Kage no Jitsuryokusha ni Naritakute! Shadow Garden 陰の実力者になりたくて！
Synopsis
The Eminence in Shadow is about Minoru Kagenou, for as long as he can remember, has been fixated on becoming as strong as possible, which has led him to undertake all kinds of rigorous training. This wish, however, does not stem from a desire to be recognized by others; rather, Minoru does everything he can to blend in with the crowd. So, while pretending to be a completely average student during the day, he arms himself with a crowbar and ruthlessly thrashes local biker gangs at night. Yet when Minoru finds himself in a truck accident, his ambitions seemingly come to a sudden end. In his final moments, he laments his powerlessness—no matter how much he trained, there was nothing he could do to overcome his human limitations.
But instead of dying, Minoru reawakens as Cid, the second child of the noble Kagenou family, in another world—one where magic is commonplace. With the power he so desired finally within his grasp, he dons the moniker “Shadow” and establishes Shadow Garden: a group whose sole purpose is to combat the enigmatic Cult of Diablos, an organization born from Cid’s imagination. However, as Shadow Garden grows in both membership and influence, it becomes increasingly apparent that the Cult of Diablos is not as fictional as Cid had intended.
Watch The Eminence in Shadow Online
Review
The story revolves around the MC and is being told from his POV (except for the trap episode 1). It’s unique because the way MC thinks and acts differs from other generic protagonist isekai fantasy. Aside from that, the rest are most likely generic clichés which you can also find in other anime. So I can say it’s unique but don’t expect too much of freshness or else you’ll get disappointed. It has plot but not that great because it’s quite common thing you can find in other but not that bad either since there are still some unexpected moments to enjoy and no annoying overloaded generic harem interaction. Also keep in mind that the first episode is some kind like a trap since it has almost no comedic feels and more like a generic isekai with serious vibes. My advice to you is don’t ever drop after watching just the first episode. At least go watch up to episode 2 or episode 3 even better since the comedy gets better from first to the third episode drastically.
Okay, so this is the main selling point of this anime. The comedy is the fruit of MC’s personality just like what I already stated above. Take delusional syndrome from Kaidou (Saiki K. series), clumsiness from Momonga (Overlord), lack of empathy from Saitama (One Punch Man), then combine them and you’ll get the MC, Cid. He is basically delusional, treats other people as NPC, and quite narcissistic. If you view him seriously like judging his actions and thoughts with high IQ, then you’ll find him annoying a lot. Hence don’t do that, I’ll explain more in the Enjoyment part. The rest of the characters are not special but not too boring also.
It’s great. The art style is quite modern. The color palette is pleasant. The animation is quite detail in some small parts but there are still power point animation style during not so important scene. It’s just like 3 secs tho so it didn’t bother me a lot. We can feel some cinematic angle shots, which is great because it doesn’t feel monotone. The scenery transition is absolutely beautiful. The action animation is enjoyable albeit not top notch.
The sfx choice are great, it fits the theme and scenes. So far I haven’t encountered cringe sound effects yet (except monologue of Cid, if you count it). There are some comedic scene in episode 2 that could be better if it got sound effects in it. Both OP and EDs songs are not so special but not so bad.
I personally really enjoy this show. At the beginning I didn’t enjoy it, but on the next episodes I did. If I rate the enjoyment on each episode, its like 6 for ep 1, 8 for ep 2, and 9+ for ep 3. I enjoyed even as far as I am going to read the manga after finishing the episode 3.
If you want to enjoy this show, then keep in mind that you come for the comedy not judging every small details things using common sense. If you come with high IQ mode turned on, then this show will appear too ridiculous for you. So switch your brain mode into entertainment mode, not that deep critical judging the academic paper mode, then you’ll find this show funny. A clown doing some foolish dumb things will appear funny if your brain mode is in the right switch. Though I admit there exists people who don’t like to enjoy a fool doing dumb things.
Basically that’s it, if you want to read the summary then read that in the top section of this review. I am an anime only currently so I think my review got less bias from other adaptation or source work. Note that this review is really preliminary due to only 3 episodes aired so far. I’ll update this if I find it necessary to do so. Thanks for reading!
