Tsukimichi: Moonlit Fantasy – S2 18 – Time to Make an Impression

After seeing to the safety of the nobles, Tomoe and Root have an interesting conversation, dragon-to-dragon. Dragons seem to be the most informed in this world, to the point Tomoe reports to Root that at this point Kuzunoha is approaching the peak of his potential, and need only choose his role in this world. Upon learning even he wouldn’t be a match against him, Root internally considers that Kuzunoha could one day defeat the Goddess herself.

After that macro, high-level conversation, we return to the nitty-gritty of the city-wide chaos. Even though his students are still riled up by the battle, having killed their first fellow hyuman, Makoto insists they evacuate to a safe location. Powerful they may be, they’re still students, and they’re under no obligation to fight the mutant monsters. Shiki heals Abelia, and he and Mio take the students to a safe location.

Unburdened by dependents, Makoto explores the city, where dozens of monsters are running rampant. His shop has been reduced to a pile of rubble, and while it while emptied of any merchandise (even the sign was taken down), it’s still an emotional blow. He’ll simply have to rebuild. The screams of women lead him to a brothel, where he meets and rescues the former adventurer Estelle and her co-workers (also regular Kuzunoha customers) from a monster, earning her gratitude and friendship.

After seeing the kids to safety, Mio splits off from Shiki to take care of unfinished business: specifically, she alone can sense that Ilumgand, or what’s left of him, isn’t quite dead yet. He’s an unsightly blob of flesh with eyes and a mouth, and retains most of his memories, but all of his anger and bloodlust has evaporated. Even so, Mio cannot forgive him for what he did to her master, and settles on taking his life for amends. She also assumes the Hero Hibiki Ilum idolized isn’t the same Hibiki she met and befriended.

That night in the slums where an evacuation center has been set up, Makoto’s underlings give their reports. Other nations are headed this way to eliminate the monsters and offer relief, so the time for the Kuzunoha organization to distinguish itself and gain indelible renown is now. They are right in the thick of it, but while Makoto is confident they can deal with this crisis, the demons’ specific motivations and ultimate goal eludes him.

In his capacity as temporary instructor, Makoto is reamed out by the headmaster for not doing enough, but both Sairitsu and Princess Lily plead for him to cease his reprimands out of respect for them. Lily informs Makoto that the Hero of Gritonia is on his way. For now, Makoto is ordered to deal with the mutants in the northeastern district, which happens to be where the merchant’s guild is headquartered. It’s time to make himself indispensable to the elites of the academy city.

Mushoku Tensei II – 17 – Being There

At first, it looks like Rudy is going to go scorched earth, flanked by Rinia and Pursena as he marches into Norn’s class where she’s currently absent with a head full of steam. Everyone in that room knows who he is and that pissing him off is not a good idea. But he tries to stay calm and ask anyone who was mean to Norn would come forward.

Those who come forward instead say that their interactions with Norn all involved them bringing him up in some way, comparing her to him, and urging her to follow in his footsteps. It dawns on him that no one in her class sent her to her dorm where she is currently shut in. It was all because of him.

Rudy knows what it’s like to be a shut-in. He was one in his previous life. But now that he’s a changed person he knows that it’s a brother’s duty to protect his sisters, even if its from himself. Only, he simply doesn’t know what to do. Rinia and Pursena laud him for his loyalty to his pack, but obviously aren’t going to help him on the psychological side of things.

What they can do is smuggle him into the dorm to at least meet with Norn, which is the first step towards getting her out of her room. The three are given cover thanks to Sylphy, who asks Princess Ariel to give an address in the common room that empties out the girls’ dorm. Even getting to Norn wouldn’t have been possible without his friends.

When he knocks on the door, the voice he hears is his own, from his past life. He imagines that his own brother must have felt this way as he visited him in his room again and again, giving arguments for why he should come out, telling him he needn’t come back to school, but only take one small step at a time to returning to his life.

Back then, Rudy ignored his brother, until he eventually stopped visiting him. And while he certainly doesn’t blame his brother for giving up, Rudy doesn’t want to give up on Norn. He knows if he leaves, like his brother did, there’s no going back. She’ll stay shut in. Her life will remain on hold. His experience with being in her situation drives him to want to save her.

Even there in the room, he has no idea how he’s going to do it. He just kneels there silently. We switch to the perspective and inner voice of Norn, isn’t sure what to make of him being there, and realizes she never knew what to make of Rudy. When they first met, she beat their dad up, the person she loved more than anyone and who had kept her safe.

The second time they met, it was outside his mansion when he was arriving home drunk with a woman on his back. She feared him because of the violence she’d witnessed, but when he let her go to the dorms without argument, she felt like he didn’t care about her one way or another, which is obviously worse than outright hatred.

At the academy and the dorms, Rudy was a universally respected and feared celebrity, and everyone who interacted with Norn spoke to her in the context of her relation to him. No one saw her for simply who she was. They even struggled to remember her name, because all that mattered was that she was his sister.

As she sits in bed, Norn realizes that all those opinions about Rudy from those at the academy reflected what two people she does trust told her about him: that he’s actually a good guy who has gone through some rough times. They said he’s not the person she thinks she is based on her limited time with him, and now she’s old enough to understand that they’re probably right.

But there’s still the matter of exorcising her mistaken idea of who and what Rudeus Greyrat is, and that can only happen by interacting with him. It just so happens that she calls out his name at the exact same time he calls out hers, and that leads her to pulling back the curtain and getting a good look at him.

Rudy might feel helpless as he stands there, but the words he chooses end up being the ones Norn most needs to hear: I’m sorry. I don’t know what to do either. I’m here for you. I won’t go away. I’ll see you for who you are.

Hearing these words opens the floodgates for Norn. Hearing those words convinces her that her fear was in her head: his clenched fist isn’t one of impending violence, but the same frustration she felt, and that their dad felt. Because her dad and her brother didn’t run, she won’t run either.

When Rudy sits beside her on the bed, Norn falls into him and lets it all out, finally able to see her brother for who he is, and who those others knew him to be. He’s someone who cares about his little sister, is there for her now, and won’t abandon her. He’s someone whose chest she can cry into as long as she needs to.

The next morning, she greets both Rudy and Sylphy with a smile on her face before stepping into the morning light and walking away, flanked by new friends. She and Rudy never exchanged any other words—neither of them heard the words we heard in their respective heads—but it doesn’t matter. You can tell that after that night, they’re both going to be all right.

If anything, Rudy admires how strong Norn is for sorting through her feelings mostly on her own, though he can’t know just how crucial his presence and words were to her finally coming to grips with who he is versus what she thought of him. It’s another heartfelt, happy ending. I could get used to these vibes, though the fact the next episode is titled “Turning Point 3” gives me pause.

RABUJOI WORLD HERITAGE LIST +
CERTIFIED GODDAMN TEARJERKEr

 

Tsukimichi: Moonlit Fantasy – S2 17 – Making Lemonade

When Ilumgand goes berserk, transforms into a giant monster and eats his teammates, the battle between him and Makoto’s students would normally happen immediately. But thanks to a little creative license, it’s placed “on hold” so that Makoto can fully assess the situation and his options.

Fifty other monsters have turned up around the city, making this a full-blown crisis. While Mio thinks this is a perfect opportunity for some of their commercial and political rivals to be culled, Tomoe suggest they take the high road and serve as heroes of the city, earning the gratitude of many important figures.

All those figures happen to be in one place: in the royal box of the arena, essentially trapped. They include Limia’s king and prince (who is actually a princess in disguise as Makoto learns); the king’s right-hand man and Ilumgand’s father; Princess Lily, Root (AKA False), Sairitsu of Laurel, and the biship of the temple.

Makoto comes to the box with Tomoe and announces his intention to help. Tomoe uses her penchant for showmanship to explain that her magic sword enables her to transport everyone to safety. Root gives them an assist by serving as a guinea pig, and everyone but the king, prince, Ilum’s dad, and Makoto teleport away.

Makoto teleports the king closer to Ilum so that he and Ilum’s dad can try to talk sense into the monster, to no avail. When a monster from the city shows up, Makoto dispatches it with non-elemental magic, saving the prince without revealing his mana matter.

Down in the arena, Mio and Shiki issue instructions and encouragement to the students, who have their real weapons back. It’s a tough battle, but Abelia distinguishes herself by asking Sif to enchant her arrows with her explosion magic.

Abelia flies up in to the air in order to aim the fire arrow at the monster’s head, and while she is wounded by the monster tossing its severed hand at her like a Frisbee, she holds her “ground” in mid-air and maintains her aim, knowing her comrades are all with her down below.

Her arrow finds its target and blasts the monster that was Ilumgand to smithereens. She falls to the ground, but she’s soon surrounded by her friends. It’s such a lovely moment I doubt even a perpetual hyuman skeptic like Mio wouldn’t be touched.

Ilum would appear to be dead, but Shiki did mention that restoring him isn’t impossible, just extremely difficult. That leaves open the possibility he’ll be back. Meanwhile, Makoto has surely gained the favor of those Tomoe safely evacuated. Makoto also made a deal with Eva and Luria to retake their homeland of Kaleneon. We’ll see how Makoto and his pals deal with the other monsters roaming the city.

Mushoku Tensei II – 16 – A New Battle

It’s been three years since Rudy has seen Ruijerd, the Superd is naturally taciturn, and his mere presence reminds him of Eris, so their reunion is a bit awkward at first. Still, Rudy is glad to see his old friend, who he trusts more than anyone. I especially appreciate how Rudy takes’ Ruijerd’s advice vis-a-vis Eris to heart. Ruijerd doesn’t want to intrude, and seems to have some bad blood with Badigadi, but Rudy at least has him eat breakfast with them before departing.

Once Ruijerd is gone, Aisha and Norn are now officially under Rudy and Sylphy’s care. Norn expressed interest in going with Ruijerd since one of her strongest memories of Rudy is hitting their dad, and the fact he’s with “a different woman” now. But while Norn is aloof and distrustful, Aisha couldn’t be happier to be reunited, and is eager to work as Rudy and Aisha’s maid. Rudy asks them both to at least take the academy entrance exam.

The tension below the surface of Aisha and Norn’s sisterhood is exposed like a raw wound when Aisha aces her exam and is thus allowed to skip school and serve as Rudy and Sylphy’s maid. Norn scores slightly below average for her age, but when she asks if she can live in the on-campus dorms and Rudy agrees, Aisha is outraged. She wonders if Rudy is letting Norn have her way because Aisha’s mom is a “concubine”, something Rudy never thought about Lidia.

Balancing his duty to protect his sisters in Paul’s stead while ensuring they’re as happy as they can be is no small task, and represents a new and unexplored challenge to Rudy. But he’s not alone; he has his wife Sylphy by his side to provide a girl’s perspective and as a sounding board for strategy and tactics. As I suspected, they have become his sisters’ adoptive parents.

A month passes, and every time Rudy sees Norn in the halls, she’s alone. He fears she’s made no friends despite living in the dorms, and that’s precisely the case. Rinia and Pursena don’t make things any easier by “gifting” him a bag of underwear from first years with certain figure. Rudy ends up in how water with Ariel, but he is forthright and honest and manages to get out of it unscathed.

The beastgirls’ prank seems a little out of place here, meant strictly to provide some comic relief in an otherwise bittersweet reunion of Rudy with his sisters. Aisha is happy as a clam and the house has never been cleaner, but Norn is clearly having a hard time, hiding under her sheets in her dorm rather than socializing.

Norn is clearly less extroverted and than Aisha, and if she’s just as talented, she struggles to apply herself, perhaps due to the pressures of her more overachieving siblings. Hopefully Rudy, no stranger to antisocial tendencies, can help lift her out of her funk, teach her ways to make friends, and help her find a place she feels she belongs. It may be his toughest battle yet, and his staff and eye can’t help him.

Tsukimichi: Moonlit Fantasy – S2 16 – Dirty Tricks

While visiting Luria’s land of Aensland in Kaleneon, a young Ilumgard Hopleys makes a promise to fight with her someday. Here, in the present, he’s using real weaponry, heavy plate armor, magical medicine, and some kind of mysterious amulet. The fix is in, so the ref allows all this as Jin, Yuno, and Izumo are the three of Makoto’s students to win rock-paper-scissors and fight in the team final.

Ilum also trained with and befriended Hibiki, which makes sense as he’s part of the nobility of Limia and as Limia’s Hero, she is the personification of his ideals. But when fate brings Ilum and Luria back together in Rotsgard, his attempt to reconnect is ruined when his toadies castigate her for abandoning her lands to invasion, and then Kuzunoha intervenes.

It’s interesting watching this scene unfold from Ilum’s perspective, because it fills in a lot of blanks about his character, who had kinda been floating on the periphery. If it wasn’t for the OP and ED, I’d probably think he was just some background character.

I also had no doubt that even with everything stacked against them, Jin, Yuno, and Izumo would have no problem dispatching Ilum and his team of nobodies with ease and style. This may be deadly serious business for Ilum, but they’re just having a fun time showing their teacher how much they’ve progressed under his tutelage.

Ilum hates Kuzunoha, and blames him both for his inability to reconcile properly with Luria and prevent him from fulfilling his promise to Hibiki. While I can’t speak to the perceptive qualities of demons in this show, I can say with relaive confidence that Rona had been watching this guy closely as a candidate for treachery. She supplied him with ability enhancing drugs, and gave him an amulet she claimed boosts magical resistance.

I’ll refer to Frieren’s rules about demons, which is that every single word they say is meant to deceive humans. Rona may not be a Frieren demon, but she’s just as crafty and duplicitous. Just like Zara did in the merchant’s arena, Rona would seem to have exploited Makoto’s naïveté.

He thought he could form an alliance with the demons, but there’s every indication that alliance would only last as long as Rona needed it to to achieve her goals, which have something to do with the amulet mutating Ilum into, well, I dunno … some kind of hyuman-demon hybrid boss that threatens all of Rotsgard?

Makoto had it all planned out: After congratulating his victorious students, he’d shove off to Kaleneon to help Eva and Luria win back their lands. He, in turn, would be able to run his trading company outside the guild’s jurisdiction. That’s all on hold now that there’s the more immediate threat of Demon Ilum.

Tsukimichi: Moonlit Fantasy – S2 15 – Out of His Element

Half of this episode is given over to the academy tournament, and while I thought Makoto’s students would face stiffer competition, the fact is no other students are a match for any of them, except each other. Jin and Sif blast through their categories without the slightest bit of resistance and end up in the final together. This, despite having to use wooden weapons.

Sif defeating Jin is a foregone conclusion, but that doesn’t take away how impressive Jin and the other members of Makoto’s class were. Not only that, despite having gone up against each other, there’s no hard feelings, and they all come away from the tournament more tight-knit than ever. Princess Lily can see what an amazing teacher Kuzunoha is, and wants to claim him for her kingdom—or at least deprive the other powers of his services.

But while Makoto’s adorable students are to be commended for their showing, they only made Kuzunoha’s enemies more irate. Before the team tournament (which his kids also ace), he is suddenly summoned to the Rotsgard Merchant’s Guild’s leader, Zara Hardis, who proceeds to give Makoto perhaps the biggest dressing-down of his time in this world. All of his physical and magical strength is useless against the bureaucracy of the guild. If he tries to use violence, he’ll be branded an ally of demons.

And therein lies a fundamental issue with Makoto’s desire to be friends with everyone. The Hyuman powers that be will not allow him to consort with demons. Makoto is chastened and bitter over having his naivety laid bare so completely, and while Mio has his back, Tomoe and Shiki, who know more about this kind of stuff, admit that the young master may have bit off more than he can chew with this one.

But if the guild is determined to squeeze Kuzunoha out of the market, with two heroes siding with Hyumans, Makoto decides he’ll go the other direction and, if not outright align himself with the demons, at least look the other way to their activities.

He has his sights set on Kaleneon, formerly part of Elysion, which is not only where his parents’ hometown is, but also Eva and Luria’s home and rightful lands. Zara shook his confidence in business, but with Tomoe, Mio, and Shiki backing this latest plan, Makoto believes he’s making the right choice.

Tsukimichi: Moonlit Fantasy – S2 14 – A Plethora of Pleasantries

On Day 2 of the academy festival there’s a formal stand-up luncheon filled with foreign dignitaries, and to put it charitably, it’s not Makoto’s scene. For one thing, it’s full of hyumans, who are all beautiful and as such tend to look alike. One of the foreigners who stands out is Kahara Sairitsu, envoy from Laurel, due to her vaguely Japanese look and her bodyguards who are actually demons in disguise (whom we later learn were charmed by Tomoki).

Sairitsu is interested in Makoto due to the use of what her country calls “sage script”, i.e. Kanji. The secluded Laurel Commonwealth considers the two Heroes to be sages—those from distant lands with inconceivable knowledge—and she has cause to believe he’s one as well. Makoto plays it coy, but like it or not, he has Sairitsu’s and thus Laurel’s attention. Princess Lily notices Sairitsu meeting with Makoto and tries to pump her for info on both Makoto and the gunpowder tech Laurel possesses.

While chatting with the Rembrandt Sisters’ parents, Makoto is confronted by the long-haired blonde student whom he and Shiki fought off upon arriving in Rotsgard. The lad declares that he’ll be challenging Makoto’s students in the upcoming academy tournament. Makoto informs his class of the threat, but has full confidence in their ability to win, and even has them agree to withhold their most powerful abilities—they’ll be fighting Blondie with handicaps.

Turns out Princess Lily also knows Root in his capacity as founder of the Adventurer’s Guild. Root rejects the notion he backs Kuzunoha, but also warns Lily that she’s no match for Tomoe, and that taking on the trading company would be akin to engaging in all-out war with the demons. Lily seems to concede she should limit her goals to re-taking Fort Stella from said demons, and if no one “notable” presents themselves at the tournament, she’ll be returning to the empire.

And so the stage is set for the academy tournament, with Makoto’s students being pitted against each other. While in Rotsgard he can always feel the influence of the noble families conspiring against him and meaning him harm, whether it’s tactics like poisoning food or unfavorably seeding his students. He admits that being less than honest with all of these hyumans may be the reason things have gotten more complicated. But for now, in the tournament, hopefully it will be a simple matter of who wins and who loses.

Tsukimichi: Moonlit Fantasy – S2 13 – The Thick of It

Having juggled between the separate stories of Makoto, the Demiplane gang, and the heroes Hibiki and Tomoki and their parties, Tsukimichi now aims to continue squishing all of these elements together. While the weeklong academy festival proves a financial boon for Kuzunoha Inc., Makoto ends up under the Church’s eye, which reflects the will of the hated Goddess.

While Tomoe, Mio, Shiki, and the Ogres eat, drink, and become increasingly merrier and more boisterous, Makoto has to fight off a flock of assassins, including the guy who had already been sent previously to kill him. None of them can put a dent in Makoto’s Mana Matter.

While the Church’s bishop is onto Makoto being far more powerful than he lets on, there’s a parallel political incident involving the nation Hibiki’s mage Chiya is from. They want her back. Princess Lily is also tailing Makoto and his cavorting party from the shadows.

With all these crossed agendas and allegiances, Tsukimichi story has never felt more complex … or volatile. We’ll see if Makoto & Co. can weather all of the myriad challenges that are sure to come while solidifying old bonds and forging intriguing new ones.

The Eminence in Shadow – 09 – Doing What They Must

It doesn’t take long for Sherry to tune the control unit, and she opens a hidden passage in a bookshelf to use the secret tunnels to get to where the artifact is so she can shut it down. She’s doing all of this for her father Ruslan, who took her in when her mother was brutally murdered.

She thanks Cid for all his help, and they go their separate ways. Once she reaches the balcony of the auditorium she finds out how bad things have gotten: the invaders are now simply picking off students for sport from above. Sherry wastes no time deactivating the anti-magic field, and when she does, Rose is ready.

Within seconds of getting her magic back, she slices the nearest invader to ribbons with a flourish of her drill-like ojou ringlets, and encourages everyone else to rise up and attack their captors; after all, they outnumber them. She tries to reach their armored boss man, whom even she isn’t sure she can defeat, but is soon surrounded and running low on magic.

Still, she fights on, confident others will fight if she dies, and eager to live up to the love Cid felt for her that led him to die for her. Things look dire until Shadow himself crashes through the ceiling and dispatches everyone around her. He’s not alone: his army of Shadows are with him, and mop up the invaders.

But the boss slips away, then hikes up the pressure of the oil lamps school-wide, causing an massive inferno. While I don’t hear a single cough from the ensuing smoke and flames, nor does anyone seem to be getting burnt by said flames … eh, whatever, maybe they’re special isekai flames.

The invader boss proceeds to start burning everything in Ruslan’s office, but Cid is there waiting for him, and knows who the boss is: Ruslan himself. Once he’d reached the absolute highest summit of swordsmanship, he became ill, and sought out a radical cure.

That’s how he ended up meeting Sherry’s mother. When she warned against using the artifact, Ruslan murdered her in a elaborate, grisly way, and while Sherry was present for that, it’s been established that she’s not very observant, and so never knew her adoptive father killed her mother.

Ruslan never gets into why he took the academy hostage, or why he set the academy on fire, but never mind, now that Cid’s there he’s not going to accomplish anything else. There’s a fun little fakeout when Cid lets Ruslan slash him right out the office window to his apparent death, only to reappear Batman-style in his Shadow form.

Ruslan fuses with the artifact in order to augment his power—as one does—but as you’d suspect, fighting him is still child’s play to Mr. Atomic, who doesn’t really have to break a sweat parrying his opponents’ lightning-fast fusillade of attacks.

When Cid has had enough, he ends Ruslan’s life in the exact same grisly way he ended Sherry’s mom’s … and just like that traumatic event, Sherry arrives just in time to witness a parent’s demise. Shadow departs as she screams out in anguish, not having the heart to tell her who Ruslan is and why he deserved this end. Knowing how much her dad meant to her, she most likely wouldn’t have believed him anyway.

While Ruslan was as two-dimensionally eeeevil as villains come (why else hire Oostsuka Houchuu to voice him?), he was never anything but a loving, supportive father to Sherry, and I was devastated watching her experience a repeat of her mother’s death. No one should have to face that. And now she’s an orphan again.

At the same time, I don’t blame Cid, because he did what he had to do. Even though Ruslan promised him that he arranged things so the real Shadow Garden would be framed for this entire terrorist attack, he shrugs that off. He never claimed he and his garden were walking the path of righteousness, but nor do they walk the path of evil.

Instead, they walk their own path. This comes as news to Alpha, who thought they were being righteous, but accepts Cid’s interpretation without hesitation, as does the rest of the organization. If Shadow is now the number one most hated and wanted fugitive in the kingdom, so be it—they’ll continue to do what they must.

As for poor Sherry, she and Cid share a muted farewell scene where she regrets not getting to know him better before heading abroad to a prestigious research institute. Before they part, perhaps forever, Cid asks her what she thinks she needs to do. A kaleidoscope of emotions fall over Sherry’s face as she’s momentarily unable to hide her emotions with a sad smile.

But she won’t tell Cid; it’s a secret. Does she, unlike so many others, know Cid and Shadow are the same person, and thus Cid is the one who killed her father? If that’s the case, is she going abroad in order to plan her revenge against him, or simply to start the next phase of her life as a researcher? It’s pretty ambiguous, and I like that.

The Eminence in Shadow – 08 – A Terribly Flawed Scenario

This week starts off by replaying the start of the invasion of the academy by Fake Shadow Garden (Shamdow Garden?) this time from Cid’s perspective, and man is he excited to be involved in a terrorist attack! The moment he realizes Rose is in serious trouble, he launches himself into the path of the baddie’s blade, as that’s the role of the background character. In doing so, he (posthumously) wins the heart of Rose, who remembers how hard he fought against her in the tournament and now sees his selfless sacrifice as proof that he loved her.

Rose and all the other students are rounded up in the auditorium, but Cid is left behind, as he’s just a corpse. Or IS he? After punching himself several times in the chest, Cid starts his heart back up, having successfully pulled off the risky “Ten-Minute Death—Heartbreak.” Considering what Cid did to himself to reach this other world, it’s no surprise he’d put his life on the line to best inhabit the role of Eminence in Shadow. Meanwhile, Sherry is researching away when one of the bad guys’ top lieutenants drops in.

She’s saved by one of the school’s elite swordsman who is still able to fight despite the lack of magic, but he falls to the bad guy’s blade soon enough. He only manages to buy a bit of time for Sherry to shuffle away in her flip-flops. After sniping several dozen of the enemy and plummeting dramatically off the school roof, Cid senses Sherry is being pursued and not doing a great job of being stealthy, so he serves as her protective shadow, killing anyone who gets close to her.

Sherry’s refrain of “it’s just my imagination” is one of many comedic highlights, and when she finally trips and nearly falls down the stairs, Cid is there to catch both her and the artifact and recommend she stop thinking out loud, stop trying to decipher the artifact while moving, and ditches slippers. He escorts her to her father’s office, where she finds unpublished research of the artifact she’s been charged with, which is the control unit for the Eye of Avarice that’s created the anti-magic field.

But the Eye isn’t just neutralizing magic, it’s absorbing it. Given enough magic, it will eventually reach its full capacity and release in one huge explosion that will level the school. So it’s a magical bomb threat. Sherry is game to fine-tune her artifact so they can shut the Eye down, but to do that Cid has to head back to where Sherry was to fetch the tuning instruments. After righteously toying and fucking with the lieutenant guy, he encounters Nu, who finds her ex-betrothed dying in the room where Sherry was working.

Nu reports that the real Shadow Garden have arrived on the scene and are ready to go on Cid’s orders. The only downside to that is that Gamma, the clumsiest of the Seven Shadows, is in command. Cid then fills Nu in on what he and Sherry plan to do, and he describes the plan so nonchalantly it basically reinforces her belief that Cid is a mastermind of unsurpassed brilliance, when he’s actually just been wining it all along and doesn’t even believe any of this is real.

But of course, it is, and the lives of  the whole school are in his, Sherry’s, and Shadow Garden’s hands. Watching him cut through the bad guys and have tons of fun doing it was immensely entertaining; watching him and his allies save the day should prove the same or moreso.

The Eminence in Shadow – 07 – Making Friends

Ever since she received the gift of chocolates, Sherry’s head has been in the clouds. She’s moved to action when she tastes one of them, and finds it irresistibly sweet. Nu shows off her disguising abilities by posing as an academy student to give Cid her report; they couldn’t get anything out of the brainwashed “Child of Diabolos”.

A “Named” Child (one who has kept their personality through the cult conditioning) has been sent to the capital, surely to continue sullying the name of Shadow Garden. There’s a sad little moment when Nu briefly daydreams about a normal high school life of fun and dancing, only for it to turn into a nightmare.

Cid has a nightmare of his own on his hands: he’s been entered into a fencing tournament against his wishes. He makes lemonade from lemons when his opponent is Rose Oriana, Princess of the kingdom of art and culture and also the academy’s top swordsman.

Because Cid is Cid—pathelogically devoted to playing the nobody—he uses this opportunity to be defeated in the most embarrassing “bloody” ways imaginable, only to get back up and demand the fight continue. Rose slashes him and he goes flying every time, but she can sense his fire…and likes it.

When she finally admits she was underestimating him and takes the kid gloves off, the ref jumps between them before she can lay down a strike. Rose is technically the winner, but she feel like a loser because Cid never gave up in the battle of spirit.

Despite trying to come off as as pathetic a loser as possible (and has practiced 48 different ways to do so), Cid inadvertently gains the ungrudging respect of Rose, an unquestionably powerful “main character”—not exactly what Cid was going for!

In that same vein, Cid didn’t put any thought into whom he gave chocolates to, but by giving them to Sherry Barnett, he picked one of the rare girls at the academy who admired what she saw of him out there in the arena. Recognizing him through his (fake) bandages, she seeks him out and invites him to coffee.

There, Sherry presents him with a bag of homemade cookies as a thank you—even though Cid doesn’t remember giving her chocolates. When he casually agrees to her proposal that they “start out” as friends, and then learns whose daughter she is, Cid is immediately apprehensive; should a background character such as he really consort with such heavy hitters?

He has no idea how happy he made Sherry with his acceptance of her offer. But when she still can’t concentrate on the artifact research, she pays a visit to Alexia, and over an extremely sweet and milky cup of coffee (contrasted with Lexi’s black) asks if she and Cid are still dating. When she says they’re not, and never really were, Sherry can’t contain her elation, which gives Alexia quite a bit of pause!

After befriending Sherry, Cid uses his “injuries” to justify staying away from classes for five days. Upon his return, Rose (the student council president) and her apparent Veep pay his class a visit to talk about elections. But just then, Diabolos commences an invasion plan by cloaking the entire academy with a magic-dampening field.

Among his classmates, only Cid seems to notice the change, and even senses when danger is approaching before it does. When Rose draws her sword to challenge the invaders, she’s unaware of the field, and almost gets seriously hurt. Instead, Cid comes between her and her charging attacker…and gets badly slashed across the chest.

As Sherry takes her coffee with a heap of sugar, I’m inclined to take Cid’s injury with a grain of salt. His performance at the tournament showed that he can an elite dark knight and a stadium full of people into thinking he’s getting seriously hurt. This seems like another opportunity to show everyone how very good he’s gotten at looking so very bad.

The Eminence in Shadow – 06 – Blood and Chocolate

While a monotonous impostor is going around town killing people saying the same phrase over and over again: “We are Shadow Garden,” things are kept light at the academy, where Po and Skel urge Cid to visit a new store that sells strange new things like “chocolate.” We learn the pink-haired girl Cid bumped into is Sherry Barnett, a fellow student and expert researcher tasked with studying a Diabolos artifact by Iris.

There’s an 80-minute line to get in the store, which gives Cid a bit of nostalgia of home due to its similarity to malls and department stores in modern Japan. Sure enough, an employee invites him (and only him) to a “survey”and ends up taking him to the opulent private top floor.

There he encounters Gamma, perhaps the smartest (and least coordinated) of the Seven Shadows. She reports that she took the stories of what stores were like in his old life and built this place, which is now raking in gold to finance Shadow Garden.

Cid, still somehow convinced this is all a big game, is impressed that she built him such a beautiful “set” (which is actually a legit throne room). Gamma also introduces him to the newest Shadows, appropriately enough named Nu.

While running home to beat curfew, Cid suddenly stops and acts out an elaborate, postcard memory-filled farce about having to poop so bad he has to duck into an alley, and asking Po and Skel to go on without him. It’s pretty hilariously executed, particularly when he drops the act the second they split.

In that alley, Cid sensed combat, but his suspicion that the random killer on the loose was Alexia gone bad turns out to be false; she’s fighting the true killers, who number at least three. When one of them slashes her arm, he intervenes and causes them to flee. When Alexia asks Cid what he’s after, he merely tells her to stay out of it and chases the baddies.

Those baddies find that trying to escape the clutches of the Eminence in Shadow is quite impossible, as they’re cut off by Nu, who is eager to show her bonafides to her boss. The next day, rumors of Cid’s outdoor pooping somehow spread, but he still gives Po and Skel chocolate; the latter striking out spectacularly when he tries to give it to an upperclasswoman.

As for Cid, he gives it to the first girl he sees, which turns out to be Sherry in the library. Later, her father (also head researcher of the academy) tells her what chocolate is and that receiving it from a boy means that boy probably likes her. That said, Cid’s two interactions with Sherry thus far have been purely incidental. We’ll see if that becomes a recurring gag, or if there are more meaningful dealings between them to come.

The Eminence in Shadow – 05 – Going Nuclear

I thought last week’s outing would end with Cid completing the rescue of Alexia and the defeat of her evil fiancé. Instead, it ended with him simply showing up, which led me to wonder two things: would a lengthy battle ensue, and was Alexia still in danger? The answers turn out to be “yes” and “no”. Alexia just has to sit back and watch along with us as “Shadow” takes his time toying with Zenon like a cat with a mouse.

Zenon has no idea who he’s dealing with and is confident he’s the superior warrior. Meanwhile, the mad scientist’s giant monster starts wreaking havoc in the streets, it falls to Princess Iris to deal with it. But no matter how many times she slashes the beast, she ends up regenerating her severed limbs in seconds. That’s when Alpha shows up and tells the good princess, essentially, that she’s doing it wrong.

All Iris is doing is making the poor beast suffer; she doesn’t have the power to put her out of her misery. Alpha does, and the red light of Iris’ magic-infused attacks are replaced by a massive pillar of blue light that obliterates the beast, leaving behind the body of the girl that was its core, as well as a locket showing who she was. A flabbergasted Iris asks her what the hell is going on, but Alpha politely tells her to sit back and enjoy the show.

Shadow, and Shadow Garden, are many orders of magnitude more powerful than anyone else in the city; that’s abundantly clear by the ease with which ever Diabolos Cult base is eliminated, along with the fact Alpha just showed up Iris. Down in the sewers, Cid continues to impress upon Zenon just how overmatched he is, but as Alexia watches she notices that Shadow’s fencing style, powerful as it is, is simple, textbook…much like hers. It’s the product of obsessive hard work, not natural talent.

Having had his fill of being overpowered, Zenon gulps on some magic pills that enhance his strength, stamina, and physique. He lashes wildly at Cid but every strike is parried, blocked, or dodged altogether. Cid is disappointed with this “unsightly” display, and offended that Zenon dares call it the “power of the almighty”. It’s just borrowed strength. Cid, meanwhile creates a beautiful blue and purple field laced with intricate bands of light.

He tells Zenon (and Alexia) something they wouldn’t know about: nuclear bombs. In his home world, he could never hope to overcome the blast, but in this new world the sky’s the limit, and after years of training he’s managed to become nuclear himself. His attack detonates, turning the environment monochromatic before evaporating Zenon in a massive blast that emerges from underground and consumes dozens of city blocks. The members of Shadow Garden watch and revel in their leader’s truly almighty power.

Naturally, despite the destructive power, Cid took steps to ensure Alexia survived, but also never got to see her savior’s face. She stands within the depths of the crater his blast created, and whips out her sword and pulls off a few stances. Then, to her surprise, a worried-sick Iris arrives and gathers her in a hug, which Alexia accepts with sisterly grace and love. Watching Cid has changed her perspective on things. Now she understands her sister wasn’t patronizing her when she said she loved her style. Her style represents effort, heart, and determination.

Back at the academy, Alexia reminds Cid that he told her he liked her fencing style, which is the same thing her sister said years ago. With Zenon out of her hair permanently, she bashfully asks Cid if they could keep their relationship going “a little longer”, with the heavy implication that it would no longer be “pretend”. Cid gives a cheerful thumbs-down, and her initial shock turns to a blushing smile—and then a vicious slash from her sword.

Shadow Garden continues its plans to rid the world of Diabolos, Iris assembles a team to investigate both the Cult and the Garden, and a still-bloodied Cid accidentally collides with a pink-haired student carrying a towering stack of tomes. He offers her a hand up, which she happily accepts, and the atmosphere immediately gets all sparkly and soft-focus-y. It looks like Cid doesn’t intend to waste his springtime of youth!