The Eminence in Shadow (2021)
[é°ăźćźćè ă«ăȘăăăăŠ!]
Volume 4
Author: Daisuke Aizawa
Illustrator: Tozai
Publisher: Enterbrain
Synopsis:
As a Shadow Garden agent, Rose Oriana is sent on a mission to her home country, which is in the throes of a civil war following the assassination of the King.
Impressions:
For those of you who only know the series from the anime, this volume covers the second half of Season 2 and the (as of this writing) upcoming film. For the first half, it helps to be a fan of Rose. I can't quite put my finger on the reason I don't like her. All the elements to her character seem to be fairly solid and compelling. I certainly hope it's nothing so shallow as the fact that I hate the "drill atama" hairstyle. Anyway, there's some decent internal conflict with her trying to balance her old identity with her new one as a member of Shadow Garden. She stands out in that she's the only member we've seen so far who's deeply attached to her past. We see a solid conflict with fellow Garden member #559, who along with Rose are the only members outside the Seven Shades who have been saved by Shadow directly. #559 is quite the Shadow fanatic (tying into her backstory, which I've been exposed to via the game) and is a fine addition to the cast. There are some nice twists and turns leading up to the Black Rose Incident that caps off the first part.
I'm tempted to not go into the details of the second half for spoiler purposes, but I'm going to give some general impressions for the sake of completion. As the movie's release date has yet to be announced, I was looking forward to seeing the story advance. The second half of this volume sees Cid and Beta isekaied into a post-apocalyptic Japan (Cid's original world). I can remember some people complaining about the prologue of S1 of the anime and it's actually the prologue of this half of the story. It was an interesting choice of the showrunners to start the series off with this. Anyway, there's a nice bit of intrigue in the setting and I enjoyed Cid and Beta's infiltration of Messiah, especially from their very different perspectives. It was also funny that a whole chapter was devoted to an old-school BBS flame war. I'm looking forward to seeing how the fallout from all this plays out.
The first half is a good tale in keeping with the series so far and the second half uses the new setting for a nice change of pace. Overall, I'm quite satisfied with the experience and any Kagejitsu fan will want to add this to their collection.
Rating:Own It