Yuji Sakai is beginning what he thinks will be another boring year of school. But everything changes when the world around him stops, the surrounding people are engulfed in blue flames, and a freakish doll-like creature begins sucking them up! Before Yuji suffers the same fate, a young redheaded girl with a sword appears and saves him. Yuji is drawn into the struggle between these creatures from another world: the Crimson Denizens and the girl Shana, called the Fame Haze. He too has a crucial role to play in the conflict, despite the fact that he's dead.
Shakugan no Shana starts off in a similar vein to Bleach, with the main character suddenly being thrust into the middle of a fight against super natural beings that feed off of humans. Except where Ichigo himself starts fighting said monsters, Yuji instead stands in the background and watches Shana fight monsters. That's probably for the best considering he seems to have no strength or power of his own, but considering he's supposed to be the main character, or at least one of them, you would expect him to be more involved in these fights than he is. He seems more like a plot device than a character since the only purpose he serves is to be a target for the monsters, who are after him because he houses some sort of treasure inside himself. He does manage to make himself useful from time to time though, such as when he lets Shana use some of his “power of existence,” which is a kind of energy that can be used to do just about anything, to heal some of his classmates that had been injured in a fight even though using it could cause him to disappear. The only real personality trait he seems to have is that he's brimming with compassion, a stark contrast to fellow lead character Shana.
Shana frequently shows disregard for the safety of humans whenever she fights Crimson Denizens, being completely willing to fight one in a packed classroom, and then willing to sacrifice one of the students, using her power of existence to fix the room and heal everyone. She always refers to Yuji as a “thing” or an “it” instead of a person because he's just a “torch,” a vessel that takes the place of a human devoured by a Crimson Denizen until it disappears and the person is erased from existence, and gets angry whenever he feels sorry for people who have been replaced by torches. Given how cold she is towards him, and how often she says she's only protecting him to prevent the Denizens from getting him, it seems obvious that at some point in the future the two are going to fall in love. By the end of the volume they're living together and Yuji even accidentally sees Shana naked, and is punished by her. You can easily see where this relationship is headed.
As for the actual content of the volume, well there isn't very much to say, because not very much happens. It sets up the world, introduces the characters and eventually the villain, and other than that it consists almost entirely of Yuji and Shana talking about where she came from, why the Denizens attack humans, what happens to humans who get devoured by them, and those sorts of things. There's a lot of exposition, as well as a lot of ellipses since it seems like a lot of dialogue had to be stretched to fill multiple speech bubbles. There isn't much plot advancement until the villain shows up late in the volume, and even then all he does is tell them that he'll fight them some other time then takes the minion Shana had just beaten and leaves. They don't even establish much of a motive for him besides wanting to capture Yuji because of the treasure he houses, and what that treasure is supposed to be isn't explained in this volume either. The volume does manage to avoid fanservice, up until the last few pages when we get a few panels of naked Shana, and a full page and a half spread as well, but with nothing actually shown of course. That's all the fanservice though, unless you count Shana eating melon bread while making a cute face fanservice, which it probably is, just a different kind.
Shakugan no Shana is really just mediocre and a bit predictable. It isn't great, it isn't horrible, it just is. Having said that, I really can't see any reason to read this volume. There were only two fight scenes, which I found to be strange and hard to follow as opposed to entertaining, so there isn't much if you want action. There isn't very much fanservice either so if that's what you're looking for you won't find it here. The only reason I even bought it was because I was buying some other things and wanted to try another series. This was the first thing I saw in the store that had the first volume there and wasn't covered in shiny pretty-boys. It just doesn't get off to a strong start, which leaves me hesitant to read any more of it.
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