Shadow World Problems – Chapter 8, Act 2, Strip 3

While Snuka recovers from a combination of concussion and humiliation, let’s catch up with the villains for a moment.

They don’t seem to be doing too bad, but not too good, either – frustrated, but in a stylish and comfortable way. Ennui with a level of sophistication, you could say.

Clearly, a coordination problem at a higher level is the source of their problem. They seem to have been given a recruitment task, but the requirement to keep their faces completely obscured by deep shadows (of no specific origin) has not been lifted, leading to a marked lack of success.

Unsurprisingly so – being handsome to borderline beautiful, as our two villains certainly are, is a huge advantage when trying to win over people, but it’s of little help when your face isn’t visible. And beyond just neutralizing that advantage, the shadows are an actual detriment to their efforts. Just imagine being approached by somebody whose face is completely shrouded in deep shadows on a bright and sunny day (and in an anime high school setting, all days are bright and sunny unless plot circumstances specifically require otherwise) – how much attention would you even pay to their words, and would you ever even consider accepting their solicitation?

So, let’s hope…uh, wait, those are villains…so, the only thing they can hope for is that their superiors get their act together soon and re-coordinate the information security and recruitment aspects of their overall plan.

The take-aways from today’s episode:
– the villains are obviously backed up by a huge and highly structured organization, otherwise they couldn’t have been given such poor and contradictory orders
– the villains aren’t really good at coming up with non-conspicuous names for things like clubs etc., possibly due to the above >_>

More on Monday.