When the villain realizes that he wasn't entering a field of sheep but the lion's den.
The Eminence in Shadow is a series that focuses on dark comedy, thanks to most of it being from the POV of an Ax-Crazy "Protagonist" - but the madness that ensues can also stop you from sleeping.
As a Moments page, all spoilers are off.
open/close all folders
In General
- Eminence in Shadow doesn't sugar coat how much of a Crapsack World the world of magic is. Bandits and monsters are common across the country, massive corruption in high societal/royalty standings, and lynching of children.
- The anime massively plays up the Mook Horror Show aspects of the series.
- Episode 1: Minoru beats an ex-military kidnapper with a crowbar until the screaming for mercy stops.
- Episode 2: Cid gleefully toys with a bandit group and leaves them in pieces.
- Episode 8: Cid goes full-on movie monster on the terrorists. Rex ends up getting tossed into the room where Cid was storing the corpses... by seating them at desks like a child playing school with dolls. And then Cid is standing on the ceiling directly behind him, providing the page image.
- The Order of Diabolos are the main antagonists of the series, and they have done every evil deed that could make a super villain proud. They are playing with dark forces to satisfy their own greed, callously experimenting on the children who are descended from the heroes that destroyed their god - and they've been at it for about a thousand years.
- The Curse that plagues several of the girls causes the body to slowly rot until the victim is pretty much a living corpse - in the meantime they get the absolute "treat" of everyone they know and love turning against them, and are not only exiled but hunted down like sick animals. The ones that are captured get sent off to a secret cult (who is behind their persecution in the first place), where they are either killed or experimented upon. Such is the fate of Emilia in Chapter 5 of the manga, and Alpha might have been next had Cid not come and saved her.
- Shadow's Finishing Move "I... AM... ATOMIC" has all the destructive power of a nuclear bomb with none of the radioactive aftermath - any poor Diabolos Cult schmuck caught in the blast is completely vaporized.
- Episode 20 of the anime shows the terrifying range of the attack. Unlike the one in Episode 5 which "only" takes out an entire block, this one shows that it can span the ENTIRE kingdom - and that's nowhere near the limit.
- Topping even that, Episode 12 of Season 2 has Shadow fire a blast at Mordred that is so powerful, it lights up the entire solar system. This puts Shadow's barrier around his planet into horrifying context - without that, his attack could have destroyed all life on the planet or even the planet itself.
Volume 1
- Cid - originally Minoru Kagenou - was downright insane well before he was reborn into the new world, and nothing makes this clearer than Minoru's death: he suffers brain damage that causes him to spend an entire night, if not longer, banging his head against a tree - the only thing he could think about after was the hope that he had found magic, but the audience knows otherwise. He then ends up hit by a truck through no real fault of his own, but by then his delusions and trauma had already overrode his natural instinct to survive and made him progressively more insane.
- Alexia's captivity in Ch. 5 of the manga sees her being released almost immediately. The anime version in Ep.4 on the other hand depicts it taking place over several days. The needle holes in her arm eventually become slashes across it. She is force-fed what can only be tactfully called "slop" with it being left around and flies gathering. Eventually, we see her motionless but for labored breathing, sporting Dull Eyes of Unhappiness, covered in dirt and bits of the aforementioned slop.
- Nu's Cold-Blooded Torture of a Shadow Garden Impostor shows even the Benevolent Conspiracy has a dark side.
- Alpha's introduction and Epsilon's flashback shows that they want death to the Diabolos Cult and their friends and family who betrayed them. So, after they deal with the cult or along the way, they most likely want to settle the score with their treacherous former loved ones.
- In the "Terrorist arc", the Shadow Garden impostors get systematically taken down by Cid who doesn't like anyone soiling his reputation. One of the impostors, the commander barely defends himself from one of Cid's attacks. He thinks he has a chance to survive this; that is until he discovers the pile of corpses of ALL his men filled in a single room. Oh, Crap! can hardly describe what that guy's feeling right now. He manages to live ...for several more seconds.
- The manga shows the gory details of the attack. Rex's arms and legs got cleaned off while his organs are spewing out of his body.
- The anime is even worse. Cid ends up playing out what is essentially a slasher movie over the course of the terrorist attack. Rex gets flung into a classroom where the corpses of all his subordinates are sitting in their seats. And then Cid is standing on the ceiling behind him.
- It's revealed that Sherry's stepfather was the one who killed her mother. He even describes every detail regarding the death showing he takes pleasure in what he did. Shadow hears this and is taken aback and he's crazy. When you made even Shadow, the man who would happily kill bandits left and right and selfishly discards others for his dream, be disgusted or enraged at a despicable action, you clearly are messed up.
- Sherry, who witnessed her mother die in front of her as a child, ends up watching her stepfather be killed by Shadow, who chooses not to reveal the truth about him to her. In the anime, the next time we see her, she's become obsessed with killing Shadow as her study room is covered with his wanted posters. It seems Shadow has made an unintentional enemy out of her.
Volume 2
- Cid's takedown of the Olivier clone is particularly gruesome; he grabs her and rips out her throat. The fact that this clone can actually feel shock from that just says it all.
- The anime shows the gory details behind Mundane's feints. Iris imagines the many deaths Mundane will inflict upon her such as decapitation and dismemberment, with the former being the very first death glimpsed in her mind being the most pronounced when she slowly closes her eyes after her head falls to the ground whilst in her perspective.
Volume 3
- The Lawless City is basically a cesspool of crime and villainy. They allowed killing, prostitution, and slavery. That's probably because the city is ruled by crime lords and one of them is an ancient vampire that nearly brought about the extinction of the human race. Goldoh and Quinton, two skilled swordsmen, learn how bad this city is and try to flee only to get captured by its citizens. When Cid sees them again, they have been reduced to mere slaves. Sure, they're jerks but this is a fate they didn't deserve. Even worse is that they were bought in the web novel.
- The anime shows a flashback to how Beta experienced her Demonic Possession and it was even worse than Alpha's since while Alpha became a full-on Blob Monster, only Beta's bottom half was transformed with her upper down showing a face that has hit the Despair Event Horizon.
Volume 4
- Shadow may have stopped the demon invasion from happening in Oriana, but it's already happened in Japan. As in, on EARTH. It's a multiverse-wide invasion, and it's already devastated Japan, killed off most of its population, and cut it off from the rest of the world. You would think that it's already destroyed our world, if not for the exposition given that it only affected the Oriana Kingdom in the past.
- Minoru Kagenou may or may not have been a serial killer back in Japan. The anime implies that the motorcycle gangs started wearing helmets so that he wouldn't kill them if he hit them in the head... and so he switched from using them as tonfa to using them as clubs. And while the manga implied that the kidnappers he fought survived, all the anime showed was the kidnap victim flinching as Minoru beat the kidnapper with a crowbar until the screaming stopped.
- In the season 2 finale, the kidnappers reappear... having been heavily modified into cyborgs by an unknown party. The ex-soldier barely seems functional, and still flashes back to Stylish's beatdown of him. And then Shadow crashes down amongst them, slime weapons and all...
Volume 5
- The epilogue has Alexia asking Cid how much he would want eternal life. His response? He is willing to destroy the whole world for it! Considering the fact this is Cid he most likely means it too.
Volume 6
- Jack the Ripper. A Serial Killer that hunts down and kills the corrupt nobles of Midgar, wearing a clown costume with a mask that shows a perpetual grin.
- What's worse is that for the entire volume, we never get any idea what Cid is thinking when he's in this guise. No Goofiness. No Comedy. Just a pure silent killer who could only give a bone-chilling laugh.
- Even worse is that Jack has created a Legacy Character in the form of Christina Hope, who very much intends to continue where Jack left off, starting with the families of the 13 Night Swords, including Eliza whom she murders with a smile on her face.
- The entire fight between Jack and the Night Swords' forces at the underground stadium is just basically a blood bath, leaving everyone watching to be stunned in horror. Alexia notes that the Night Swords' men's power can surpass that of the knight order and Jack, who she discovers later is Shadow, effortlessly takes them down with brutal ease. Alexia clearly realizes that at any point in time, Shadow can wipe out Midgar kingdom in just seconds, without using his strongest magic. Not to mention that the Church is having all the kingdoms to assault Oriana kingdom, now protected by Shadow Garden, and if Shadow does step in, well, the battlefield would look like one large tomato paste.....
- The only fighters that are spared from Jack's onslaught were a group of therianthrope mercenaries who clearly see who's the true victor. When the Night Swords threatens to destroy their reputations and have them killed, the mercs just laugh in their faces, giving them a cryptic warning that their lives are about to end by the Monster Clown.
- When Cid visits Claire in the infirmary as she's being cared for by Nina and one of the Numbers, he remarks how it would be nice if his sister could sleep forever if only so he doesn't have to endure her "abuse". Nina and Mu's reaction, however, implies they took his words to mean he wanted to kill Claire. Cid says he was joking when he sees their unusually serious expressions, unaware that he almost signed his sister's death warrant.
Web Novel
- Despite they were the bad guys, it's pretty horrific that these nameless minions in Chapter 179 got wrecked by Shadow. Shadow, in less than a second, left a gaping hole in one of them and held his heart. The other one gets it seconds later. This chapter once again establishes that despite the new monsters, especially Mordred, Shadow is the real Dreaded.
- Before that, Cid's encounter with the five men from the Doem faction is Bullying the Dragon played like a horror movie. These bastards didn't know what hit them. They thought they were beating up what they believed to be just a normal kid but after witnessing him No-Sell all their attacks all the while with a Slasher Smile in his face, to say that they were having an Oh, Crap! moment would be an understatement. And this is before Cid leaves fresh holes to each of the men through their gut. If he had been actually serious and genuinely wanted to save Oriana, he could crush Doem and his forces in an instant.
- Doem's fate. Imagine being unable to defend yourself nor able to move your arms and legs and within inches from you is the perpetrator himself. Next after that is that boy prying information out of your head by performing a full-on lobotomy.
- The Black Rose of the Oriana Kingdom, where the Stygyian Beasts cruelly slaughters friend or foe alike and takes at least 10 ordinary soldiers to even subdue it unless you have the prowess of the Shadow Garden itself. It massacred 100,000 invading Velgattan soldiers OVERNIGHT as a Godzilla Threshold of the Oriana Kingdom. If not for a certain someone(implied to be Aurora), it would have destroyed Oriana and put it out of the map.
- A zombie invasion is happening in the capital of Oriana.
