face, Shana retreats.
Margery and Wilhelmina make progress in breaking through Yuji’s ball so Yuji stops them by giving out information about the silver. This forces Shana to attack, but Yuji dodges them all.
Inside the ball of silver Yuji spawns out several suits of armour that resembles the silver and says that they are the embodiment of human emotions and a part of the armour that forms his personality. And that armour is just an illusion that appears before humans who have deep emotions. Basically the silver that appeared before Margery was her hatred, and it did what she wanted to do herself.
Hearing all this, Margery completely loses herself and breaks down causing the contract between her and Marco to fluctuate.
Margery has a flashback and things finally make sense now. She was betrayed repeatedly and hated everyone. She had hated the silver for destroying what she wanted to destroy, but now she finds that it was actually herself all along. It was all over already.
Back outside it’s only Yuji and Shana and their battle begins as Yuji pulls out Blutsauger. Shana looks to have the disadvantage in strength and as Yuji still owns that Hogu that absorbs fire he’s unharmed from her fire. Shana tries out her new move and after that they land on Yuji’s old house.
Yuji then tells her of his plans to change the world. To protect everyone and to free Shana from the fate of endless fighting. He tells her that he’s gotten stronger like she wanted, so now he will fight to walk alongside her and to protect her. They launch their final attacks and Shana’s flames are completely overwhelmed by Yuji’s.
From the Haridan Kazumi and Tanaka see Yuji fast approaching and in seconds he comes crashing through the roof holding an unconscious Shana. He collects the Haridan, rejects Kazumi (from what I see) and leaves with Shana.
Thoughts:
So, Yuji’s taken Shana away, what for? If she was the only one to stand in their way then why didn’t he get rid of her there and then? And if Yuji’s existence is still there then he’d want Shana to stay safe, so wouldn’t he just leave her alone? Keep her captive and safe that way so she can watch the world change due to his doing? But even so, is it wise to keep her alive? Also if what Yuji meant by protecting her and ending her misery of having to fight everyday by killing her, then why would he keep her alive? I don’t get it… unless I’m mistaken somewhere. But anyway the reason about capturing her to see him take over the world seems the most plausible explanation for his actions, for now at least, so I think I’ll go with that.
But anyway, we now know who Yuji’s new personality is, snake of the festival, a crimson lord on par with Alastor, who had once tried to take over the world basically, I wonder how he’s able to walk around so freely. I’m assuming he’s using Yuji in a way similar to how Alastor is using Shana? Cos if the lord himself can walk around in the real world like that then that’s not going to be good. I don’t think they can take down a lord with the same power as Alastor. In which case I am hoping for them to show Alastor’s true form to have him battle it out against this snake guy, that’d be fun, but I don’t think that’ll happen as it’ll be Shana who’s fighting.
Anyway Yuji proves what I said last time about intellect being far greater than brute strength. He used words to take down Margery and was fighting Shana at the same time, now that’s what I like to see in a powerful person. Reminds of the time when Zhuge Liang talked Wang Lang to death and forced his army to retreat, of course this was fictional but even so, it shows the power in words.
I’m sure with the help of Tanaka and Keisaku, Margery will soon get out of her dead mood and start drinking as normal again. So maybe a quiet few episodes as things calm down and then heat up as either Margery and Wilhelmina go after Shana or Bal Masque take the fight to them.
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November 2, 2011 at 3:17 am
Inuhanyou
Yuji had no intention of killing Shana, his motives of protecting Shana are genuine, and the Snakes are as well.
The story is not so black and white that Tomogara = automatically evil and Flame Haze = automatically good.
What if…..what if, the snake’s desire to create a Utopia was genuine? And he had the means to do this? And what if Yuji agreed with him? What if…all this time during the Shana series, it was the Flame Haze who were mistaken?
You’d say that was a good twist right?
November 2, 2011 at 4:18 am
Lucretia
That would be an interesting twist, but from what I see in Shakugan no Shana it seems to follow a typical storyline of good versus evil so I’m not expecting any big u-turns, however that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t love to see one. And yeah I gathered Yuji wasn’t going to kill Shana and does want to protect her, but what does that mean is what I want to know, carrying her to his ‘domain’ is not going to do her any good the other denizens there won’t let her off easily and she’s unlikely to cooperate, so I still wonder what purpose she’s capturing her for.
And all evil villains willing to take over the world for their idealised utopia are genuine, and some of them are very nice ideals, but usually to do it they cause too much damage or sorrow or something which is why they are viewed as villains and people stop them. I don’t doubt the snake’s utopia idea, but to do it he’ll need to wipe out the opposing side, and in the end, whoever wins will be right and they can claim themselves as ‘good’. Yuji could’ve fallen for this idealistic approach and not realised to consequences, but who knows, he may also have been brainwashed. If he truly wishes for snake’s utopia, he’ll have to get past Margery and Wilhelmina and I don’t see him having the heart to do that. Unless he somehow convinces them.
I don’t deem denizens as bad and flame haze as good, Lamies is awesome, and I deem him ‘good’, my favourite character oddly enough. But from this perspective it seems the story wants to put flame haze as good, and I don’t see this changing any time soon. However I think there’s more to Bal Masque than meets the eye. obviously, they’re just fighting for their ideals, as I said, the people who declare themselves good, are those who win. But yes, a twist would be nice and interesting.
Huh… seems I got carried away, if you can be bothered to read all that then thanks ^^.
November 3, 2011 at 1:39 am
takashid
sigh…
The Shana anime hasn’t cleared things up as much as i would like. In the novel this scene makes it clear that Yuji and Snake of the festival are truly working together, as a completely equal partnership to change the world(at least for now). It also makes it clear that Yuji loves Shana, and that the last thing in the world that he wants is her dead. He is the boss of Bal masque now, so if he takes Shana back and says that she is a prisoner not to be harmed, they will obey.
The reason Yuji is doing this is because as the world is now, eventually the people they love will be eaten, no matter how strong they get. No matter how many Denizens are beaten, more will come to earth looking for power. Even if Bal Masque is smashed, another group would rise up eventually. In the novel he uses his dad as a prime example of his point; his dad travels all the time. What if he were attacked while traveling? The classmates he and Shana have grown so close to will eventually graduate, and some will move away leaving them vulnerable. As he points out, they can’t protect everyone, can’t send a flame haze to guard every person.
So, he wants to change the worlds rules, literally alter the world, so that people wont be eaten anymore and disappear, and Shana wont need to keep fighting till she kills herself one day. Snake of the festival also wants to change the rules so that his Crimson denizen brethren can come to this world without needing to eat people.Thus, they work together to accomplish that goal.
November 3, 2011 at 2:04 am
Lucretia
Ah I see, that would explain things better. The anime was too vague, although it’s still early days, maybe the anime will explain it all properly another time. I would love to read the novel, but there’s only 2 volumes released and I’ve got them, annoyingly they’ve stopped and I really hate reading on a screen. I do hope they’ll continue with Shana light novels soon, an anime can only show so much, the more detailed parts would be written down.