Ah, are we already at the end? I was having so much fun. The first season spoiled us with twenty whole episodes, and this second only has twelve. But boy did it ever make the most of them, not least of which this finale, which wraps up the Oriana arc … and a lot more than that!
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Perv Asshat and Queen Reina are dead, and the Black Rose has been activated. When Eta reports this, Alpha is unconcerned, because Lord Shadow is there. Unless the apocalypse is part of his plan, it won’t happen, legends be damned.
Turns out Rose’s mercifully cancelled wedding was attended by far more members of Shadow Garden than she thought, and they all rise up and recite their motto to Mordred, who has no idea how out of the league he and his metal dragon are.
The Garden members spread out to take care of the myriad beasts it unleashed upon the capital and minimize innocent casualties. Before heading up into the sky to fight Ragnarok, Cid gives Rose the nudge she needs, and she joins the fight on the streets to protect her people.
Mordred must face off against Beta and Epsilon, the former being an elf who resents that he wields and hides behind stolen Elven artifacts. The duo intends to teach him a lesson, and after that look forward to him telling them everything he knows.
After taking down a monster with relative ease, Rose is approached by Margaret, who like everyone else heard the message from the dearly departed king. There’s no time to apologize, but Margaret does bow her head, accept Rose’s orders, and recognizes her as Queen Rose.
While Cid toys with Ragnarok, happy to be in a real-life fantasy video game boss fight, Mordred ends up a defeated mess. While he’s in bad shape, he’s still confident Ragnarok will destroy everyone and everything, so he has no problem indulging Beta, Epsilon, and Rose with some high-level cult intel.
He starts by describing the world they currently inhabit as merely one of infinite dimensions. The worlds in other dimensions, called “realms” by the cult, are where they believe humanoids came from, which explains their dominance over the earth.
Those realms also brought magic and magical creatures. The Black Rose creates a portal between realms, and allowed Ragnarok, a creature of another realm, to pass through. This also pretty much confirms how Cid got here from the Japan of our realm.
Like Perv, Mordred loves his little arranged speeches, but just as he’s promising the ladies that their moments are numbered, a shattered piece of the ruined and defeated Ragnarok comes crashing down upon him.
As a smirking Shadow looms above, 559 makes her report to Alpha and Epsilon that all monsters in the city have been eliminated. She also makes sure to shoot Rose a dagger of a look, but Rose stares right back through her blunt bangs.
With Ragnarok dusted, the apocalypse has been postponed, but Mordred still manages to morph into his Final Fantasy Boss Form, losing much of his humanity but gaining a whole lot of power. Unfortunately, the most power he can muster wouldn’t equal the power in Shadow’s pinky toe.
Shadow demonstrates this by engaging Mordred in a quick but stylish and scenic battle, launching him up into orbit, then going into a monologue about man’s successful struggle to harness the lightning of the heavens (i.e. the power of the atom).
Of course, we know what’s coming. As soon as a rightfully panicked Mordred sets him up perfectly by asking “WHAT ARE YOU?!” Cid answers, this time with a contraction: “I’m Atomic.” The resulting eplosion creates a light brighter than dawn down below, where everyone who has ever interacted with Shadow look up admiringly and know exactly who’s responsible.
When the light fades and he returns from orbit, Alpha and Epsilon are delighted, and 559 is … well let’s just say she’s enjoying herself, shall we? But then something happens even Cid didn’t predict: Whether it’s the remnant of the Black Rose portal or a new portal created by I Am Atomic, it sucks Cid in with a burst of green lightning.
Just like that, Lord Shadow is gone, leaving behind his Seven Shadows, the Garden, and Queen Rose. I’ll give Eminence this: it’s not content merely to return to the status quo in this finale! This is the last we see of everyone we know other than Cid. I had hoped for an after-party, but the show had bigger plans.
In a realm where Tokyo is a charred ruin, Nishino Akane, the girl from the first episode of the series, wakes up, looks up at the crescent moon, and is reminded of an utterly average classmate she once knew. That makes this the same Tokyo Cid originally came from, only this is what has become of it several years later.
Akane is in her 20s, so I guess time flows differently between the realms? In any case, Akane (voiced by Horie Yui) is walking alone down an alley when she’s suddenly accosted by two toughs with cybernetic implants and knocked out with a stun gun.
Akane wakes up bound, and one of her captors addresses her as the “grand savior,” and their intent to turn her over to their bosses. The other captor, nicknamed “brainless”, goes off-script and starts choking her.
But just after looking up at that familiar crescent moon through the hole in the ceiling, Akane’s would-be attacker receives a devastating blow that shoots him clear across the building, while the rest of the ceiling shatters, revealing the night sky in which the moon hangs. Akane’s savior, of course, is Shadow, not the “Stylish Ruffian Slayer” from the first time he saved her. He’s back!
Presumably Cid knows where he is, but even if he doesn’t, he’s sticking with this persona for the time being. As for whether he remembers Akane, what her and this world’s whole deal is, how Cid will contribute, and whether he’ll ever return to his Garden are questions for future sequels, the first of which will apparently take the form of a movie with a release date TBD.
It goes without saying that whatever form future Eminence in Shadow anime content takes, I will be there for it with bells on!
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