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

Zeta Supporting

Asai, Ayaka Japanese

Aurora Supporting

Nazuka, Kaori Japanese

Kikushima, Kazufumi Producer

Watase, Shouta Producer

Maruyama, Hajime Producer

Mizuguchi, Takeo Producer

Reviews

Nov 12, 2024

MKIkawa

Recommended

Many people have always wondered, including me, if a work of fiction needs to have such a creative and innovative premise to be considered good. Is a story full of overused tropes really that bad, even if the execution is good? I'm yet to be completely sure, but one thing that I can say is, The Eminence in Shadow is an anime Worth experiencing.

"Kage no Jitsuryokusha ni Naritakute!", more known as The Eminence in Shadow, is an isekai about a boy named Minoru, who gets reincarnates as Cid Kagenou, a seemingly "background character" from a noble family. In reality, he's obsessed over gaining power, and ... becoming a powerful being that lurks in the shadows, naming himself Shadow.

STORY/WRITING: 7/10

As mentioned before, creativity when creating a premise and a plot as a whole is widely considered to be pretty important, but not everyone has thought that a reimagination of an overused trope can be good if done well. What makes this story interesting is that they took the "edgy overpowered protagonist" trope to another whole level, and they went into the right direction if they didn't want to make everything look extremely generic and uninteresting.

Overall, the premise isn't creative at all, but they used it to their advantage, by enhancing the worldbuilding and power system compared to most other isekais, creating a much better experience for the average audience. The most important part of over exaggerating the plot is that, if done poorly, can make the story much worse, but if done well, can make it more engaging, and sometimes, more fun, specially for "parody" anime. In this case, we can see a lot of exaggeration, for example, every situation Cid creates in his head, only for his "roleplaying", always ends up being true, including the Cult of Diablos. This is something really absurd, but it definitely makes The Eminence in Shadow more enjoyable to watch then almost all other anime with the same monotonous tropes.

Another thing I can praise about the series is its setting, which shows that the world is constantly and rapidly evolving, most of the time through the knowledge the servants of Shadow recieved from him, and developed on their own. You can clearly see hamburgers becoming more and more common in a world that looks ike it's just about to reach the Industrial Revoution, for example. I find that incredibe, specially because that's such an uncommon trait for anime to show, and it makes the worldbuiding much more interesting from a viewer's standpoint.

AUDIO/SOUNDTRACK/SCORE: 7/10

Honestly, while the soundtrack could be better in some moments - with more impactful songs in some scenes or better sound effects - I don't have much to complain about it, because sometimes it definitely can make some parts more exiting (specially in episode 5, for example). The voice actors that worked on this are pretty good on average in the japanese version, and they were fine in the english dub (and yes, I watched both for this review), but I want to highlight the VA's of Cid and Delta from the japanese version, which were simply awesome for their characters.

CHARACTERS: 7.5/10

This is a pretty strong point of the series. I can only complain about the antagonists here, since they look much unoriginal and bland (as of what has been shown in the anime). The Eminence in Shadow stands out the most over other "edgy" isekais out there is that the characters are actually charismatic, specially the main protagonist. They surely make the series much more enjoyable, because most other works don't seem to be able to create a cast interesting enough for anyone to care about it, and this anime does the opposite. While they're definitely not that complex or full of depht, their captivating personalities are what creates better character interactions, evolving into more impactful scenes and better dialogue.

ANIMATION: 8/10

Pretty solid part of The Eminence in Shadow, there's also nothing to complain related to this either. It's really well done, not inconsistent at all and some fight scenes look amazingly done. One thing, though, that's not personally liked is the amount of fanservice. Of course, there are many anime out there with a much bigger amount of these scenes, and the quantity in this series isn't that big either, but I'd rather not see any kind of fanservice, at all.

ENJOYMENT: 7/10

While it definitely has plenty of good and memorable scenes, the story wasn't that interesting to me, specially because if follows a lot of tropes, including edgy and cringe moments, even if they're done in a comedic way. I had a lot of fun watching it, it's memorabe, it has got a great direction and quality, and I'd definitely recommend it to someone who likes edgy isekais, because this is probably the best one of this type I've seen.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Aug 11, 2024

LangleyAsuka

Mixed Feelings

Out of all the post-isekai anime we're getting lately The Eminence in Shadow is certainly the one that marks most checkbox out of the bunch. It's straight face-humor just hits right as it impeccably weave critiques to the established Isekai tropes in a way that is not only funny, but also a little horrifying.... but I'm getting ahead of myself.
Starting from zero, it's been quite some time since I felt so disorientated when watching the first episode of an Isekai, coming into this with no further information I was feeling disoriented as the first episode continue playing and I had no idea the direction it ... was taking, it gave me no ground to stand on. Meanwhile, it all felt a little off, they anime never fully commit to the indecorum of breaking the fourth wall, but at points the characters would speak in a very artificial way as if they're aware of tits existence, giving the impression they performed that same trope a handful of times. That creates a nice fun tension in the anime as Cid, our most deluded character, who gives up his very life to chase a far-fetched fantasy that can never be realized based on the tenuous and elusive idea of becoming the Eminence in Shadow, is also the one closer to the truth. As his prize, instead of dying Cid is reborn in world that at times seems like the product of his own fanciness, where under the distorting light of the moon he shapes this world according to his whims. Ignorant to the truth that this reality is just a distillation of all the crappy niche Isekai he grew up with.
All that to say that the Eminence in Shadow reaches its peak at episode 5. By this time all these elements had enough time to build on each other and crate one of the most fun, action packed and surreal sequence I've watched. Ending with the words that will forever be engraved in my soul I AM ATOMIC. Everything after that, is just a reiteration and recycling of the same idea in increasingly uninteresting ways, not to say it doesn't have its moments, but all it had to say was already said.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Nov 21, 2024

Lawgun

Not Recommended

This anime's cover provoked me for months since appeared on a main page of MAL, it's just another situation when recommendation system simply doesn't work.

What, another isekai anime with tags Action, Comedy, Fantasy and people call it a 'parody on isekai genre itself'? Sounds nice, for sure it must be pretty funny and original, right? I mean, there are Konosuba, Isekai Ojisan and Isekai Bishoujo Juniku Ojisan already as great examples of comedy parody on isekai and they were pretty fresh in its ways of resolving standard isekai situations.

Forget about it, Kage no Jitsuryokusha ni Naritakute! is just a bad joke which repeated ... hundreds of times with an idiotic stubbornness. How is it a parody on isekai if it's keep being so serious and pretentious in terms of plot and characters' motives? Obviously it's not a parody on isekai, author of this abomination is just pathetic and insecure so decided to use excuses for his cringe worth writing skills by including silly scenes everywhere so it would look like as a total farce and circus what could help with avoiding of critics which traditionally follows anything barely serious and plot oriented.

Half of this garbage anime try hard to be a comedy. Oh, it's a parody on a comedy then! Okay, then author did a good job since made a lot of unfunny jokes and put in some random delusional fool instead as MC. Another half of anime is a mess full of lengthy boring battles and basic formal dialogues. Oh, it's a parody on meaningful anime then! Okay, then author did a good job again by making worthless incoherent plot which fails to intrigue.

There is nothing to discuss here in terms of details or plot moves since all of them are meaningless and tasteless just like the author himself. I don't care how this anime looks and sounds, how much money were spent and who voices who here. It's just another 'popular TM' trash with some group of fanatics which can't do anything better than spread lies about 'parody' premise in this anime. This parody on anime itself totally deserves its parody-tier 'fans', what a joke.

Reviewer’s Rating: 1

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