Shakugan No Shana - Production

Production

In an early draft of what would later become Shakugan no Shana, Yashichiro Takahashi set the story in a different dimension and described the main character as having the initial personality of Shana, but the appearance of an older woman similar to Margery Daw. However, after talking with an editor, Takahashi rewrote the character to have the appearance of a young girl. In doing so, he used Shana's small build to symbolize a story of growth and to emphasize the physical conflict between her and her opponents. Noizi Ito was contacted in early August 2002 to be the illustrator for the series, and she was very excited to work on the project after she read the manuscript for the first novel; this was the first time Ito drew illustrations for a book.

Shortly before writing Shakugan no Shana, Takahashi made his debut as an author with A/B Extreme, which was awarded an honorable mention in the eighth Dengeki Novel Prize by MediaWorks (now ASCII Media Works) in 2001. By his own admission, A/B Extreme was too difficult for readers to understand, so for his next work, he set out to write something easier to grasp. As such, the initial premise of Shakugan no Shana was to write a boy meets girl story in a school setting, though initially love was not one of the themes included. He was given the freedom to write as he pleased based on this premise after showing it to his editor.