What is the “Eminence in Shadow”? Desperate to embody this enigmatic idea, “background character” Kagenou trains day and night while blending in at school. But Nishino sees him—after all, Kagenou is different from all the others who praise and adore her. Kagenou looks right through her, interacting with but not really seeing the school’s most popular girl at all. She determines that he too must be hiding behind a facade. And she hates him for it. But when Nishino is kidnapped and held for ransom, her life depend on the one she abhors—and his life is about to take a turn for which all the years he’s spent training may have perfectly prepared him, though not in the way he would have expected.
Wait, wait, WAIT. I was totally confused by the opening of this series. Having read the first four volumes of the manga and never once encountered the character of Nishino, I wondered if this unexpected start was because I had read the manga instead of the light novel. Could the original work have started differently? I looked it up and no, neither written work begins this way. The anime surprises fans (and attempts to do the same with those new to the franchise) by taking a character who doesn’t appear until much later and using her story to give context for the work, with Akane’s situation serving to explain Kagenou’s motivation for what he will do in a different world. The after-credits portion clearly lays out Cid’s (his isekai name) frustration at human limitations, now surpassed through magic in his reincarnated state, and introduces the real setting for the series, as Cid runs his shadow clan and narrates a desire to broker power from behind the scenes instead of being a more typical hero or villain. I’m not convinced this was a good choice for episode one. The extreme fanservice and modern-day type tale demonstrated in the first 17 minutes might lead less-patient viewers (i.e. me if I had no history with the series) to drop the anime before getting to the real story. The humor of The Eminence in Shadow, which is my favorite part, is also neglected in episode one. While it does show up in a few small instances, like Cid’s Christian Bale Batman voice as he says embarrassing stuff like “I need more power” in broken English, I wonder if these scenes come across as intentionally funny or simply cringy. It’s the latter, I think, since episode one makes it seem as if this anime is a straight-forward action fantasy series rather than one featuring a heavily comedic tone. And when your opening episode doesn’t demonstrate what is perhaps the most unique and engaging part of your series, I would call that a fail. But as a fan of the manga, I’ll of course be tuning in again next week when I assume the show will get on track, and I hope you’ll do the same and give the series a chance, presumably seeing more of what The Eminence in Shadow is really about, not just in story but also in its DNA.
The Eminence in Shadow can be streamed on HiDIVE.
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