[darktruth]

My copy of the limited edition DVD was delivered today! Yay! I watched about half of the theatrical cut before dozing off since I haven't had much sleep since yesterday morning. Gonna rewatch it sometime later but the parts that I saw, I noticed they added some new bits and pieces in the fight scenes (most particularly the one between Shana and Marianne). Couldn't help but feel like the movie was rushed through but I guess it's because I've seen the TV series already that made me feel like that.

I gotta say the packaging of the DVD is great and it's heavy too with the extras that comes with it like a whole booklet of character sketches and designs and a separate booklet of promotional art drawings. They also included a 4 frame film reel of a random scene in the actual movie as well. The first press poster is also kind of big as well and it's the same picture that's used as the front cardboard slipcase for the DVD inside.

I just checked out the bonus disc of materials and it contains a 30 minute making of/behind the scenes of the movie, the premiere of it and the anime convention held at Akihabara that featured Shakugan no Shana as well as theatrical trailers, promo spots and interviews. There's also a new 6 minute shana-tan of the movie. I guess the producers and writers are running out of jokes for the first season as many of them weren't really outrageously hilarious, just a few of them made me laugh but the rest I was just staring blankly at it. There wasn't any sexual jokes in this one although the closest came to Yuji and panties. I took a few screencaps of the shana-tan omake below.












Oh yeah, I also received this Shana DJCD where it's claimed that you can only get this with the DVD if you pre-ordered the movie. It contains the Japanese VA's of Shakugan no Shana on a special radio program for the movie I think and it runs for 30 minutes.



There's also one where you can also get a special 3D card from pre-ordering it but I didn't get it with my order. I think obtaining the 3D card depends on where you pre-ordered the DVD. I ordered mine from CDJapan and they had a poster as their special first press item.

[Flynt]

Looks like a good buy there Darky, the extra's make it well worth getting.

Yeah did you know the new season starts airing in Japan on October 4th?

[Analog]

Nice! Although I think the DJCD wouldn't be too big on my must have list for Shana... although listening to that "book" talk about "Margery Daw" for more than a few minutes all by itself.

I'm three discs into the 1st season right now. I'll have two more on the way for this weekend and will likely finish it up just in time to wait impatiently for the 2nd season to finish airing in Japan so it can be brought over to the US. XD

[darktruth]

I just watched the director's cut version of the movie and it's much better than the theatrical version. The theatrical cut ran for just an hour while the director's cut had about 20 minutes of footage restored back into the film (most of it involved the scenes that had the original Yukari Hirai).

So much of the story was rushed through in the theatrical version that I doubt it'd make much sense for those who haven't seen the TV series. There are a few new scenes and parts that were changed during the latter part of the film. The details below are most likely to be spoilers for those who have not seen the TV series.

The first few minutes of the movie had some new scenes involving Friagne fighting a male flame haze. He easily defeats the male flame haze with a special gun that we didn't see him use in the TV series. I guess this was done to show how bad ass and powerful he is. In the TV series he was shown to be a weak villain that Shana easily defeated despite Alastor saying how he has defeated many previous flame hazes.

After this part is where the difference between the theatrical and director's cut version is notable. The theatrical version had Yuji narrating the story for about the next 15 minutes, many of which was done to move the story faster and ended up skipping through most of Yukari Hirai's scenes. The director's cut version restored nearly of all these scenes with no narration at all.

Most of the new scenes after that involve Yoshida to show her crush on Yuji, there's one where she's taking a bath and another where she's putting some cookies in a bag to give to him as a gift. The scene where Friagne is talking to Shana at Yuji's school (after her fight with Marianne) is slightly altered where Shana was planning to use Yoshida's existence to fix the damages. In the TV series, it was originally Ike that she was planning to use but it was changed to Yoshida in the movie.

The fanservice scene/panty shot which Yuji accidentally sees remains untouched and is left in both versions of the movie. When Margery Daw and Marco appear in the film the pace of the story gets moved much faster, however, the part where Shana fights her is taken out of the film as is the Grimor that collects the torches about to die out. Both Shana and Margery Daw talk for a little bit and then Yuji comes in with his anger directed at Margery thinking she's the one taking out the torches.

This is the part where Friagne enters and a short battle commences between the three before taking Yuji hostage. From here, it's mostly new fight scenes after I think Shana and Margery form an alliance. We get to see how powerful and strong Friagne is with that gun of his as he pretty much kicks Shana and Margery's ass for the majority of the fight. He also summons up many dolls in wedding dresses to fight against Shana and Margery. It's here that Yuji realizes the dolls Friagne uses have the human torches inside their bodies as a weapon (he uses the torches to set off explosions against Shana).

Like in the TV series, Marianne sacrifices herself to help Friagne but in this movie she tells him to use her as the final attacker against Shana. The TV series had Friagne acting delirious and out of his mind at this point just before Marianne's sacrificing herself but the movie version had him sane until he she tells him to use her.

At this point is an extremely intense scene where he shoots Shana with his gun and she falls off the building bursting into flames. This is where Alastor reveals his true form and boy is it amazing. The whole city in the Fuzetsu area begins to be engulfed in flames and buildings falls apart to reveal Alastor as a HUGE minotaur-like creature with Shana inside of him, Margery escapes the area at the advice of Marco when they realize what's going on and look on from a distance. Alastor gives out some sort of speech while Friagne is frightened into speechlessness before being engulfed by the flames. Yuji is also engulfed by the flames but not before seeing Shana inside. She opens up her eyes and the next thing we see is that it's night time and the city has been returned to normal.

We see Yuji lying down with Shana sitting next to him. He thinks he's about to disappear as he sees himself starting to fade out so he gives some sort of emotional speech to Shana asking her to use the name he gave her before closing his eyes. There's a shot of a clock striking midnight and it fades out to black for a few seconds. It cuts back to Yuji opening his eyes and being confused to why he's still there and hasn't disappeared yet while Shana is laughing at him. Alastor then explains to Yuji didn't disappear because of the Reiji Maigo inside of him fully restoring his flame every midnight. Margery Daw comes back for a few seconds to look at Yuji and Shana before flying away and they notice it as they look up the sky before the screen fades out and the credits start rolling.

Overall, the director's cut version of the film was much better than the theatrical cut and it was also better than the TV series version as Friagne got to shine a lot more in this. The fight scenes was a major improvement as it was intense and heart-pounding.

[darktruth]

Finally took some photos of the DVD package to show you guys how much effort the Japanese companies put in these sorts of releases.

Slip case on the left side while the DVD foldout package is on the right


what the inner cover of the DVD package looks when it's folded out


the back side of the dvd foldout


the two extra booklet specials, the one the left is a really thick one that contains the storyboard of the film from start to finish while the one on the right is the one that contains character info, designs, background layouts and promotional illustrations


more extras - some leaflet handouts, a 4-frame film cut from the movie reel and the DJCD from preordering the movie


finally, the poster that only came with the first press editions of the DVD from CDJapan