Review of The Eminence in Shadow Season 2
Vampires, Financial Crashes, Chunibyo & Other Delusions. His Eminence returns for a second season after his wisdom of the shadows created one of the best modern isekai parodies in memory. However, six months of production between seasons one and two is a short amount of time, and I would argue that season two suffers a bit from season one’s success. The moon is red. We have little time. The hour of awakening draws near! The frenzy has begun, and the Cid Kagenou is still completely unaware that the world's plot and backstory he made up on the fly for fun so he can role-play as the OPleader of a secret anti-hero Power Rangers faction is 100% real, actually, and his harem of six-hundred and sixty-six skin-tight slime-suit warrior-women called Shadow Garden is fighting a genuine war with the Cult of Diablos (which Cid also thought made up). Cid being the most overpowered person in the room at any time, balanced by his complete unawareness of any situation, is still extremely funny, and the lengths he goes through to hide his secret identity and power behind his average mob persona are still just as absurd.
The season sees Cid’s sister, Claire dragging him to the Lawless City, a slum of Red Light Districts and crime ruled over by three magical factions one of which just so happens to be resurrecting their vampire queen, so he can make a name for himself. Cid soon realises that if he wants to continue his chunibyo dream of being the Eminence in Shadow he's going to need a lot of money.
This season was great. It is still a hilarious story with a lot of well-thought-out and written characters as well as a sheer level of fun and shamelessness you can only get from artists who understand exactly what the assignment is. However, season two tried to cram one and a half’s worth of light novel material into twelve (eleven) episodes and a few characters and the first arc suffers for it. The show neglects Beta, Cid and Claire some important backstories which further enrich their characters. Especially Claire who, if my theory is correct, will be the one to defeat Cid in the future. I’m pretty sure Victoria was never introduced by her name once, yet she was presented as an important character. The Red Moon Incident and the Major Corporate Alliance Conflict arcs felt very rushed. I didn’t mind that too much for the MCAC arc as it isn’t the most interesting arc to watch, but The Red Moon arc was actually an important moment in the story and after season one’s carefully paced and thorough adaption of the first two light novels, it was disappointing to see Eminence adopt a similar adaptation strategy to your average light novel anime. However, the Black Rose Wedding arc was really well done.
The art and animation are still very good, but six months of production time between seasons one and two is not a lot of time. There are quite a few moments of reused animation scenes which, when not used for comic purposes, give fight scenes a sense of de-ja-vu, robbing them of their impact.
Despite my grips, we must remember the hour of awakening draws near. The frenzy has begun and the Eminence in Shadow’s general premise of an OP protagonist role-playing and unwittingly leading a secret faction against a secret cult is still intact and still objectively funny. It is becoming increasingly harder to believe Cid hasn’t clocked on to what’s happening as the consequences of his actions, but I think that’s what makes the show funnier. It needed more time in the oven and a few more episodes to flesh out some of the cut content, but it’s still fun, funny, shameless and well-written. I’m looking forward to the movie.
8/10 Great.