A corporate espionage arc, satirizing our financial system, with Cid attempting to dismantle Shadow Garden’s financial organization, Mitsugoshi? Why would Cid.. Ahem. John Smith, do such a thing?!

Recap & Reaction

What we can expect from the flow of a season is that if the previous episode was high-impact action, we can expect the following one to be more grounded. In the previous arc, there was a major revelation regarding the origins of the demon-possessed and the vampire progenitor, showing they share the same ancestral origin. As a result, we had our classic big boss fight in the end. For this arc, it appears to be setting up a more devious and underhanded plot. Nothing sums up this episode better than undercover Cid as the “Super Elite Secret Agent, John Smith.”

Opener

There’s nothing like an arc that starts off with some paid thug NPCs trying to take advantage of innocent women. Except, these women just so happen to be Shadow Garden and they literally know everything that’s going on.

One of the competing business owners, a lovely nice old man named Garter, turns out to be a not so great individual when it comes to other businesses lightening his pockets. He dispatches a gang of thugs from Garter Corporation to strong arm these unsuspecting Mitsugoshi girls.

The Mitsugoshi girls play coy with the ruffian NPCs as they spill the beans like every dumb guy does. The Mitsugoshi girls turn into Kai and Omega. Then, Shadow Garden reveals themselves as Alpha and Nu stand in front of these hired hitmen to utterly obliterate them.

The opener scene sets up exactly what this arc’s theme will be about. Business, money, profit and corporate espionage. Rather than the typical satire aimed at anime tropes, this arc has themes centered around making fun of real life economics.

Everybody Against Mitsugoshi.. Even Cid

Skel and Po are eating with Cid at a restaurant and are hyping up their Mitsugoshi drip to Cid. As they are prancing around, the tape on their shirts start to come off and it ends up being knock offs of the Mitsugoshi branded clothing.

This scene intends to inform us just how influential the business of Mitsugoshi really is. It’s an early foreshadowing of what’s to come for the episode, which ends up being about a ‘counterfeit’ ploy.

Super Elite Secret Agent, “John Smith” Meets Yukime

Once Cid gets done eating with Skel and Po, he gets a little distraught for the people that Mitsugoshi is stealing business from. His determination to aid other businesses leads to a new role-playing endeavor: going undercover as the ‘Super Elite Secret Agent, John Smith,’ with the mission of taking down Mitsugoshi.

These first few scenes sets up the premise of the plot. Mitsugoshi, ran by Shadow Garden, is taking things too far by taking many other businesses out and taking significant shares from major players. In Cid’s vision, he wants to tear down these businesses and create one in his own vision.

Like what camps are to character development, trains are to plot development. The scene shifts to Yukime and John Smith on the train, discussing why they are working together. Shadow has “forsaken his name” for John Smith. With mutual interest in taking down Mitsugoshi, Yukime’s true aim seems to be taking down the Major Corporate Alliance’s true boss, Gettan the Sword Devil, whom Garter works under.

This scene sets up the plot with Shadow Garden’s Mitsugoshi versus the Major Corporate Alliance. It tells us the “who” that’s in the plot.

If there weren’t hints at it before, Yukime shows herself to be this manipulative and underhanded kind of character. She’s perfect for an espionage arc.

Don’t sleep on the execution of these scenes. It has that dark and mysterious, even whimsical feel to it that sets the stage really well. It’s one of those things that the anime can do to contrast the comedic scene with something more grounded.

The Counterfeiting Scheme!

After the train scene, Cid meets up with Skel and Po again. This time, they are roaming around in the shopping district as every business are competing for customers.

Cid reiterates that Alpha and the Mitsugoshi business has taken brutal capitalism too far by selling exclusive clothing and items at their stores, eating into the competition’s market share, even pissing off their local distributors. Surely, these massively giant corporations will do everything in their power to stay in power.

Cid’s whole plan involves helping Yukime take down Mitsugoshi and then take down the group he helped to build his own Mitsugoshi brand Then, he’ll just bring back Alpha and Shadow Garden to work for him. Cid hopes that taking this path to take down Mitsugoshi to rebuild it in his own eyes, would be understood by Shadow Garden later.

Obviously, this is a hilarious plan because Cid doesn’t understand that that is exactly what Mitsugoshi already is. It’s an “obliviousness” motif in the show, but it useful for a funny plot. It’s going to hilarious to see what shenanigans happen between John Smith and how Shadow Garden will approach this.

On the flipside of a more realistic parallel, I can see this as a representation of Cid and Alpha not being on the same page as the leader or ‘CEO’ of Mitsugoshi. This might be a bit of a reach, but can make sense logically. Of course, the joke still remains that Cid doesn’t understand that Mitsugoshi is literally ran for him.

Cash Rules Everything Around Me

Cid comes across two separate bank note bills while he was hanging out in the city with Skel and Po. Turns out Mitsugoshi have their own bank with their own currency note with a harder to counterfeit bill compared to the Major Corporate Alliance one. Cid starts to go over Shadow Garden’s inspiration to setup all of this and it’s all have been inspired by his mentioning of something he heard from the NHK news. Then, something snapped inside his head like the revelation from the previous arc of Shadow stealing Mary’s cliche lines. With riches and shiny gold coins on his mind, he gets the bright idea to start ‘counterfeiting’ the Major Corporate Alliance’s money. Absolutely engulfed with his new idea with Po’s bills in his hand, he runs away in delight as Po and Skel are stunned by their close friend running away with Po’s money!

Credit is a SCAM!

John Smith and Yukime are back on the train going over their plans. John goes over the “fleeting” idea of credit that Shadow Garden implements. It mimics what banks do today when the Federal Reserve prints more money backed by “who knows what?” (It used to be gold). The true value that’s in the vault of Shadow Garden’s money remains constant but won’t cause any issues unless that money gets claimed all at once. At the same time, the bank earns money on the interest that it lends out from that vault. In this system and process, there is a clear financial risk that can make the bank default.

John Smith elucidates that the banknote representing the real value of the gold coins is essentially worthless; it’s just a piece of paper. Yukime concurs, characterizing this paper currency as fraudulent, expressing a desire to confront the “scam artists” of Mitsugoshi.

Holy crap! Legit real world problems incorporated into this arc is actually pretty amazing when it parallels to real life. I never thought we’d get into some kind of nerdy economics mumbo jumbo, but here we are.. In The Eminence in Shadow, making fun of our modern day monetary system. Talking about money backed by gold **LOL** It adds a unique layer of humor and social commentary to the series.

John Smith’s “Counterfeiting Scheme”

John Smith tells Yukime about his plan to counterfeit this bank note, but Yukime respectfully explains that simple counterfeiting of the notes would be quickly be traced back to its source and he begins shaking in his boots at utter disgust at the quick rebuttal. John Smith hovers over Yukime in an intimidating manner with the most intimidating music, questioning how she could really doubt such a plan.

Here, is where the comedic irony begins. Counterfeiting these bills is really stupid guys. But Yukime with John Smith hovering over her aggressively is gaslighting the crap out of her. So, she starts to think about how this plan would actually work. This is where The Eminence in Shadow viewers like myself love this kind of humor.

In light of John Smith’s counterfeiting plan, Yukime starts to process this plan a bit deeper and begins explaining how this plan would actually work. Authorities tracing the counterfeit source is the plan! It would circulate fast, breed dissatisfaction within its citizens and lose confidence in the value of the currency. Through that lost of trust, citizens will flock to the bank to try to redeem their money for gold. By default of the fake notes, the bank would not be able to redeem everyone’s notes, collapsing it.

John Smith goes full goblin-mode again and an intensity that feels like violence is going to ensue as he questions her one last time if what she says about his plan will work. Yukime, scared almost out of her mind agrees. John Smith abruptly stops his intensity towards her and says that everything she said was correct.

Guys.. This literally happens in the world today with currencies collapsing and bank notes not being able to be redeemed. Let’s not get too political here, but the realness and humor of this scene is WHY I FREAKING LOVE THIS ANIME!

John Smith walks out of the train in agreement to Yukime. Then, Yukime starts to reflect about what exactly just happened. She figures that John Smith was just testing her resolve for the plan and if she said anything else, she’d be dead meat.

Comedic irony y’all.

Shadow and Delta Bonding Time

As John Smith walks out publicly on the road, he slips into his Cid Kagenou form and eats at a food stand. For some reason, Delta showed up to hang out with him. As Cid walks out on the road with Delta clinging to him, she sniffs the fox on him, but he plays it off like he was actually hunting them earlier. In Delta’s simple-mindedness, she couldn’t help but offer her master to go hunting together. While showing off more of Delta fan service, both toy around the idea of hunting down some bandits. Then, Cid questions why she’s even in the capital. Of course, she forgot that she was supposed to help Alpha with something.

Garter and Gettan, Boss & Underling

Garter and Gettan speak to each other in a classic underling to boss scene. The private bandits for hire to kill some of the Mitsugoshi girls did not go as planned. So what does the big bad boss say next? You guessed it. Bring the bigger, badder, one step above the bandits out to defeat them. These bigger, badder bad guys are called “Clovers.” They are whom were hand picked by the big boss of this arc himself. And of course, the underling has the classic reaction of “not those guys. They will really do a number on those Mitsugoshi girls!”

Classic, classic, classic bad guy tropes. Once again, it’s not quite about the extreme nature of a super duper elaborate plot. It’s about the use of these tropes to make fun of something using some kind of comedic irony.

Shadow and Delta Murders Some Bandits

Just like that, the scene shifts to Delta ravaging and mass murdering said “Clover Bandits” working for Gettan. He’s disappointed that Delta always fights one way and that is to completely obliterate. To Shadow’s discontent, he never has the opportunity to have fun playing with his prey. All the while, Shadow is looking into a bag of Major Corporate Alliance bank notes.

As Delta gets ready to kill the last bandit, the bandit questions if Delta is Sara or Zara. The bandit in question is named Zabra, Delta’s brother. He questions where she’s been at all this time and that their father hunted her down as she was turning from the demon possessed. Zabra mentions that he works for Gettan now. Before he can elaborate more, Delta slaughters his brother like there are hundreds of her siblings.. because there are. She explains further that “weak brothers should die.” That their clan operates this way as her father pretty much has a harem of his own with hundreds of offspring. It’s basically Darwinism for the Therianthrope. If someone dies, just make another.

Shadow thinks to himself that most therianthrope are like this, except a handful that are different and intelligent like Yukime. He suggests that they should visit them one day. Delta gets extremely excited because Shadow could be her boss one day. All he has to do is defeat her dad to become one and his harem offspring would go bananas!

This could be a setup for a little twist later on in the plot as Gettan reveals what he looks like.

Garter and Gettan, Boss & Underling Part 2

Garter reports to Gettan that one of the hideouts have been obliterated and plundered with Zabra being disposed of. Garter explains further that their numbers have been almost completely wiped out; that they need everyone else to run their commerce—considering all resources they put into buying off all the politicians. He scarily asks Gettan to rethink their strategy. However, Gettan is your average run of the mill bad guy trope that only gives orders and reminds Garter that his place of running their commerce was given by him, the big boss man that knows everything, but eventually loses at the end because of his hubris.

Gettan, who is a therianthrope like Delta gives the order to continue trying to steak all of the Mitsugoshi secrets. At the end, he mentions that the cult was right in labeling Mitsugoshi as a real threat.

Last Thoughts

Something to Learn From in this Freshly Themed Arc

Once again, this anime excels at transitioning from one arc to another, offering a fresh perspective with each new storyline. It introduces entirely new challenges, leveraging the ‘obliviousness’ motif to create plot misunderstandings and showcases Cid’s character in a different light as John Smith.

It’s the same formula of The Eminence in Shadow brand of humor, centered around money, business and economics. Thereby, creating a plot centered around corporate espionage. This is the kind of arc that the writer has been setting up for a while now since the introduction of Gamma. If you are a money, business or even some random crypto bro, this is the kind of arc you’ll greatly appreciate. Even though it’s classic Eminence in Shadow humor, this has a nerdy adult themed twist to the arc that an aging ojisan like myself can appreciate slightly differently than teenagers and young adults. These are the kind of arcs that really give you insight into what the writer really thinks about the world, in this case, offering commentary on money, business, and potentially some of capitalism’s pitfalls.

Funny vs NOT FUNNY!

On the pure entertainment, side of watching this anime, there is a real debate over why people like or dislike this anime. Some find it funny and some despise it. From my point-of-view, the setup itself is inherently funny. Cid’s mistaken assumptions always provide good humor, especially when they’re coupled with another character’s misunderstandings. It was John Smith’s gaslighting of Yukime that really killed me in this one. If you don’t find the comedic irony in these kinds of scenes, you’re just not going to like it as much. Some viewers, when combined with a lack of interest in the show’s themes, may perceive it as just another stale isekai.

At this point, everyone understands why I love this anime. Whether people agree or not is not going to change my opinion because I wholeheartedly appreciate everything, from the writer’s intentions to the themes and how they create comedic irony by using classic anime tropes. The Eminence in Shadow haters can hate all they want, but I will be defending each and every episode until a string of episodes proves me wrong.

This episode deserves at least an 8/10 or higher rating in my book! I love the premise, the corporate espionage-themed plot, Cid’s portrayal as John Smith, and the gaslighting-based misunderstanding comedic irony that I find the most hilarious. Have a laugh and enjoy it folks!