English Dub Review: The Eminence in Shadow “Mask of Falsehood”

Overview

Our Take

This time around, we meet Garter. President of Major Corporate Alliance (MCA) who controls trade in Midgar via organized crime, goes to war with Mitsugoshi, a fashion company secretly run by Shadow Garden. Alpha hopes killing Garter’s thugs will force Cultists within MCA to reveal themselves. However, Cid deduces that Shadow Garden owns Mitsugoshi and made new enemies without telling him. Believing Shadow Garden is potentially going too far with the knowlege of his previous life, Cid arranges the secret meeting with Yukime to discuss putting Mitsugoshi and Garter out of business as a warning to Shadow Garden, whilst making vast profits for himself and Yukime. Yukime is on board with this idea, but warns Cid of Garter’s boss, Devil Swordsman Gettan, whom Yukime wants to kill personally.

Upon discovering that MCA and Mitsugoshi own competing banks, Cid proposes they counterfeit a fortune in fake bills. And Yukime knows this would destroy public trust in banknotes and cause a bank run of people withdrawing their gold, destroying both banks and allowing Cid and Yukime to make even more profits. She congratulates Cid for knowing this; in reality Cid is completely confused but bluffs his way through. While this is going on, Delta visits Cid whilst hunting MCA thugs. And Gettan sends his assassins the Four Clovers to attack Mitsugoshi. One of these Clovers just so happens to be a relative of Delta that she cares very little about and explains how her Wolf people tribe works. Cid is fascinated by Delta’s Therianthrope society (who are basically animal people) and considers visiting Delta’s clan someday, until Delta makes a weirdly happy and unusual demand. Meanwhile, Gettan begins to understand why his Cultist allies warned him Mitsugoshi was dangerous…

Overall, This was a bit of a fun episode that expands the lore a bit while Cid under a different identity bluffs Yukime into figuring out a plan of action for him and Delta shows no mercy not even to siblings. and much like Ainz from Overlord, dumb luck keeps happening to Cid as loves to make stuff up on the fly and have that shit work in his favor somehow. Also, the market aspect within this universe is now another battlefield in the war against the cult. But at the very least, it was nice to see Yukime be involved in this arc too. The shadows really ended up replicating everything they learned from Cid in their past conversations right down to how bank and an economies work and the modern dapper suits people wear compared to the medieval stuff of this world was wearing before. Aside from that, Delta’s subplot helped bring humor and levity to the proceedings, and that cliffhanger left me wanting more.