Flash

There is no "ancient school" of Shotokan Karate. Shotokan Karate is a relatively new style developed by Gichin Funakoshi (Shoto was his pen name - therefore Shotokan, Shoto's school). Funakoshi Sensei developed it from the various styles of Okinawan Karate that he had been trained in and he taught it in Japan. Some people claim that what he taught was a simplified version of Karate designed to be easily taught to mass groups of students or soldiers (if you look at photographs of old-school Okinawan Karateka working out, you notice that classes were small and most of the guys aren't even wearing gis - they're working out in regular clothes or even in their underwear).

I don't know about whether it's effective or not but Oyama Sensei (the founder of Kyokushinkai) trained in Shotokan briefly before dismissing it as something more akin to dancing than to fighting and then he went off and began meditating in water falls and karate chopping bulls to death.