Don’t feel bad if you were fooled by Cid’s personality, originally, when he was once Minoru who seemed like a vigilante more than a wannabe secret organization leader. Cid seems like he cares for people—as he saves his various “organization” girls—and even takes down an enemy in a similar fashion as them. The image Cid plays is a cool OP hero but as we learn later in The Eminence in Shadow, this man isn’t about righteousness or heroism, Cid is about becoming the strongest and taking down those he feels go against his own principles. In many ways, Cid is so different from the likes of Naofumi from The Rising of the Shield Hero or Subaru from Re:Zero. Cid is more like Hajime from Arifureta, he’s got his own principles and that is how he lives. It can be so awesome to see this in a character but you can’t deny that that makes him kind of cold when it comes to saving others or even when he explains why he wishes to grow in strength.

We all have friends who are vivid storytellers, they will lie about something but make the lie so perfect and grandiose, that you’ll fall for it most of the time. It’s common for those with few stories to share to make a simple tale into an epic. Cid, though… This man is a literal walking lie and yet, we can’t outright say he is a liar because he’s made his lies become a reality! Cid might have lied about being weak and losing to his superior sister or his “fake girlfriend”, but he also lied about a secret organization—in this case, Cult of Diablos—and yet it wasn’t a lie, they really do exist and plan to overthrow society! Our MC Cid made his lies/dreams into reality, and that is so incredible if you really think about it. We all have dreams or self-described lies that help us cope with the world and try to dream bigger than we can, and Cid is guilty of this, too. Yet, Cid didn’t give up on his dreams. He pulled a Shia LeBeouf, “just do it,” and made his entire chuunibyou fantasy into reality!

Come on now… Most isekai protagonists aren’t shy about saying how OP they are. Lugh from The World’s Finest Assassin Gets Reincarnated in Another World As An Aristocrat and Tanya Von Degurechaff from Saga of Tanya the Evil, basically won’t stop proving how superior their abilities are! Lugh at least has a tinge of realization that he could possibly lose a fight—like when he goes against a dude he has to trick to beat in one hit—but most of the time, Lugh and Tanya are all about strutting their abilities, and making us go “WE GET IT!!!” Cid… This man goes around school losing in fights—sometimes comically like the sword tournament where he bleeds out an unhealthy amount—and just downplays his abilities. Cid is well aware he can’t be beaten easily and is very arrogant about his talent but he doesn’t flaunt them until the battle starts and even then, there are a few times he’s been surprised at what he can do. We love Cid’s attitude as he knows he’s powerful and proves it in combat by not winning every ten seconds to random people or the viewer.

Now you may think we adore Cid and are wishing we’d be like him when we grow up here at the hive but, Cid is also a person we think is close to being a sociopath. When he’s the leader of Shadow Garden and going by the moniker Shadow—so original, right—Cid can be quite disturbing. There are no heroic actions going into this man’s mind but just a yearning to fuel his own desire to be a leader of an underground organization, become the most powerful and control things from the shadows. We can’t deny this makes us question how far Cid is willing to go for his aspirations as there are plenty of times he’s shown an almost alarming amount of heartlessness. In episode 9—which we mention a lot in this article but have done our absolute best to avoid spoilers, Cid actually makes a remark that he hopes his enemy's story doesn’t go too long as he clearly is bored and just wants to fight. This man literally murdered a woman for his own gain and yet, helped take care of someone like a surrogate father…there’s some depth here to be heard and Cid shrugs it off as an annoyance. Cid isn’t an anti-hero or even a vigilante. As we noted above, he fights because he wants to and whatever challenge comes in front of him he takes it if he feels it will push him to become stronger and closer to his visions. We are pretty sure medical books have been made about people like Cid…