The Fall 2023 Anime Preview Guide

The Eminence in Shadow 2nd Season

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At first glance, Cid Kagenou might seem like your average background character, but there's much more to him than meets the eye! Before he was the younger brother of a skilled swordsman at a prestigious magic academy, Cid was a modern-day Japanese student obsessed with being a shadowy mastermind who helped others from the shadows. After dying and being reincarnated in this fantasy world, Cid now has all the power necessary to live out his ultimate fantasy, taking up the secret identity of Shadow and recruiting others to his cause. Everything has been going according to plan, but the hour of awakening draws near. Cid and his secret organization, Shadow Garden, investigate the Lawless City, a cesspool where the red moon hangs low in the sky, and three powerful monarchs rule the streets.

The Eminence in Shadow 2nd Season is based on the light novel series of the same name by Daisuke Aizawa. The anime series is streaming on HIDIVE on Wednesdays.

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Richard Eisenbeis
Rating:

Starting off with a bang (or in this case a bloody zombie murder-spree), this episode is exactly what you want when it comes to a season premiere. On one hand, it's full of callbacks to all the things that made the first season so enjoyable. We have the usual pattern: Cid says something randomly cryptic because he thinks it sounds cool—which turns out to perfectly describe the situation and make him seem like a genius to all those around him. Meanwhile, he tries to maintain his loser background character act but still manages to stumble into adventure regardless.

On the other hand, rather than being a simple retread, this episode moves things forward by completely changing up the setting and introducing more than a few new characters—along with putting Claire back into the spotlight for the first time in a long while. We have street thugs, vampires, fox girls, and even a zombie apocalypse for Cid to play around with—and it all works as the perfect foil for the series' comedy.

And I can tell you without hyperbole, the jokes this episode made me laugh out loud more than once. Some of them were simple sight gags—like the Seven Shades frantically sniffing themselves when Cid tells them something smells (metaphorically) or Cid's repeated reverse pick-pocketing of everyone who bumps into him to steal his wallet. Other's showed off the series' wonderful dark comedy—like Cid running around saving people just so he can parrot the lines Mary told him (because he thinks they sound cool) or Claire crying while holding Cid's decapitated head, only to realize it's not him and toss it aside with zero empathy.

Yet, if that weren't enough, the attention to detail is staggering as always. Numerous minor characters—like Lamda, Nu, Chi, and Omega—get quick cameos for anyone paying attention to the background and even the fanservice shot of Delta that starts the episode is designed to remind us that everyone just kind of ditched her after her fight with Nelson an entire arc ago—basically leaving her naked and alone ever since (not that she seems to mind all that much).

In the end, the only reason I'm not giving this episode five stars is the simple fact that there's basically no character development for anyone involved—something that has been prominent in The Eminence in Shadow's best episodes. But honestly, that's a minor complaint when it comes to a series premiere as well put together as this.

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MrAJCosplay
Rating:

That was the most “Eminence In Shadow” episode of The Eminence and Shadow that I think I've seen in a while. I love that season 2 wastes no time leaning hard into the exaggerated edge and cheesiness. If you cut out just a few scenes, then almost everything about this episode makes it come off as one of the most generic dark fantasies you've probably ever seen. What's that? We find ourselves in a lawless town with competing criminal groups fighting for supremacy? There's a blood-red moon that's connected to vampires swarming the streets? Roughly ninety percent of The Eminence in Shadow has always been this very serious and straightforward dark fantasy, but what sells it is that the remaining ten percent of it highlights that, at the end of the day, most of it doesn't matter. You watch how they sum up season one in this episode, and you already know what you're getting yourself in for.

Season one had our protagonist, Cid, go through all of these intense scenarios that usually would leave a character wrestling with many moral and ethical questions. But because our resident edgelord doesn't think any of this is real, he thinks he's just a bit character in a larger story that everyone is just sort of making up as they go along; nothing phases him. While that might make things seem shallow, that's the point because the appeal isn't in the actual narrative. Instead, the main appeal is in how everything is reflected in the misconceptions of our lead. This opening episode features probably some of the most blood and body dismemberment I have seen in a while. Yet, I'm smiling from ear to ear because our main character acts like Batman, saving random people in the streets. He's having the time of his life because, like an inspired drama student, he's excited to copy the “performance” of a vampire hunter who saved his life. He's just quoting her in front of anybody willing to watch him, utterly oblivious to the profound impact he's probably having on everybody he's interacting with.

This episode is a great return to form, given the lackluster way that season one ended. The second half of season one tried to go for a balance of serious introspection and over-the-top comedy. But this episode was just pure comedy. As long as we get insight from our main lead and his crazy antics, then I think, at the very least, The Eminence in Shadow's second season is shaping up to be a good time. Who knows, I might even watch this season dubbed.

Given that this is HIDIVE's first simuldub, I couldn't help but be curious. It's a little rough around the edges, but Adam Gibbs carries much of it with his performance as Cid. You can tell he's having a lot of fun, and so am I.

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