Hmmm, reading through some of the various reviews my attention was caught by the debate over Angel signing over his Shanshu.
Firstly, one thing that caught my attention was the following statement in the review:
"In order for any legal document to be valid and executable a person must sign his or her legal name. Angel’s name is Liam, and we’ve never learned his surname. All those documents are invalid."I doubt W&H would make such an amateur mistake and would assume that in all legal terms "Liam
<Insert surname here>" is dead. By that I mean that Liam was his
human name, one we have to assume that he stopped going by shortly after being turned. Changing again when he regained his soul. In such a world (remember Gunn had both human
and demon laws inserted into his brain), I'd guess that the name of the demon was equally acceptable as the human name - there may need to be some clarification for creatures such as vampires (and any parasitic demon that takes control of it's host's body) that take over other creatures, such as a minimum amount of time for usage of a particular name (and it's not like W&H would actually want to do much business with newbie vamps or something similar).
Anyway (looks at above and sighs - that wasn't meant to be anything more than an odd comment during this response), as to the discussion of the actual signing
away of Angel's possibility of ever Shanshu-ing. I think that was more of a final play from W&H than anything else, as others have commented whether or not he ever recieves his Shanshu would likely be down the PTB. I think W&H were getting it in place just in case it ever becomes a possibility (in which Angel may then be in two minds as to whether or not he'd take it), or as a final card to throw in if he does become human.
That said though, the only problem I have is that unless there are
more prophecies dealing with
'the human that was a vampire' or something similar, then why would W&H (or in fact anyone not
personally involved with some aspect of Angel/Angelus's existence) even care about one random human being... as far as I could make out, the whole Shanshu / becoming human thing was of benefit to Angel (and would affect the lives of his friends), but on the scheme of things would have only really confirmed which side he fought on during the End Of Days (which historically was supposed to be debatable according to Holland, the vampire with a soul wasn't stated to be good or evil - just that he would be influential in the battle (or something similar - doing this from memory), and if we assume the final episodes of ATS 5 were that End Of Days battle then he
did play on
both sides of the line). So unless there was something
else that we weren't being told about the whole Shanshu thing, then I don't see why W&H would have such a problem with him becoming human... dealing with a human is easy, it's when he's a vampire with a soul that he's causing problems for them.
Just some odd thoughts I had,
Mike C