Making sense of shit going down
This is all from translators at Anime Suki, so giving credit where credit is due. This is for me to understand what's going on and to have all my information in one place.
Vol.16
- Yuji joins with the Snake of the Festival (Festival Snake) and becomes the leader of Bal Masque. The reason is because Yuji wants to create a peaceful world where Shana does not have to fight and Humans, Tomogara and Denizens can live together. Seeing that his ambitions were similar to the Snake, they decide to unite. The Snake plans to kill all Flame Hazes in order for his dreams to come true. And the only way this can happen is if there's enough Existence to change the world. (????)
- Yuji ends up having a confrontation with a party of Shana, Margery and Wilhelmina with the Snake in control. (not sure about that part) The SoF is described to be a god and has powers to back it up. (Yuji can spit out silver flames now and whip people with his fabulous new ponytail 'w')
- He ends up defeating Margery and Wilhelmina, confesses his love for Shana and beats her to near death. After which, he takes her to Bal Masque's headquarters.
- Yuji meets with Yoshida (?) and tells her that he loves Shana. Yoshida = Heart broken.
- Flame Haze from all around the world decide to get together in order to form a plan of counterattack against Yuji and Bal Masque.
Vol. 17
- Shana recovers, but is pissed off-slash-creeped out at SoF Yuji.
- Yuji strips her of her powers (by giving her a fancy bracelet), throws her in a dungeron and takes away Alastor. Shana is left scared, weak and alone. (her biggest fear)
- Hecate confronts SoF Yuji and bitches about Shana. Saying that they should kill her before she becomes a real problem. Also she might be jealous of SoF Yuji showing more attention to Shana?
- Alastor decides to take his chance in order to find some weaknesses to SoF. (he could return to Shana at any time, but it wouldn't make her happier) The only thing that could defeat him -- The Tenpa Jyousai (the move that defeated Friagne, I have a clip of here) Reflects on the past when his previous Flame Haze, Mathilda had done this and died as she defeated the SoF. Fears that "The Great War" between Crimson Denizens and Flame Hazes will begin again.
- Yuji and Bal Masque take a ROAD TRIP in their sky fortress to China in order to defeat some Flame Hazes that had gathered in oppression there. Bel-pol (sexy three-eyed woman) claims that the survivors will become a threat in the future to their plans.
- Bel-pol and the other minions wonder if Yuji's memories are affecting SoF's behavior and start to worry. But minus the Flame Haze aboard their HQ part, they claim that everything has been going according to plan. And Hecate does a keikaku doori gesture as she claims that Bal Masque will conquer all.
- More Shana emo where past memories start to haunt her and she tries to break her bracelet with a sword, but ends up cutting herself. (:() Yuji tries to see her wound, but ends up hurting her, much to his surprise. (good fucking job)
- Rammie (the Corpse Receiver from Vol. 2, episodes 5-7ish of the anime) shows up to visit SoF Yuji.
- Back in Japan, Wilhelmina learns of the lists of dead Flame Hazes (some were her friends :<) and Tiamet (her head dress thing) comments that the Great War is going to begin again. Wilhelmina visits Chigusa (Yuji's mother) and we notices that she does not remember anything about Yuji or Shana, but still threats Wilhelmina like her friend.
- Wilhelmina had been planning an operation to save Shana. Most of her friends that she had sent letters to, had turned her down due to long distance issues or were killed in the recent battle in China. Wilhelmina decides to go out and rescue Shana on her own.
- Margery is more or less emotionally broken. A shell of her former self as a Flame Haze without any confidence, purpose to fight or a reason to live. (Jesus SoF must've kicked their asses really good then) Will she get her groove back and take part in the battles to come? I don't know.
- Wilhelmina comments on the child that Chigusa is going to give birth to before she leaves.
Vol. 19
- Not much described, but 2/3 of the novel is said to have epic battles between the Flame Hazes and Bel Masque. Even though it's one-sided, the Flame Hazes have a plan to win. (many new characters are introduced here)
- Shana somehow gets her powers back. (I assume she broke the bracelet?)
- Next volume looks like to be a set up between the remaining Flame Hazes (Shana Faction) and the Crimson Denizens of Bal Masque (Yuji Faction). THIS IS WHERE WE STAND.
My thoughts
OKAY. There is a place where I'm up to date with Novel downloads, but sadly I cannot read moonspeak. I really would want to help out with Novel translations (since there's apparently one dude at Baka-Tsuki doing it 'A') but yeah.
As for the story, I'm really looking forward to the final showdown between Shana and Yuji. And really, I think Yuji has the right ideas about changing the world for peace, but he's just going about it in the wrong way. It goes into the "you must kill a thousand people to save a thousand people" kind of philosophy there. The witch hunt of Flame hazes is part of the SoF's plan, but what's Yuji going to do?
I think the series is about to reach it's conclusion within a few volumes, so I hope it's good one! And possibly Season three of the anime will be done right. There's rumors of one coming out in 2010? Season one was excellent, even though they changed a lot of important elements near the end and a little bit in the beginning. And Season two was more of a cocktease since we didn't get any Darth Yuji. They focused more on the slice-of-life bits instead of the action. But they did a good job with that when we reached Pheles' arc and the battle with Sabrac.
If you really want something close to the novel accuracy, either check out the movie where Volumes 1 through 3 are animated amazingly and then the manga which has NICE art. The only problem is that it's hard finding scanlations beyond Vol. 2. I have a hard copy of Vol 3 on hand, but I wouldn't want to rip that baby up for icons.
I guess I'll update with more pics and rough translations later on.