What happens when John Smith and the Cult of Diablos have the same strategy of counterfeiting banknotes? How Shadow Garden analyzes this will be key as the irony in this plot starts to unfold.

Recap & Reaction

Coming off the previous episode where John Smith and Yukime proceed with their counterfeiting strategy of flooding the market with Major Corporate Alliance’s banknotes; this episode focuses on Shadow Garden’s perspective and insights into combating this plan to build distrust within the citizens through the use of paper money. We all know this series is an expert at comedic irony? So, where does the irony play out?

The episode explores another recurring theme, the cliche trope of “not being strong enough.” Alexia and Rose have their moments in this episode to foreshadow what may be the next step in their character development. Also, the rise of Gamma!

Opener

Gamma reports to Alpha about Mitsugoshi business updates. It’s important that the cargo on the trains are always protected.

Trains are such a great place for a setting, whether it’s plot or character development related. This is a nice little foreshadowing for what’s to come by the end of the episode.

She reiterates the Major Corporate Alliance’s concern with issuing too much credit, echoed from the previous episode. At the pace that they are on, it will eventually collapse. Alpha gets Gamma’s reassurance that she will be doing everything she can to not reveal any connections between Mitsugoshi and Shadow Garden. Of course, a special guest of the NPC variety, the strongest of the Clovers that work for Gettan shows up.

Alpha thinks efficiently and effectively as she asks Nu to take on the intruders. Gamma puts on a grin as she asks Alpha that she step in to take care of it. Alpha asks Nu again to take care of the nuisance, but Gamma absolutely insists that she be the one to take down one of the Clovers. Alpha finds the happy medium and commands Kai and Omega to go along with Gamma, where everything won’t completely ‘slip’ out of control because of Gamma.

Fresh, fresh and fresh. It’s always important to keep the audience interested in characters we already know. In this case, this arc sets up Gamma to be in the limelight as she is one of the big brains behind the financial operations of Shadow Garden. Having 664, 665 and 666 be a team is a cool wrinkle to watch Shadow Garden operate as smaller squadrons. So, seeing Gamma, Kai and Omega act as a team is pretty entertaining as well.

Gamma walks in the hallway with her cheeks red in excitement as Omega and Kai are feeling an overwhelming nervousness as to what will occur.

Gamma Versus the Strongest NPC!

Every major Shadow Garden character has gotten a surface level introduction to their character. Arc by arc, each member has built depth into their character and something comically ironic with their character dynamics. The previous episode featured Beta in a new light—being in actual combat and having to lead Shadow Garden members on her own. In this episode, we get to see the full scale of Gamma’s physical capabilities. Her immense magical powers combined with her uncoordinated klutz!

After the opening theme, the scene presents the Clover men sent to take down the manager of Mitsugoshi, Luna. Suspicious that they were able to infiltrate the Mitsugoshi facility to effortlessly, they reluctantly tread on until..  The sinister three of Gamma, Kai and Omega happily, welcome the three unwelcomed gentlemen with a face full of open hands.

As it is with most big fights, “Leaf One,” assumed strongest of the Clovers within Gettan’s ranks, engages in combat with the unknown powers of Gamma. Leaf One, not taking Gamma seriously, gets above Gamma to karate chop her in the head. If you thought that sounded ridiculous, well it sounded just as ridiculous as to how Gamma reacted to this poor soul’s karate chop. Shadow’s role-playing aspirations may have rubbed off the most with Gamma as she cries about the karate chop hurting her noggin. She complains that the cliche attack that she was expecting is supposed to come from a “frontal attack.”

Surprisingly, the ditzy Gamma pulls out an artifact and hones her magical powers within it like a sword to attack Leaf One. Leaf One explains that Gamma is indeed ‘very fast,’ but very ‘amateurish’ with her fighting style. She deduces that he is of the Western Liechtenroi style of fencing. However, that doesn’t really help her counter as all she can do is spam one magical frontal attack. Leaf One counters again right on Gamma’s noggin and she takes it like a champ once again, but with a few whiny tears, as if a disappointed father just smacked a good one on her daughter’s head for misbehaving.

Leaf One is just utter dismay as he hit her with direct hit like in a Pokemon battle. Gamma concentrates more of her magical energy into her sword and spams her attack once again, but in greater force, blowing back Leaf One. A Gamma flashback occurs to give us Shadow’s brilliant wisdom onto Gamma. You guessed it! Put all of her magical energy into her sword and spam away! And most importantly, look like badass while doing it!

In light of Gamma’s epic moment, she ends up tripping on the building rubble from her magical energy creating significant damage to the building. She assumes that it was Leaf One’s ‘Liechtenroi style’ of fighting that countered her. In reality, Gamma was just being a klutz.

Leaf One, feeling completely overwhelmed as Gamma is convinced of Leaf One’s mastery of his technique, tries to round up his men to retreat. But just like every bad guy NPC, they have been completely dismantled by Kai and Omega. Leaf One tries to make his solo escape. Gamma chases after him, putting all of her energy in her next attack. Before she can make her final blow, she trips and her sword goes flying in the air. As Leaf One is running out of the building window in slow motion, the slow motion magical sword with all of Gamma’s magic concentrated in there catches up and pierces him right in the back of the neck, causing a tremendous explosion. Gamma pulls her head up from the rubble and reveals that was her final attack called, “the Self Sacrifice Spinning Wheel.”

Can we even say Gamma is showing her ‘sinister’ side? For the first time like Beta, we get to see what Gamma’s fighting capabilities are. Like Delta’s utter obliteration style of fighting with no real technique, Gamma has a spammy magical frontal attack. Her fighting ability is like a drunken master, but the ditzy klutz version. All in all, this was a fun and humorous scene. Gamma may not be the most popular Shadow Garden member or have the most entertaining moves, but scenes like this can be very entertaining in low moderation.

Boss and Subordinate, the Real Scheme

The Gettan and Garter trope they’re making fun of is the boss making the subordinate handle every mishap, when they should call it quits in trying to take down Mitsugoshi. Garter is in the position to never be able to have a real decision he can make myself, while Gettan gets to make all the decisions. This is even worse as he sees everyone in the Major Corporate Alliance as expendable.

I think the play on this trope here is to show how ridiculous it is to be in Garter’s position, given that he has no real freedom or power on his own to make decisions without Gettan. As we learn later on, Gettan is in full self-sabotage mode. We all know how this might turn out for a guy in Garter’s position as well. Resentment should be at the root of how he feels towards Gettan, so it could set up Garter having a ‘backstabbing’ moment at some point.

Like Griffey Zenon and Sir Gaunt, it seems Gettan has aspirations to become part of the 12 Knights of Round like many of the Cult of Diablos villains before him. Gettan has a grand plan for himself that is soon to be revealed. With that said, this scene hints at a little flashback of our not so mysterious boy with a bag on his head slashing down many NPCs. Watching on is a severely damaged younger Gettan, with a cut through his eye that indicates where he got his cliche samurai eye scar from.

Like Rose Oriana’s origin story of wanting to become a Magic Knight, Cid played the role of the “boy with the bag on his head defeating a bunch of bandits,” saving Rose. In Gettan’s case, he seems to have a similar origin story for his goals in life, except it looks like he was a part of the bandits that Cid was attempting to take down. Since Cid is in his backstory, there is an expectation of some funny irony at play here.

Alexia x Cid, Getting Stronger

The scene starts with Cid and Alexia sparring with each other. She quickly dispatches Cid’s sword in classic anime trope form with the sword flying away, while Alexia is posed in a confident victory stance. There is a brief pause for some comedic humor and Cid hits Alexia with a slightly patronizing clap for Alexia’s improved skills.

Alexia and Cid go on to get some sandwiches. Cid surmises from his deep insight that Alexia got better likely from figuring something out or changing her mindset.

Alexia has come a long way from the last time Cid and Alexia spent time with each other. This is the clear next step for a character like Alexia. This scene represents her realization and growth as a character. Like how last season ended, her aim is to still get stronger regardless.

It’s another classic anime trope scene for character development where characters come to fully realize what their next steps are going to be. The down-to-earth feel and quippy nature of the scene, with two characters who are supposed to represent, in most cases, a budding relationship, is always a great segue to use in the middle of a story..

Yukime Wants Gettan’s HEAD!

In a true espionage like scene, John Smith sits down at a food stand and a therianthrope shows up to order food. She mentions to John Smith that “preparations are complete.”

Yukime uses Viscount Grease’s old stomping grounds as the location to make their counterfeit bills. Yukime and John Smith sit on the train to go over the quality of their counterfeit bills.

The bill with the lesser quality is… the real or fake one? Both John Smith and Yukime answer completely opposite of each other in determining which one is the real one. John Smith thinks the lesser quality one is fake, while Yukime thinks the poor quality one is real. John Smith figures that Yukime’s quality of counterfeit bills ended up being of improved quality compared to the authentic bills.

In regards to how authorities will trace the source of the counterfeit bills, that responsibility will be led by John Smith, himself. The details of that have yet to be revealed. However, Yukime starts to display a great displeasure for Gettan, as she wants the sole responsibility for ending his life.

In another classic storytelling character motivation trope, Yukime wants revenge against Gettan. It’s a classic ‘eye for an eye’ scenario. When someone has taken something from you, you want to inflict that same hurt back. In Yukime’s case, Gettan is responsible for mass-murdering her friends, family, and village, essentially taking away everything that is important to her. It has been her prerogative ever since to get her hands on the man who inflicted such traumatizing and agonizing pain onto her.

John Smith let’s her do what she will, but warns her of taking such a dark path.

This scene, which is similar to Gettan’s flashback scene, hints at what their true motives and inspirations are for what has led them up to this point in the story. Getting to understand Yukime’s true motivations for working with John Smith is probably the biggest insight here that matters to the viewer.

Shadow Garden Catches Wind of the Counterfeit Money

Gamma reports to Alpha about the rising trend of counterfeit bills from the Major Corporate Alliance. Alpha orders Gamma to make the Major Corporate Alliance aware of this trend, echoing what Yukime discussed in the previous episode. The goal is to build distrust and resentment towards paper money.

Alpha begins to suspect that this trend has been deliberately orchestrated, which would be their downfall. However, this doesn’t seem to make sense. She instructs Gamma to investigate the source of these counterfeit bills, setting up an encounter with what John Smith has planned for later.

Gettan’s Twist

Money, power and influence—to run a secret organization from the shadows, you need all of these to make a criminal organization function. In this episode, its focus is on the ‘money’ aspect of the Cult of Diablos. What is one of the biggest obstacles to the Cult of Diablos maintaining their wealth? Mitsugoshi.

Soon after Alpha gives command to investigate the source of the counterfeit bills and the reasoning, Garter approaches Gettan about their findings of counterfeit bills. Curious, Gettan asks Garter which bill is actually the counterfeit bill. Garter responds with little confidence that the poorly made one was likely the one. Gettan goes on to tell Garter to investigate the source.

This is where Gettan reveals that the plan all along, given by the Cult was to collapse the credit given by the paper money. Major Corporate Alliance was built to be a kamikaze to take out the competition with it. Prior to the ‘kamikaze’ plan commencing, the Cult was supposed to recover all of the artifacts first, which is scattered across the MCA’s different business entities. If this plan proceeds prematurely, there is a great risk in the Cult losing massive fortunes.

Clearly, the Cult’s plan aligns with what Yukime and John Smith are planning. However, from Gettan’s perspective, the key concern is the timing of when the counterfeit money was supposed to circulate, setting us up with a myriad of entertaining possibilities.

John Smith x Trio of 664, 665 & 666

The Trio of 664, 665 and 666 are sent to one of trains to investigate the whereabouts of the counterfeit bills. The goal is to take out as much of the counterfeit money as they can.

As they board the train, an eerie silence shrouds them, making their entry seem deceptively easy, until suddenly, they find themselves ensnared in a web of wires! The perpetrator behind this trap? None other than John Smith himself! 664 and 665, caught in the magically enforced web, struggle in vain to break free. It’s then that John Smith makes his grand entrance. 666, formerly known as Rose Oriana makes her move to attack John Smith. John Smith acknowledges 666’s all out frontal attack as a good strategy, but is no where near the level that could cleanly accomplish such a high risk attack. Then, he easily ensnares 666 and proceeds to delivers some classic antagonistic lines and tosses all 3 out of the train.

664 and 665 restrain 666, preventing her from attempting to reboard the train. However, the train has already moved far beyond their reach. 664 wisely warns against returning, as it would be a blatant mistake to fall back into the same trap. This situation leaves 666 with a profound sense of disappointment in her own strength, as if nothing has truly changed for her.

This scene delves into another layer of irony as Rose questions her abilities, unaware that she’s pitted against an undercover Cid. It reflects a common fallacy in life where we often compare ourselves to others as if our circumstances are identical when, in reality, they are not.

Once again, Cid as John Smith plays that role of imparting his wisdom upon characters that are searching for some kind of character development. Although, this anime is meant to be comedic and rife with situational irony—Cid still plays the role of bestowing his knowledge upon characters like Alexia and Rose. It’s still likely that he will do something similar for other Shadow Garden members, if they engage again in future episodes.

Last Thoughts

Surprise Character Development and Setting Up Some More Surprises

This episode continues to develop the plot and characters introduced in the previous one. The heart of the story often lies in its mysteries, and the current mystery centers around the next moves of John Smith and Gettan. Gettan has a significant backstory with Cid as the Bandit Slayer with the bag on his head. There is zero doubt at this point that John Smith has some fun surprises in mind for Shadow Garden as the irony starts to play out with Gettan assuming the counterfeit plan is the Cult’s doing.

This episode reiterates Alexia and Rose’s position in the show. They are clearly trying to become stronger and be more useful characters in the show and especially against the Cult of Diablos.

The Hilarious Comedic Irony Continues

Like with most plots in this anime, there’s always something ironic about the plot. In this case, between both John Smith & Yukime’s plot compared to what the Cult had planned with the counterfeiting strategy. There’s going to be a lot of “not realizing” from all sides in this plot.

Keeping the Plot Fresh

Given that the tropes and motivations of the central characters like Gettan and Yukime is simplistic, this arc has the most potential from John Smith and Shadow Garden’s perspective. The episode introduces an intriguing dynamic of “friendly fire” espionage between Cid and Shadow Garden. It’s going to be interesting to see what the learning lessons will be for these characters, as John Smith will clearly teach them a lesson purposefully or not.

Overall, this was a fun episode with the signature humor of The Eminence in Shadow. Gamma’s character shines, and the development of the John Smith vs. Shadow Garden plot promises to be exciting. While not one of the best episodes in the series, it’s still good enough to keep viewers engaged and eager to see the payoff.

If I had to give it a score, it’d be a 7.5 out of 10. It’s a good episode with the typical amount of depth you’d expect. If you enjoyed the comedic irony in the plot and Gamma’s entertaining scenes, then this episode definitely has some rewatchable moments you can catch on YouTube. It’s another solid one folks!