Review of The Eminence in Shadow Season 2
The second season of Eminence in Shadows is essentially just more of the same. It’s a bit wider in scale seeing as how most of it takes place outside of Midgar, but it largely still follows the same formula. However, as the first season was great that’s certainly not a bad thing. Rather, while this season doesn’t do anything too different, it does manage to change things up enough to provide enough variety to keep things interesting even if you’re watching this season right after finishing the first. Furthermore, the execution overall seems to be quite a bit better. It’s overall much better paced and spendsmore time on the parts that are great and less on the parts that didn’t work so well. There’s a lot of Cid just doing crazy nonsense while having no clue what’s going on, but everything somehow magically managing to work out absurdly well without him realizing it. There’s a lot of Cid being absurdly overpowered and leaving his foes flabbergasted. And quite a lot of the members of Shadow Garden worshipping the ground he walks on. There’s not much of Cid’s normal school life. And there’s very little time spent on characters whose character arcs don’t really seem to be going anywhere, such as Iris’s.
With that said, this season Rose does have a proper character arc and it is by far the best character arc in this anime so far with some really painful and some really satisfying moments. The Seven Shades also get fleshed out better. It’s not like they really get their own stories or arcs, but the anime spends more time highlighted their unique personalities and their relationships to one another and Cid. At this point I would say I’m invested in them.
I should also note that the ending to this season is somewhat of a cliffhanger. The second half of the last episode of this season is actually the beginning of the next arc. As you would expect, it’s basically just an introduction to what the arc is going to be about with very little progress made. It’s not some shocking twist, but it’ll still leave you wanting more. It’s still a pretty epic ending though so I can understand why they chose to do it this way.
The art and designs are just as good as last season, if not a bit better. The animation also seemed somewhat improved in that the action is still just as great, but there were also fewer slower portions that were noticeably weak. The OP was pretty good in terms of the song and visuals. The EDs were also decent enough. The soundtrack was fine. Also, I would like to note that I really liked how Cid’s voice changed when he was John Smith. Absolutely perfect casting.
tl;dr: A sequel season that does more of the same but a bit better.