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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.