The Eminence in Shadow – 32 (S2 Fin) – By Any Other Name Would Smell As Sweet

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!

The Eminence in Shadow – 31 – The Black Rose Blooms

Last week we got some majestic setup for the season-closing Oriana arc, but I didn’t know we’d get so much payoff right here and now! I am not complaining; this arc is moving, but doesn’t feel rushed and still allows for plenty of quieter funny moments like the sniping between Epsilon and Margaret.

It’s when he’s with Epsilon that the Black Rose comes up, but Cid thinks she’s simply talking about a Black Rose; the flower, because of course he freakin’ does. But now that he knows Rose is holding back for her mother’s sake, his main priority is freeing Queen Reina, which he hopes will free Rose to become the Tyrant.

What he finds instead is that when it comes to Reina and Perv, things have gone from a fantasy isekai to a soap opera. He believes if Rose learns the truth, it will enrage her sufficiently enough … to become the Tyrant. I loved Cid’s inverted face as he endured what is clearly his least favorite genre.

When Cid meets with Rose again, it’s as Shadow, whom Rose assumes is there to kill her. Instead, he asks her to follow him to the balcony outside Reina’s chambers. There, they not only overhear her and Perv getting it on, but discussing all of their schemes.

Reina admits to being the one who drugged her husband the king, all so she and Perv could be together. And once he marries Rose as a mere formality, they’ll “get rid” of her too so they can rule Oriana. Rose may well be enraged later, but in the moment, she is so disgusted she starts vomiting uncontrollably, then passes out.

Cutting through this devastatingly heartrending scene (considering what Rose is going through), Cid drops his Shadow voice to lay out his intentions directly, only Rose is out cold, so he gives a half-hearted apology.

With Rose at her absolute nadir, Cid tries one more thing to push her towards rebellion: he appears on her balcony as Cid playing Moonlight Sonata in front of the moon. Rose gives an exhausted, grim smile as she joins him outside, saying she’s killed her father, betrayed by her mother, betrayed Shadow Garden, and is hated by her subjects.

But she still smiles, because through it all, Cid has never been far from her side. Cid tells her he’s split the world into “things that matter” and “things that don’t”, because he had a dream that would be impossible if he didn’t. As scenes of their time together flash by, Rose takes this to mean he’s cast everything else in life aside apart from what matters to him most: her.

Cid goes on to say the world is “too bright”, that it makes it easy to see so much that one can lose sight of what matters. He believes the light of the moon to be the perfect level of illumination, making people look more closely at what matters. He then asks her what she sees in such a moonlit world, in a voice not too dissimilar form Shadow’s, and vanishes, leaving the Black Rose ring on the bench.

Turns out Cid wasn’t trying to give the ring to Rose. He didn’t even leave it there on purpose; it simply fell out of his pocket! But as he tells Epsilon back at the inn, he gave Rose “the key”. When he says “key”, he means the truth Rose needed to hear in order for her to rise in rebellion and become the Tyrant. But Epsilon thinks he’s talking about the key—the Black Rose—which explains why Garden hasn’t been able to find it.

Speaking of the Black Rose, Perv doesn’t open the box that no longer holds it until the day of his freakin’ wedding. I love how after his initial double take, he closes it, repeats the same villainous lines, and re-opens it more than once before completely flipping out. Cid would probably recognize the game too. And like Cid, Perv intends to fake it until he makes it (through the wedding) so he gets the seat at the Rounds Mordred promised.

As a gorgeous but focused Rose walks down the aisle to an organ arrangement of Moonlight Sonata (played by Cid of course) my first thought was How did her locks grow back so fast? But my second thought was just how awesomely she would blow up this wedding and Perv’s plans.

The thing is, Rose believes the ring is a wedding ring from Cid. I don’t think she knows its significance. As Reina tries to stay awake and Perv keeps rifling through his pockets, he says “I do,” and then when presented with the same question, she says “I do not.” It’s one of the most badass moments of the entire show.

Rose lists all of the terrible things she’s done, but is ready to look past those, as long as the kingdom knows the truth about Perv. She lists his misdeeds and pronounces him guilty. Refusing to give up on love, she puts the ring on her finger.

Then, to her surprise, it starts doing all kinds of weird stuff, like glowing, flashing, and finally projecting a kingdom-wide recording of her father the king. Addressing both her and his subjects and knowing he was nearing the edge of reason, he declares Perv Asshat to be the one responsible for destroying his mind, and declares Rose Oriana to be his one and only successor to the throne.

The king’s message ends with him saying he loves Rose, which brings tears to her eyes. When Perv starts bloviating, all of his allies in the court turn on him at once. Tearing off her extensions (she didn’t grow it back!) ripping her gown to reveal her sword, she points it at Perv and prepares to, I assume, take him into custody.

But then all of a sudden his head goes flying in a fountain of blood. Rose looks as shocked as everyone else (including Perv). When the head comes to a stop right in front of Reina, she doesn’t have any reaction until the split-second before her head is separated from her body.

The culprit behind both beheadings is none other than Mordred, who was posing as the priest. Now that the Black Rose has a new master and is operational, he uses his little garage door opener doohickey to use the ring to “open the door” (but not to a garage).

Rose’s ring shoots another beam of light straight up into the sky, creating a portal through which the “Grand Ruler of the Fourth Realm” emerges: Archfiend Ragnarok, a colossal metal dragon. It unleashes its breath and destroys a good chunk of the capital. Reminder that this is the WMD Oriana used against their enemies as a last resort, and it really shouldn’t be in a big built-up city!

Rose is still trying to figure out what the hell is happening when Ragnarok seemingly tries to lash out and kill her; that was my assessment of its gesture, and that also explains why the dragon’s arm is swiftly cleaved off by Lord Shadow (revealing cables and tubes). Whatever else goes down here, he intends to keep protecting Rose, for whom he has such grand plans.