Shakugan no Shana/YMMV

• And the Fandom Rejoiced - When Funimation announced that they would be licensing the second season. More rejoicing followed when they also announced that they would be licensing the movie and OVAs.
  • Third season will air in the fall 2011 season.
• Broken Base: Third season has split the fandom between supporting Flame Hazes and Tomogara -- and in this case, Rooting for the Empire is quite understandable.
• Crowning Music of Awesome - Now with it's very own page!
• Die for Our Ship - Kazumi, especially after Pheles gave her a Hougu which can summon Pheles, but would take Kazumi's life as a price.
• Dude, Not Funny - The ending of the Shakugan no Shana movie. Yuji, believing he's going to fade, finishes what he thinks is his "last speech" to Shana just as the Reiji Maigo replenishes him. Shana and Alastor double over laughing.
• Evil Is Cool - Yuji as Snake of the Festival very much so, his fans often nickname him as Darth Vader Yuji, or just Darth Yuji for short.
• Gannon Banned: It seems the correct form of Shana's catchphrase is "Urusai! Urusai! Urusai!!!"
• God Mode Sue - Yuji after he ascended as Snake of the Festival, he basically and literally became God and needless to say the strongest in the series.
• High Octane Nightmare Fuel - Being devoured by a Tomogara results in you being replaced by a Torch. Bad enough that your remaining life is spent as a sort of cosmic scab meant to insulate the universe from your disappearance. What makes this Nightmare Fuel is that when the Torch burns out, not only do you die, but no one will ever remember that you existed at all. There's an episode that chronicles Yuuji trying to save a Torch; watching her run down and burn out is equal parts Tear Jerker and this trope. If memory serves, the episode even ends with "What have we been doing all day?" when she does vanish. Brrrr.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • URUSAI! URUSAI! URUSAI!
    • URUCHAI! URUCHAI! URUCHAI!
  • OH GOD SHANA IS HOT
  • de arimasu~
• Paranoia Fuel - At any time in the past, you may have been killed, eaten, and replaced with a copy without you even realizing it. And eventually, that copy can run out of power...
• Rooting for the Empire - One interpretation is that the more Crimson Denizens (Guze no Tomogara) are in desperate need of resources and thus feeding on humans is sometimes the only option and some Flame Haze are overzealous. The former is backed up by the idea the Bal Masque was founded by a god, thus they essentially should have the same authority as Flame Haze (though they are not contracted with Crimson Lords). The latter is partially backed up by the fact that Marjory was originally shown as being somewhat of a Blood Knight, thus indicating that there are more violent and less honorable Flame Haze.
  • I still find it rather impossible to root for them, what with the horrible fate they inflict upon innocent sentient life forms and all. If your survival means that you have to kill lots of innocent people (and the denizens, as stated above, do far worse than that to their victims), then you ought not exist from a moral standpoint. Great Freudian Excuse and all, but it still doesn't change the fact that they are all in dire need of a headshot, preferably several of them.
  • Although it could be said that they are a higher form of life, when compared to humans, we are but food. Nothing more, nothing less.
    • By that logic, it is okay to root for a shark if it manages to eat a family member or friend in front of you. They are but food. Nothing more, nothing less.
    • By the opposing logic, you could argue that humans are just as bad as Denizens if you consider killing for survival to be evil. In order to eat, we slaughter plenty of animals on even a daily basis. Depending on how far you're willing to stretch it, even vegetarians and the like benefit from murder; ripping parts off living plants or devouring their unborn children (seeds). Is this fine because we're "higher" than plants and other animals? If so, then us getting devoured should be fine too; we're just lower on the food chain than we'd like. If it's not okay, then we still don't have the moral high ground and ought to be killed off for being monsters in our own right.
  • Difficult to root for the Denizens with examples like Friagne, the Twins, and Annaburg. They are higher only in the sense of being able to use power of existence. Yuji all by himself shows that they're no more intelligent. Tenmoku Ikuo has shown that humans that sacrifice their humanity and live consuming Denizens can also be quite powerful, although it's true that according to the anime he's actually three entities including the sword.
  • Rooting for the Empire became a more viable option in the later light novels (and the third season) when it is revealed Bal Masqué's plan, as well as their new leader Yuji's, is to create a utopia called Xanadu where Crimson Denizens will not need to devour humans to sustain their existence, and even coexist peacefully with them. And considering how the series ends...
    • It should be noted that Yuji original plan was to allow Crimson Denizens to feast on humans, but it was only a copy of the world, but Shana made rule that the Crimson Denizens can no longer eat humans in the new world which they agree to.
  • Given that the general attitude of Flame Hazes towards humans ranges from indifference to contempt, this one had a difficult time sympathizing with their cause. Now in the third season we see Tomogara eating, drinking and displaying rather human characteristics, the actions of the Flame Haze in the latter half of the season, especially The Four Gods of the Motherland could be characterized as genocide of a sentient species.
  • Another point to not Rooting for the Empire is that Flame Haze went to war on the Crimson Denizens because they would have eaten large amount of human existence in short amount of time that would cause The End of the World as We Know It if left uncheck. The Snake of the Festivals offer them a world where they could feed on human without any consequence. To me the Crimson Denizens are like greedy jerks like CEO that make large bonus for themselves or farmer using the land every year not caring if the company or land is ruin as long they make a profit now.
• Squick - The Aizens, Tiriel and Sorath, make out with each other. In public. A lot.
• Tear Jerker - Poor, poor Hirai...
  • Also the end of episode 20, where Wilhelmine is trying to kill Yuji and Shana's far away, very upset.
  • The scene where Konoe dies/is absorbed by Hecate, with little to no resistance at all. Its extremely tragic, since the show built her up as such an innocent character.
• Wangst - Often resulting in combat. At times it seems like the series would be half as long if Shana and Kazumi wouldn't take so much time with their angsty internal monologues over Yuji, although Yuji himself isn't immune.
  • Indeed, Yuji himself plays this trope at the end of the second season.