Kage no Jitsuryokusha ni Naritakute!

For as long as he can remember, Minoru Kagenou 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.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Kagenou, Cid Main

Yamashita, Seiichirou Japanese

Delta Supporting

Fairouz Ai Japanese

Alpha Supporting

Seto, Asami Japanese

Beta Supporting

Minase, Inori Japanese

Kagenou, Claire Supporting

Hidaka, Rina Japanese

Midgar, Alexia Supporting

Hanazawa, Kana Japanese

Epsilon Supporting

Kanemoto, Hisako Japanese

Gamma Supporting

Mimori, Suzuko Japanese

Eta Supporting

Kondou, Reina Japanese

Zeta Supporting

Asai, Ayaka Japanese

Kikushima, Kazufumi Producer

Watase, Shouta Producer

Maruyama, Hajime Producer

Mizuguchi, Takeo Producer

Reviews

May 31, 2024

VibesonFleek

Recommended

Anime with overpowered protagonists usually suffer from a number of issues such as being wish-fulfillment fantasies with a lack of tension and presenting an overload of bold, straight-faced cringe. The funny thing is Eminence has all of these issues and yet overcomes them by constantly re-framing the narrative within consistent self awareness and refusing to take itself seriously.

Eminence features a protagonist that can best be described as an edgelord. He's obsessed with appearing cool as a shadowy figure in the background. The self described shadow who hides in shadows to fight the shadows. At times, the show presents this 'shadow' character very seriously, but ... it always reels in the cringe by reaffirming it is essentially an act. The shadow is juxtaposed by the protagonist's true identity where he purposefully tries to act like a background character (or NPC) and intentionally behaves cowardly, pathetic, and weak. This juxtaposition between the background character's true identity and the ridiculously overpowered and melodramatic 'shadow' alter ego cultivates a humorous dynamic of hidden identity and scenes that are more focused on being flashy and satisfying for the viewer over being realistic or gritty. The story lines where the all-powerful shadow needs to pretend to be something he's not often result in some of the best scenes Eminence has to offer.

Obviously, Shadow has a harem of powerful elves and animal girls who function as his private army under the shadowy organization name of Shadow Garden. Now is probably a good time to mention this show is overflowing with ecchi. The ecchi elements further take away from the seriousness of the show. Scenes with purportedly serious subtext are layered over literal minutes of framed chests, legs, and rear ends. There is a female character who features the same breast physics as certain fighting games but it's actually explained as a function of that characters magic. The protagonist goes as far as to say that character has integrated chaos theory into her breast physics. Again, this level of self awareness helps the viewer enjoy Eminence without prematurely expiring from cringe and actually infuses humor, almost bordering on satire, into the overwhelming ecchi. Despite that, the show is definitely aimed at a male audience.

Another interesting element of the harem in Eminence is the one-sided nature of it. As far as romance goes, Shadow is a completely apathetic character. He has less than zero interest in romance because it would only distract from his activities as Shadow and his eternal fantasy of being the loner in the shadows on the sidelines. All of the women in the show want Shadow and Cid, his 'true' identity, but he couldn't seem to care less.

The quality of the animation is middling at best. The action sequences are bright and flashy but lack much of the detail you might expect from premiere action anime. That's okay. In my opinion, Eminence is not a show about action but rather about set up and payoff. More than anything, Eminence rewards invested time with humor.

The sound quality in Eminence is, on the other hand, exceptional. Everything from the voice acting to the ost to the sound effects are very, very good. The voice acting of Shadow in particular really stands out, especially as he transitions frequently from his 'true' identity voice which is boyish and light to his "Shadow" voice which is overly deep and over the top. This also gives the implication he's purposefully changing his voice to play shadow which adds to the character.

So, is Shadow the alter ego, or is Cid, the schoolboy, the alter ego? In my opinion, they are both the alter ego. Everything about this protagonist is manufactured. He's always acting, scheming, calculating his behavior in order to achieve what are often very superfluous, petty, and silly goals. In this way, the low stakes of the isekai OP protagonist anime becomes a point of strength rather than weakness. You're not disappointed by the lack of tension or stakes in any given scene but rather shaking your head saying "really?" as the protagonist goes to great lengths to secure shallow, frankly goofy outcomes in supposedly serious situations. Despite being all powerful, the protagonist also seems unable to predict outcomes reliably and often completely misunderstands entire arcs of story to entertaining results.

I'm not sure this show goes far enough to truly be considered satire but it's also certainly not a hundred percent serious. It's honestly not even half serious. Instead, everything is absolutely ridiculous in so many ways and continually strives to undermine the severity of it's own plots and character arcs to hilarious effect.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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May 15, 2024

SimonSama

Mixed Feelings

If you haven't watched The Misfit of the Demon King Academy, you might like this one. I watched the former one first, and while the general idea behind both anime's the same ( overpowered MC ), Cid Kagenou is just bad compared to Anos Voldigoad. Cid Kagenou has his harem, constisting of nearly 150 woman, and he's totally uninterested in any of them, in any way - as I understood, he thinks they are pulling pranks with him, pretending to fight the Cult of Diablos, and even though they do most of his dirty work, he still doesn't care about any of them. And yeah, ... overpowered MC is okay, but an overpowered army of at least 150 of his followers is a bit of an overkill for me. I will watch the 2nd season despite all of this, just to see if the story has gotten any better, but this anime is bad in my opinion.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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May 12, 2024

TheBigDog

Not Recommended

I think i might be in the only one that didn't liked this anime......8.29 rating in MAL......Overrated......mc started of as batman wannabe then tried to turn into lelouch (code geass mc) wannabe but couldn't even laced his boot then he just turned into another isekai overpowered mc that thinks like this whole isekai world is just a video game.......majority of villains are girls and old man that are just made of blood balloons......villains should be build up from the start and have some credible threat to mc becoz if there is no pressure/seriousness on mc then action is just bland bullshit.........most of the scenes were ... pretty cringe as well still watched all the episodes becoz i thought it would get better but it didn't......the only thing that made me curious is that new villain introduced that is voiced by kobayashi (dio brando) but in the end even he will be completely dominated by mc without breaking a sweat.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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