©Daisuke Aizawa・KADOKAWA／Shadow Garden
If you compare the two, this season’s climax is much less exciting than last season’s. While Cid coming out on top was never in question, at least there was a fight—and one that ends with Cid genuinely losing his temper for the first time in a great character moment that dives straight into the very core of his being.
In contrast, this episode is more of a curb stomp than a battle. Cid effortlessly defeats Ragnarok while Beta and Epsilon playfully beat Mordred to a bloody pulp. Oh sure, there are some fun moments—having Beta and Epsilon (usually at each others’ throats) working as perfect partners shows how well they divide what’s business from what’s personal. Likewise, seeing the true power of “I Am Atomic” compared to the tiny crater remaining in the Midgar Kingdom is a fun way to convey just how much Cid has been holding back. But then we have that several-minute stretch where all the action grinds to a halt so Mordred can give Beta, Rose, and Epsilon a brief, introductory course on how the multiverse works.
In the moment, it seems so out of place. The lecture kills all excitement for the fight for something that seemingly could be explained later. But that’s the trick of this episode. This episode isn’t concerned with the season’s climax—it’s not actually important. Instead, the climax exists expressly to give us this information on the multiverse—because the twist ending doesn’t work on a narrative level without it.
This episode is truly about one thing: bringing Cid full circle. He started off trying to attain his dream by beating up thugs in our world before dying in a traffic accident. In his second life, he spent his time pretending to be The Eminence in Shadow—taking advantage of any suitable situation that he happened to stumble across. However, at some point, his greed and envy led him astray. Since learning his lesson, he has been trying to be more active than reactive in being The Eminence in Shadow (namely by helping Rose take the throne). And in the final fight against Mordred, Cid finally returns to the root of what it means to be The Eminence in Shadow: to be the unstoppable power greater than any hero or villain. This brings us to the episode’s final scene—and also back to the very beginning of the show.
The anime as a whole starts the story at a far different place than the novels or the manga. Instead of plunging us into the isekai dark comedy as quickly as possible, the first episode shows us Cid in his first life through the eyes of his teenage celebrity classmate, Akane. While this story is in the source material, it comes from the fourth novel, not the first. So why choose to start there? Well, now we know the answer: to set up the very end of season 2.
In this final scene, we have a twisted repetition of what happened in episode one. While Tokyo is in ruins, Akane has a glowing energy sword, and violent cyborgs roam the streets at night; the events are the same. Akane is ambushed and kidnapped after leaving her (now former) school—taken to the same warehouse by the same people. And just as before, Cid arrives in the nick of time to save her. However, Cid isn’t the same as he once was. He isn’t a boy armed with crowbars, pretending to be something he can never realistically become. No, this time, armed with magic that makes him more powerful than an atomic bomb, he is genuinely what he always wished to be: The Eminence in Shadow.
Rating:
Random Thoughts:
• Where is Delta when “I Am Atomic” goes off? Sleeping in the palm of the giant statue of Shadow at the Shadow Garden HQ.
• Nice to see Rose reconciled briefly with 664 and 665, as well as Margaret. (I’m pretty sure 559 still wants her dead, though.)
• For those of you who are familiar with the novels or manga and noticed that a certain someone was missing from the final scene of the episode, don’t worry. This week’s Kage-jitsu! makes it clear things are still going as you would expect.
• I’m happy to see the next arc of the story, which will be done as a feature film. So I’m sure I’ll see you all again in my review of The Eminence in Shadow – Lost Echoes, if not before. Thanks for reading!
The Eminence in Shadow 2nd Season is currently streaming on
Hidive.
Disclosure: Kadokawa World Entertainment (KWE), a wholly owned subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, is the majority owner of Anime News Network, LLC. One or more of the companies mentioned in this article are part of the Kadokawa Group of Companies.
