The Eminence in Shadow – 21 (S2 01) – Black and White and Red All Over

Our boy Shadow, sitting in his throne room, hears reports of stirrings in the Lawless City from the Seven Shadows. It’s your typical serious, brooding, self-important exposition scene…suddenly hilariously undercut by Shadow getting everyone to freak out about whether they have B.O.

Turns out it’s the red moon he smells, and rather than a bad omen, he sees the moon as no big deal, and intends to investigate the Lawless City himself. With that, Eminence is Shadow’s second season heads to a new place with lots of new and familiar faces.

It just so happens that coming off her Bushin Festival win (of course she won), Claire is also headed there to hunt vampires. Because she has a brother complex, she ensures they’re in constant contact by dragging him by the back of his collar through the city.

On the way they encounter Goldy and Quentin, having been defeated and now on sale as pets, but only Cid vaguely recognizes them. He then somehow ends up separated from Claire, has his pocket picked, and proceeds to use his slime to pick the pickpockets’ pockets. He’s already starting to like this den of villainy.

He likes it even more when another night under the red moon comes, and with it a sudden outbreak of ghouls (i.e. vampire thralls). He’s ready to go toe-to-toe but a badass-looking red-haired woman spots him, assumes he’s about to die, and “saves” him.

Introducing herself as Mary, an eminent vampire hunter, she then spews a series of cliches about a frenzy starting, the moon is red, their time is running out, and if he wants to live he’d better run. This whole scenario is like catnip to Cid. Meanwhile, Claire begins searching for him, killing ghouls as she goes.

From there we meet Marie, a bruised sex worker trying to wallow in despair when she hears commotion outside: the ghouls are biting people and turning them into more ghouls. When they invade the brothel, Shadow is right on time to behead them and save Marie. But she doesn’t just get saved in the immediate mortal sense.

Shadow parrots the exact same sequence of clichés he just heard from Mary, and they inspire Marie to get up and leave her life of turning tricks, quite assured despite her friend that Shadow can’t possibly be a bad guy. Perhaps she’ll end up in Shadow Garden like Rose, who unfortunately doesn’t appear…yet.

Claire’s search leads her to finding the remains of someone who vaguely resembles Cid, but on closer—heck, just on regular inspection, the head she’s holding had blue eyes, thus ending her grieving session. This needle scratch of a fact is pointed out to her by Mary, and the two decide to team up as they’re headed to the same place: the Crimson Tower.

A young, glasses-wearing student council-type dark knight and her few comrades who didn’t flee are about to be overrun by ghouls, but Shadow once again does the exact same thing he did with Marie: rescue the knights and say his borrowed spiel, only he adds a little extra.

Sadly, we don’t get to see him do it a third or fourth time, which would no doubt lead to a game of telephone-esque devolution of the phrases into something completely different and possibly cornier. But we do learn that the outbreak of ghouls was no accident.

Lord Crimson, one of the three de facto leaders of the Lawless City, intends to use the red moon and the blood of the city to resurrect the Blood Queen Elizabeth, who has slumbered for 1,000 years. He’s opposed by the other two lords: the stylish Yukime who rules the White Tower, and the musclebound Juggernaut.

As those latter two bicker and fight with one another (no enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend compromise to be found here), Cid decides it’s the perfect time for Shadow of the Shadows to enter the fray. The moon is red, and a frenzy has begun, but fortunately we’ve got plenty of time to enjoy more Eminence, which is back and as solid as ever.