English Dub Review: The Eminence in Shadow “He Who Pulls The Strings”

Overview

Alpha and Gamma carefully plot not take any actions that would implicate Mitsugoshi’s connection to Shadow Garden. Meanwhile, John Smith (Another fake Identity that Shadow/Cid is under) has a plot of his own.



Our Take

As the Clovers proceed towards the Mitsugoshi building to kill the CEO Luna, (Gamma’s public alias), The clumsy Gamma insists on dealing with them herself. Gamma turns out to have unusually high amounts of magic and resistant to physical damage, so while her combat abilities are below even an amateur she hilariously blasts her way through the fight, killing their field leader in the process. Gettan in response decides to take action himself since he’s determined to attain the power needed for revenge on the boy who scarred his face years ago, known as “Stylish Ruffian Slayer” (aka the younger Cid). Yukime prints millions of fake banknotes and feeds them into the economy via Lawless City.

Yukime then reveals that her grudge towards Gettan stems from her terrible past of him killing her family. Alpha discovers the counterfeit money and orders Shadow Garden to investigate the source. Gettan also discovers this, but is less than thrilled as he had the same counterfeiting idea to cause a bank run, but it was not supposed to happen until he had bled the economy of all its gold for the Cult. Should a bank run occur now the gold will be returned to the citizens and impossible for the Cult to retrieve. Meanwhile, when investigating the Lawless City. Rose/Soldier 666 falls into a trap set by Cid, aka “John Smith”, who cryptically warns her it is too early for Shadow Garden to discover the truth, but he proceeds to throw their asses out of the train like he’s Walter from Hellsing before they figure things out…

Overall a fun yet passable episode. The irony that the true villain the girls are facing is actually their master. And it’s clear that Mr Smith’s counterfeit plan is stepping on the toes of both Alpha’s company and the Cult which has its own counterfeit scheme to bring down Alphas company. But the fight against Gettan though sure is pretty personal for Yukime. Rose despite being “Soldier 666” really needs to learn how to open up to her team mates if she wants to be successful in her quest. Looks like this arc is starting to heat up!