Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: The Eminence in Shadow
|
Goto page Previous Next Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
| Author | Message | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
Izanagi009
 Posts: 464 Location: Pittsburgh, PA, USA |
|
|||
|
I've been watching clips and news on the show from the sidelines and find it the show itself a bit off putting metatextually
I get that Cid is supposed to be some sort of "mob character who's secretly the hidden orchestrator" and I get the artistic value of the show is supposed to come from the contrast of Cid's delusions and psychopathy and the seriousness that the world actually treats his delusions due to them actually being real. For some reason though, I find this show to have the same "having your cake and eating it too" feel as stuff like Asterisk War or Chivalry of a Failed Knight. It feels like the world from a metatextual perspective is made to indulge Cid and his fantasies rather than deconstruct or challenge him. In that regard, it's hard for me to see the show as more than an isekai power fantasy. However, i admit i'm probably very biased or prejudiced so I would like to ask. Am i treating the show too seriously or expected too much out of it? |
||||
|
||||
|
Nojay
Posts: 112 |
|
|||
I think yes is the answer. One meta-narrative you might consider is that the story (webnovel, manga, anime) you're seeing presented to you is the "life flashing before his eyes" wish-fulfillment imaginings of Cid as he is hit by the Kadokawa truck in our world, a moment before he dies and he is never reincarnated subsequently. It's not a Hero against Evil story like most isekais, it's not even Overlord (although it does have some similar tropes such as the new world being a playground where they can do what they like without consequences since everyone else is a game construct and not real). There are some mangas out there that take this approach or where the reincarnated person is not a goody-two-shoes Hero, many of them hentai, but it's rare. FFF Trashero is one that immediately springs to mind, Arifureta and Redo of Healer are other possible examples. _Kage_ avoids the H-component of the main character being not-a-Hero by making Cid basically sexless despite all the slime-suited beauties and secondary characters around him. It is an odd and oddly pleasing change compared to the usual isekai stories. |
||||
|
||||
|
Iron Maw
Posts: 492 |
|
|||
Eh, disagree. Delusional or not, Cid isn't actually hurting anyone who isn't committing heinous crimes to begin with. We shouldn't get that twisted and make him out to be the same as Zenon, the quack doctor or that Count even if he is borderline insane as far as how into he is into his role-playing. |
||||
|
||||
|
Thesarum
Posts: 426 |
|
|||
I suppose it depends on how you weight intent vs outcome. He's hurting, in some sense, everyone he comes into contact with. He might have accidentally freed a bunch of girls and given them power and autonomy and purpose they'd never otherwise have had... but that wasn't his intent. He believed he was telling them lies and forcing his delusions on them. Leading them into danger and getting them to kill people for his personal enjoyment. He may have stopped the Count and Zenon committing terrible acts, but again, that wasn't really his intent. He believed they were nobody in particular (petty criminals and bandits, and an arrogant sword instructor) and that he'd invented the crimes that he murdered them for. He lies to absolutely everyone he meets. He has a false relationship with the sister that genuinely cares for him. He looks down on the kids he selected as his "friends" precisely because he thinks they're pathetic. He doesn't trust anyone, is incapable of engaging with anyone honestly or emotionally. He had an opportunity to do genuine good for someone with his relationship with Alexia (and, he does.. but again, entirely by accident) but he doesn't care about that in the slightest. He doesn't care about anyone, only himself. (The Shadows are a partial exception, he seems to at least respect them). In his head, he's not actually out there saving the world (even though he is). He's killing people in service of a game he's playing with himself (ironically, about saving the world). And that's the joke. And it is funny. But that's not an argument that Cid is a good person. |
||||
|
||||
Yttrbio
 Posts: 3653 |
|
|||
He's not? Doesn't he blow up a huge portion of an inhabited city this episode, only because he wanted to look cool? He must have killed hundreds, if not thousands of innocent bystanders. At the very least, he destroyed their homes and livelihoods.
Akiba Maid War and Golden Kamuy are both shows this season filled with senseless violence and dark humor. But they also don't go out of their way to humiliate everyone else over and over again in order to prove how awesome their leads are. If this show wanted to distinguish itself from the naked wish-fulfillment standard of isekai shows, it could have. It clearly doesn't intend to. |
||||
|
||||
|
Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11438 |
|
|||
The Knights evacuated apparently the entire city while Milia was rampaging, so probably only a few stragglers and Knights were killed in the blast. Then again, Iris was practically on top of it, and she was fine, so I guess the blast was mostly upward, and then the entire underground collapsed to cause the massive hole? I dunno, visuals and effect didn't quite match up to me. But the rest of your point certainly stands. This is another situation where it feels like this world is literally made for Cid (i.e., in universe, not by author). |
||||
|
||||
|
DRosencraft
Posts: 667 |
|
|||
|
I think several folks have better touched on what my feelings are about this show. Is Cid evil? I think that at a minimum, he's amoral, which in "our" world would commonly put you leaning towards evil. But when you add on to that the overpowered meme, it becomes something worse. Going back again to this last episode, someone mentions that he might not have killed anyone because the city was evacuated. But did he know that? Did that question even cross his mind at any point.
Now it's entirely possible it did, or they could throw in some bit about sensing whoever was around, or guessing that the city was evacuated... but I have 0 confidence that happened, and think that would lack credibility regarding his character. As noted by others, other shows in the genre can touch on dark humor and violence and even on the idea the main character is evil despite their own mental gymnastics to justify their actions. But there has to be a credible counterbalance to that. There has to be an external force that is there to eventually moderate or correct them, or some evidence of them having that internal struggle between their intentions and their actions. Even Ainz in Overlord has that tension between him trying to act out the fantasy role and not be discovered. Right now, there's no clear evidence that any such forces, internal to Cid or external in the world, exist. |
||||
|
||||
|
Thesarum
Posts: 426 |
|
|||
I certainly looks that way. I haven't quite decided if (in-universe) the world is literally created by his fantasies. Or if he's just got uncanny luck. Like, when he cast about the room for story to tell Alpha, did his invention of a cult named after objects in a shed cause one to come into being? Or is the universe set up so that when he rolls the dice the objects he settled on just happened to give him the name of a cult that already existed? Which direction does cause and effect run? When he throws a dagger into a map, does the base exist because that's where the dagger landed, or does the universe just unfailingly guide the dagger to it's mark? |
||||
|
||||
|
Velorien
Posts: 106 |
|
|||
|
I am intensely confused by the latest episode review and the statement "Everything Cid has is due to one thing and one thing only: hard work."
Is there any reason to believe that? Preteen Cid demonstrates that he can handily beat his acknowledged genius sister in a fight and just chooses not to. He (admittedly, semi-accidentally) undoes a curse effect on the spot that's supposed to be impossible to undo. He casually slaughters gangs of armed adults. By the time he is in his mid-teens, he can literally annihilate the heart of an entire city, and he can do it while leaving somebody metres from the epicentre completely untouched. Is that really something anybody in this setting could do by his age if they just worked hard enough, simply because it's a world where magic exists? It's also worth bearing in mind that Cid's dedication to his Background Character A way of life places strict limits on how hard he can train. As a child, he has his ordinary training where he can't push himself, plus whatever else a child of the minor nobility is supposed to be doing with his time, and if he skips out on those things in order to train and somebody notices, he's failed at his life goal. Ditto his student life, which features such time sinks as hanging out with his two friends outside class. Edit: The other thing that occurs to me is that this world supernaturally bows to his will, giving him everything he needs to carry out his delusion even if he doesn't know it. That includes cults, conspiracies, and minions. Why wouldn't it include giving him the incredible supernatural powers that he considers to be a vital part of the role? |
||||
|
||||
|
Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11438 |
|
|||
Thank you for bringing this up. I had intended to point out that, while luckily probably few to none were killed, he didn't know what was going on above ground, but I forgot. 
@Thesarum: Thanks for articulating this question better than I've been able to other than just asking it. Also I hadn't even quite formed the conundrum of which direction cause and effect runs, if indeed either is the case.
|
||||
|
||||
|
Thesarum
Posts: 426 |
|
|||
Agree. While he does work hard at his obsession, he's surely not the first person in this world to think "you know what, maybe I'll train really hard?" Yet he is so much more powerful that those around him. If nothing else he has some sort of effect multiplier going on that rewards his efforts to a greater degree than would normally be expected.
The universe conforms to his will. Somehow. That on it's own is a pretty god-tier isekai cheat skill isn't it? Regardless of whether we got half an episode of exposition where the Goddess of Reincarnation explained the rules of how it works to us. |
||||
|
||||
|
Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11438 |
|
|||
I meant to reply to this back then, but got sidetracked. Yes, we know he thinks they're just going along with it. My question was why does he think that? He was both surprised and delighted that Alpha bought the story he made up off the cuff. At that time he thought she was fooled. So what changed his mind between then and now to make him believe they are humoring him? I don't remember him ever telling her or the rest otherwise. |
||||
|
||||
|
Series5Ranger
Posts: 42 |
|
|||
|
Cid, Technically didn't commit any war crimes as part or Iris's dialogue, they had already evacuated the district of civilians. You also see him put up a shield between him and Alexa before he goes atomic, so that takes care of that too
|
||||
|
||||
|
Thesarum
Posts: 426 |
|
|||
It's presented as a call-back to his pre-isekai life, where all his friends outgrew their games and left him pursuing his dream alone. That he felt it was inevitable that at some point they'd "grow up" and leave him all alone. Though it does feed into that strange sense that he maintains multiple incompatible beliefs simultaneously. That the girls believe, and don't, his stories. That he's invented the cult, but this guy really has crazy magic pills. That he both is, and is not, The Eminence in Shadow. We're very definitely thinking about this too much. |
||||
|
||||
|
Thesarum
Posts: 426 |
|
|||
|
This week in Cid can't comprehend anything external to himself as real ... our hero is pleased at the realization that it's almost like he really was The Eminance in Shadow, and thinks hidden castle on the roof of a department store is "a set" despite its obvious physical reality.
I didn't read this like that. I think he was afraid of her ability to build this, and earn that very real money on her own. It means she's capable of independence. Of functioning in the "real" world, whatever he understands that to be (not his world, certainly, as that can only ever be fake). It means she has no need of his stories and his games.
His motivations here again illustrate his extreme amorality. Its one of the few occasions when he acknowledges the the person he hunts is actually committing a crime (random murder). But he makes it clear he has no interest in this. "you do you" he says. Their crime is using his name, and for that they deserve an instant and unforgiving death, regardless of who they might be (because he does initially believe this to be Alexia, who I'm glad remains in this story.) |
||||
|
||||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group