#in which jack pretends he's posing dramatically like a hero he's starting to be on the table until kimi walks in

[fullofsunsetwhispers]

Kimiko: What are you doing?

Jack, standing on a table: I live here you know. I can stand wherever I want, thank you very much.

Kimiko: …

Jack: …

Kimiko: Where’s the spider?

Jack: Under the Chair

[kyogre-blue]

Eminence in Shadow, ch39

(JP: Kage no Jitsuryokusha ni Naritakute)

I love it. 

The MC is........ SO stupid. I have never seen a character this batshit and yet so competent and happy. He is truly living his best life, and I am here for that. 

The plot is fairly simple: The MC was a “normal” high school kid who was obsessed with becoming what is translated as “eminent in shadow” but what basically means is a super cool, super OP mysterious character that is neither hero nor villain. Like... the Black Ranger, I guess? 

But to give you an idea of how lost in the sauce he was, his criteria for this was “but can I take a nuke head on?” 

This didn’t work out for him in the real world, but he eventually met Truck-kun and reincarnated into a fantasy world where it is indeed possible to jack your stats up until you can punch out nukes. Which he proceeds to do, but because of his personal sense of aesthetics, he insists on pretending to be a completely unremarkable person on the surface while hiding his true potential... and accidentally starting a hidden organization that goes toe to toe with an evil cult. 

Hijinks ensue. 

It’s really glorious, and I enjoyed both the humor and the serious storyline going on in the background. 

Pros: 

The MC is OP, but we don’t have to sit through an extended training arc, since it’s presented as part reincarnator knowledge, part just his character to train obsessively. It’s not interesting, so we don’t need to see it. imo it benefits from being unintrusive (some shows really stretch believability in explaining why the protag is just the bestest) and also avoids being tedious (many stories drag out this part). 

There is a lot of gratuitous violence (the heroes cut off limbs and heads all the time), but it isn’t presented in a particularly gorey or graphic way, making it come across as part of the comedy style. At the same time, there is basically no sexual violence, which I am very grateful toward. The story just does not care for trying to be edgy via rape. 

The humor is great. Seriously, the MC is OP enough to do whatever he wants, but what he wants is to basically be a full blast chuuni. Wearing a mask and a black trench coat, posing on top of buildings, spouting off dramatic sounding lines... He really is living his best life and it is both so cheesy and so earnest that you have to cheer for him. 

A lot of the comedy also comes from the fact that the girls he rescues become part of his shadowy cabal (based on some nonsense he made up on the spot and which turned out to be true) and think he is an absolute genius. He CAN beat them all in combat, yes, but he is dumb as a brick and generally has no idea what is going on. However, while the story is aware of how dumb everyone acts, it doesn’t mock anyone in a mean-spirited way. Not the MC and not the girls, who are very serious about following the actual plot. 

This part is important because the show doesn’t commit one of the cardinal sins for me - mocking emotional moments. The vampire queen who was forced to go on a rampage and the subordinate who wants to save her? No one mocks them for it. They get to live together. The princess who has to kill her brainwashed father? She’s not mocked for that. She’s rescued and given a way to keep fighting. Stuff like that. 

This is kind of the important part to me: the humor is absurdist, but it is not cruel or mocking, and it balances well with the actual story. 

Cons: 

There really is a lot of gratuitous violence. The MC was slaughtering “bandits” en masse at age 6. Killing is just a thing, and you have to make sure you don’t think about all these dead mob characters as people because the main cast do not and this isn’t treated as a problem. 

It is the general setup of male MC and a full female cast. I don’t think there is a single recurring male character aside from the MC’s two comedy relief, off-model classmate pals. Also, every female character was rescued by him as a child, and they are all in love with him, often based on some misunderstanding. 

The MC is also hyped like crazy for his combat skills, which are the real deal. He is basically the strongest person ever and his fighting is so beautiful that just seeing him in action will give people a religious experience. It is what it is. 

There is not a lot of emotional depth. I like the characters, and the emotional plot lines that exist are allowed to play out without being undercut by humor, but none of it is very deep. 

But still, I really liked it. Very fun manga.