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

Aurora Supporting

Nazuka, Kaori Japanese

Zeta Supporting

Asai, Ayaka Japanese

Kikushima, Kazufumi Producer

Watase, Shouta Producer

Maruyama, Hajime Producer

Mizuguchi, Takeo Producer

Reviews

Jan 30, 2025

hexashadow13

Recommended

Cid Kagenou had always wanted to become The Eminence in Shadow, an overpowered mysterious entity that worked behind the scenes. While in Japanese he was only a fairly strong high school student, but after he got himself killed trying to will magic into existence, he was reborn in a world where he was finally able to make his dreams come true. While maintaining the identity of a normal dark knight in training, he secretly takes on the moniker Shadow and creates the organization Shadow Garden dedicated to defeat the Cult of Diabolos.

The thing is that he just made the Cult of Diabolos up. In ... supreme chuuni fashion, he’s just doing his best to act out how The Eminence in Shadow should act and just pretending that what’s going on actually fits into the type of story that The Eminence of Shadow would be in. But despite that, it all seems to be true. There really is a Cult of Diabolo and they are operating exactly as he said they are. And the random stuff he does as a part of his act really does end up throwing a wrench in their plans in an absolutely perfect manner. This results in those in Shadow Garden pretty much worshipping him. But Cid doesn’t realize any of this. He thinks that he’s just fighting random thugs. And he thinks that his underling in Shadow Garden are just good friends that are humoring him by going along with his act. It’s completely absurd and generally pretty amusing.

It’s similar to the dynamic in Overlord, but even more extreme. In Overlord Ainz is actually trying to fool his underlings and thus often tries to talk around things. Cid does no such thing, spouting out complete nonsense with utter conviction which just somehow happens to be true. Ainz gets lucky and is shocked when he’s successful in ways he doesn’t expect. Nothing surprises Cid because he has no idea about what’s actually going on.

And that’s not to say that Cid isn’t overpowered. He is in fact absurdly powerful to a ridiculous degree, and that at least he realizes. He actually does seem to be really smart when it comes to combat and using magic. And the narrative leans pretty heavily on using that to show how amazing he is in standard overpowered character fashion. These were a mixed bag, with only the finales of a few arcs really being good. The last arc is an exception in that it was pretty good throughout due to it involving Cid taking on a new identity and entering a tournament with the singular goal of making himself seem unexpectedly overpowered. The finale of this arc was also great, which led to the season having a pretty satisfying ending.

While doing his thing as The Eminence in Shadow, he’s also attending an academy for dark knights where he is doing his best to act as a mob character. It seems he doesn’t just think of the mob character thing as simply cover, but rather a core part of being The Eminence in Shadow. And thus, he does his best to mob it up as much as possible and embody every mob trope he can think of. Things don’t automatically seem to work out in this regard however, in that he keeps getting pulled into the stories of girls around him in such a manner that is unfitting of a mob character. He somehow manages to do and say the right things to inspire them to overcome whatever crisis they’re facing, and in the process, they fall in love with him. Cid though generally remains blissfully unaware of this too, which is somewhat amusing.

Overall, I thought this aspect and the characters in general were pretty weak. There’s an attempt at giving depth to various characters surrounding Cid and Shadow Garden, but they’re pretty underdeveloped. The characters themselves aren’t all that likable either and somewhat hard to get invested in. With Cid and his main underlings in Shadow Garden, there doesn’t even seem to be an attempt at fleshing them out. They generally have pretty flat personalities and very limited backgrounds. However, they’re still pretty fun characters with amusing dynamics, so they end up pretty likable. Still, the lack of any substance is disappointing.

I suppose these problems with the cast arise from the fact that the plot makes absolutely no sense. I suppose it shouldn’t be a surprise considering that at its core Cid is doing whatever he wants, but it’s still really bizarre. It’s not like the world building is bad or there are a lot of plot holes. Rather, the plot holes all seem to arise from how Shadow and Shadow Garden’s actions are just random and often don’t seem to fit any sort of goal and get handwaved away as being for mysterious reasons. Like Shadow will use his overpowered magic to just randomly nuke a city for no real reason, but it’s just kind of ignored. There’s this bizarre dissonance where Cid thinks that he’s playing around, but he’s still doing extreme things that are causing harm to a lot of people. But at the same time, he’s definitely not supposed to be evil either like in Overlord, and in general the narrative seems to be trying to frame him as the good guy. It would be fine if this was a completely comedy focused anime that didn’t take itself seriously at all, but there are a good amount of plot threads and character beats that it feels like it does expect to be taken seriously but that just don’t work.

The art and designs overall are pretty good. The animation was a mixed bag. For the most part it was just okay. There are segments that are especially weak such as where it uses strange angles and shots clearly for the purpose of not having to animate certain things. But at the same time, there are also parts that are incredibly well done, mainly the heavy action scenes. The OP is pretty good in terms of the song and visuals, though I didn’t like how it was used for all 20 episodes. The ED is decent enough in terms of the song and visuals. The soundtrack was fine but not particularly memorable. I will also note I liked some of the translation choices, such as how some on the nose names in Japanese were changes to on the nose names in English.

tl;dr: An incredibly chaotic anime that is really amusing but lacks substance.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

What did you think of this review?

Nice 0

Love it 0

Funny 0

Confusing 0

Informative 0

Well-written 0

Creative 0

More reviews by hexashadow13 (758)

Show all

Read more

Show less

Open

Gift

Report

Jan 27, 2025

Kranst

Mixed Feelings

Many fantasy-adjacent stories draw you in through carefully crafted worlds and environments, supported by well-thought-out ideas and concepts. The Eminence in Shadow is not one of these. Unapologetically self-aware, it plays every stereotype, trope, and cliche straight with so little hesitation that the viewer might completely forget this is a parody. It wears them like a badge of honor. Despite being unexceptional in every way except for the on-point music, it has entertaining moments when displaying absolute confidence in the narrative despite how ridiculous the situation is. Intentionally pretentious, woefully edgy, and expectedly predictable, watch this only if you know what you are in for.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

What did you think of this review?

Nice 0

Love it 0

Funny 0

Confusing 0

Informative 0

Well-written 0

Creative 0

More reviews by Kranst (29)

Show all

Read more

Show less

Open

Gift

Report

Jan 26, 2025

tanjoubi

Not Recommended

The MC was entertaining enough for me to finish the season, especially his new appearance during the last 6 episodes (somebody wrote about how this anime is a bad version of One Piece, I didn't watch One Piece, but I would love to watch it if Jimina Sēnen was the MC). However, I would not recommend this anime, unless you're quite bored. Most of the harem characters are quite mediocre, probably made so to make the MC to stand out, and unfortunately they got too much screen time. The story is quite mediocre as well. That said, there are some hilarious moments and some moments ... that you could genuinely agree with the MC are indeed quite "cool", and watching someone living their dream of being cool after they worked for it all their life, is inspiring even if the whole anime is quite plain.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

What did you think of this review?

Nice 0

Love it 0

Funny 0

Confusing 0

Informative 0

Well-written 0

Creative 0

More reviews by tanjoubi (1)

Show all

Read more

Show less

Open

Gift

Report

One Main Character

by Gino99

50 Entries · 101 Restacks

Best of 2020-2024

by Doggo1195

50 Entries · 194 Restacks

Best of 2020-2024 Catch-up

by aifukola

49 Entries · 7 Restacks

'The Eminence in Shadow' Interview: The Serious Comedy of Cid's Story

Kage no Jitsuryokusha ni Naritakute! (The Eminence in Shadow) made its TV anime debut in Fall 2022 and—much to the surprise of its staff—quickly amassed...read more

Jan 18, 2024 10:06 PM by Kineta | Discuss (5 comments)

North American Anime & Manga Releases for October

Here are the North American anime, manga, and light novel releases for October. Week 1: October 3 - 9 Anime Releases Cowboy Bebop Complete Series Blu-ray [SteelBook ...read more

Oct 10, 2023 6:34 AM by Aiimee | Discuss (1 comment)

	Poll: Kage no Jitsuryokusha ni Naritakute! Episode 4 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ) Stark700 - Oct 26, 2022	247 replies	by PenguinLam »» Feb 19, 9:37 AM
	Poll: Kage no Jitsuryokusha ni Naritakute! Episode 20 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ... Last Page ) Stark700 - Feb 15, 2023	782 replies	by Washedindividual »» Feb 19, 2:14 AM
	Poll: Kage no Jitsuryokusha ni Naritakute! Episode 11 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 ) Stark700 - Dec 14, 2022	155 replies	by stickywildebeast »» Feb 16, 4:28 PM
	Poll: Kage no Jitsuryokusha ni Naritakute! Episode 10 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 ) Stark700 - Dec 7, 2022	168 replies	by Sayan_Pal »» Jan 24, 3:48 AM
	Poll: Kage no Jitsuryokusha ni Naritakute! Episode 5 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ... Last Page ) Stark700 - Nov 2, 2022	391 replies	by moshu_06 »» Jan 22, 4:23 PM