Casting a Shadow

aka: Dark Is Edgy

Elder magic, not dark magic. Get it right.

"I have seen the night torn into thin darkling strips and woven into shapes too bleak for dreams."

— Crovax, Strands of Night, Magic: The Gathering

Darkness is arguably the most unique element in existence (though it's also arguably the most abundant thing in existence) and thus one of the most eldritch forces of nature one can warp. This actually makes sense, given you're bending a Primal Fear that is literally nothing more than the absence of light.

Whereas darkness as an element is frequently portrayed as acting nigh-identically to its polar opposite, Light, with characters "projecting" darkness as one would light, the shadow element is usually focused on creating things— typically corrupted or imperfect copies of something else, or intangible illusions. Characters are also sometimes able to use shadows to teleport. Either form is often used in systems that allow the combining of abilities to create "dark" versions of other powers by combining Casting a Shadow with other Elemental Powers or other power sets.

Shadow powers frequently act as the inverse of Hard Light — shadow-beings or creations of pure darkness will be able to affect the world as if they are solid objects. If a shadow being is the Living Shadow animated from an existing being, the victim probably Casts No Shadow unless it is returned. Some portrayals of elemental shadow or darkness paint it as a sort of life-devouring ectoplasmic goo. Also, beware of those who can root you to the spot just by shadow contact or summon Tendrils of Darkness, because you're probably not getting away from them. Because the shadows are often associated with stealth, don't expect these people to fight fair.

Given the prevalence of Dark Is Evil, darkness as an element is often used by villains in a clear-cut case of Bad Powers, Bad People. Even when Dark Is Not Evil, darkness-based powers are almost always relegated to Anti-Heroes and other morally grey individuals. It wouldn't do to have the white side of Black-and-White Morality use darkness-based powers, after all. Either way, darkness-based powers are frequently associated with negative emotions — fear, hatred, anger, pain, etc. As probably the most Primal Fear in the human psyche, don't expect darkness to be pleasant, even when it's not actively malevolent (unless it's The Sacred Darkness). Evil darkness-users will often play this up, luxuriating in their evilness, whereas others will usually become The Stoic (suppressing their negative emotions by suppressing all their emotions) or just have a lot of Angst to deal with.

If these guys are heroes, then they will often be a Byronic Hero, but it is not impossible for a person with this trope to be a Perky Goth, if even that.

Characters using darkness-based powers are sometimes Weakened by the Light, which may be shown by having Casting a Shadow opposed by Light 'em Up or Holy Hand Grenade in Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors. When the two are compared, that's Light/Darkness Juxtaposition. When they're combined, however, the result is a Yin-Yang Bomb. See also Unholy Nuke. These powers usually Kill the Lights. See also God of Darkness.

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Example Subpages:

• Anime & Manga
• Literature
• Video Games

Other Examples:

Asian Animation

• BoBoiBoy: Aloof Anti-Hero Fang's superpower is the ability to manipulate shadows, usually in the form of animals, though he has used Shadow Hands on occasion. Weakened by the Light is inverted since his shadows are weak in the absence of light.

Comic Books

• Astro City: Lord Sovereign can control and weld the mysterious dark energies that empower him.
• The Darkness: Jackie manipulates the dark, but broadly speaking, he's a good guy. For a mob hitman. Well, he's better than the wielder of the light powers, anyway.
• The DCU:
  • All shadow wielders, by and large, draw their powers from an alternate dimension known as the Shadowland (or Dark Zone), the former residence of the Great Darkness, the shadows that existed before creation which retreated when the Presence said, "Let there be light". Much like their Marvel counterparts, they range the gamut from hero to villain. Most interestingly, the shadows created by The Shade were at one point analyzed by a police scientist. He went insane the moment he looked at the sample in the microscope.
  • Phantom Lady on the other hand uses science! Well, a Dark Light gun from a mysterious European scientist.
  • Shadow Lass/Umbra, member of the Legion of Super-Heroes. She can cast dark-fields preventing all light from reaching an area from outside. These can either be complete, effectively rendering useless all light sources within the area, or hollow to allow the interior to be lit. She can also solidify these fields, to use as a more direct weapon. She has the power to create darkness 100 times darker than a moonless night. Her black shadows are impenetrable by light.
  • Malice Vundabar, the youngest member of the Female Furies, could summon a shadow monster called Chessure.
  • Suicide Squad: Nightshade's mother is from the Land of Nightshades, whose denizens can transform into and manipulate shadows. These abilities were made more powerful and versatile during her time with Shadowpact. It is not known if the Land of Nightshades is in any way related to the Shadowlands
• Locke & Key: The Shadow Crown allows its wearer to summon an army of shadow-creatures to do their bidding. Dodge also uses it to transform himself into a house-sized wolf-creature.
• Marvel Universe: Darkforce users can use this, although they aren't all evil.

Fan Works

• Destiny Intertwined: The main character, Hayze, is a shadow dragon, and has a link to the artificial element of darkness comparable to other dragons' attunements to the natural elements. He primarily demonstrates the ability to move quickly by transforming himself into a patch of darkness; later, during a sparring session with a young Malefor, he also uses a Breath Weapon consisting of a cloud of choking, smoky shadows.
• Jackie Chan Adventures:
  • Project Dark Jade: Jade usually gains a variation of this in stories where she once again becomes a Shadowkhan (refer to the Western Animation entry below):
  • Queen of All Oni: After Jade resumes the role of Queen of the Shadowkhan, she gains the ability to move through shadows, and eventually gains a pair of fans that can fire blasts of shadow chi.
  • Kage: Jade gains the ability to move through shadows, and her Superpowered Evil Side has shown the ability to use shadow-based Combat Tentacles.

• Sorry About The Mess: Anna gains Shadow magic midway through the story in contrast to Elsa's Ice magic.
• Elementals of Harmony: Luna uses a spell to turn her shadow into a localized version of the heat death of the universe to destroy the honesty elemental by forcing it to knowledge the ultimate truth — everything ends, and life is a statistical aberration. Comes complete with a creepy Magical Incantation:
  The world is a mote of dust circling a tiny spark, floating in an unfathomably vast ocean of nothingness. Light, life, chaos, all of these are lies. Lies of such minuscule consequence that the universe allows them to seem true. But one day, its patience will run out. The spark will gutter. The mote will freeze. All will be as it truly is: dark, silent, unchanging. For eternity.

• Pokémon Master: Ash can manipulate and shape shadows and see through darkness. Pikachu's attacks are always black in color.
• Walking in the Shadows: Xander is a variation in that though he is a cleric/paladin, he has magic that is cast on a person's shadow to affect them. One such example is runes he carves onto someone's shadow to affect their physical appearance. Xander used said runes on himself so he doesn't have to shave.
• Shadow Magic: Harry can manipulate darkness and shadow, which he uses to take over Slytherin house and become a dark lord.
• Cat-Ra: Adora gets a magic headband giving her control over shadows, making her a match for even a full-powered She-Ra. This proves to be an issue for Double Trouble, who can duplicate the appearance of the shadows but not their abilities.
• A Diplomatic Visit: The final arc of the fourth story, The Diplomat's Life, features Rabia and the other Umbrum Forces, who have power over shadow and darkness, having literally converted themselves into living shadows.
• J-WITCH Series: The Shadowkhan still show up, so canonical cases of this are still in play. Then later on, Jade becomes the sixth Guardian, with shadow magic that she's able to use offensively, while also having lesser abilities like being able to sense people's shadows, allowing her to sense that the Elyon illusions are fakes.
• Under the Northern Lights: Perytons can transform their shadows as they please, and interact with the physical world using them. The one in the story is seen transforming his shadow into a mass of razor-edged tentacles during a fight, and later into a large web to hold on to his ship during a storm.

Films — Animation

• Chernabog in Fantasia uses shadows of his hands to summon his minions.
• Dr. Facilier in The Princess and the Frog. At least part of it is thanks to his Friends, though his own shade could actually be his own.
• Pitch in Rise of the Guardians. Notably, his powers are actually constructs of black sand, so they're more physical than most examples here. Beyond that, he is seen slipping into shadows (especially in his lair) and even creating multiple shadows to act as decoys.
• Sister Helley from Wendell & Wild can transform into a shadow and move at high speeds.

Films — Live-Action

• Thor: Love and Thunder has Gorr the God Butcher. Through obtaining the Necrosword, he displays a considerable control of darkness, being able to teleport via shadows and create monsters made out of pure blackness.
• Thanatos Dubaer in the Disney Channel film adaptation of Twitches controls an amorphous force appropriately named the Darkness. In the sequel, T*Witches Too, he returns as an animated shade, clinging to what was left of his life in the Shadowlands.
• Shadow magic in Upside-Down Magic is malevolent in nature. While it amplifies magic, it also corrupts mages and eventually takes control of them with intent to destroy humanity.

Folklore and Mythology

• In some versions of Arthurian Legend, King Arthur's dagger, Carnwennan, has the magical power to shroud its wielder in shadow, which he used to slice the Very Black Witch in half.

Gamebooks

• Sorcery!: One of the available spells (for players choosing to play as a wizard) can engulf an entire area in complete darkness, as long as it's cast in an enclosed room without windows.

Live-Action TV

• Heroes Reborn (2015) gives us Phoebe Frady. She could originally animate shadows (most notably her own), darken a room (even unintentionally damaging light bulbs when angry), and concentrate darkness into a ball of black energy. All complete with her eyes glowing purple. After an... interesting interview, she becomes "The Shadow", powerful enough to bind her enemies, send shadowy tendrils down their throats to apparently mutilate their internal organs, and even shut off other superpowers by causing a solar eclipse... somehow. This time when her eyes glow, it's not quite as appealing. Because umbrakinesis rarely ever appears in live-action media, she gives us pretty much the most versatile example thus far (at least in the West).
• Kagura Rentaro, the Kamen Rider Shinobi from Kamen Rider Zi-O uses energy imbued with darkness. There's also his Another Shinobi.
• Shadow and Bone has the shadow summoners, of which there are several. General Kirigan, who is also the legendary Black Heretic, along with his mother Baghra, are the main shadow summoners. They are able to summon and manipulate shadows, creating darkness, and even suffocating people in it. There is also the Cut, a move that solidifies and sharpens the shadows, turning them into a deadly blade. The Black Heretic uses his powers to create the Shadow Fold which split Ravka in two. The morality of the powers is questioned, as shadow summoners (called Darklings) are often considered evil, thanks to the Black Heretic in particular. And, as perhaps expected, the Black General (Kirigan) is juxtaposed with Alina Starkov, the Sun Summoner.
• Supernatural introduces Amara, also known as "The Darkness", the older sister of God. She occasionally uses dark constructs to fight, even using shadowy wisps to kill Him (no, I didn't stutter)!
• Ultra Series:
  • Gatanozoa, Big Bad of Ultraman Tiga, could create a fog of killing darkness that could engulf the entire world in mere days. This is carried on into Ultraman Orb, where it appears as Maaga-Tanozoa, the King Demon Beast of Shadow.
  • Empera, Big Bad of Ultraman Mebius, sought to cover the entire universe in darkness, displaying the ability to fire beams of powerful shadow energy, as well as cover light sources like the Sun with solid darkness.

Manhwa

• Varete of Witch Hunter show just how powerful shadows can be, with her power to control shadows. She can block swords with the shadows up her sleeve and level entire towns using the shadows cast from a tree. She is almost impossible to hit with attacks, as she can use even the shadows between her hair and her head to attack and defend, with an almost limitless amount of mana to allow her to fight for extremely long times.

Music

• DJ the S' Disciple of Darkness is a compilation remix of Darkness-based themes from video games.

Roleplay

• Sebastian Smith from Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues is able to control his shadow thanks to the superpower bestowed upon him by his symbiote Fesxis. He can manipulate the shadow for various effects, such as grappling opponents, setting up a barrier, or creating weapons.

Tabletop Games

• Anima: Beyond Fantasy has the sphere of magic of Darkness, most of whose spells mirror the ones of the sphere of magic of Light allowing for stuff such as manipulating the former to make solid objects and of course shadow manipulation.
• Champions: The Shadow Queen, a villainess in the adventure The Great Supervillain Contest, has Darkness powers, including the ability to solidify, project, and merge with shadows.
• The Darklings from Changeling: The Lost have a buy-in with the Contracts of Darkness. They don't involve shadow manipulation, however, as much as they play on some of the stereotypical qualities of darkness (creepy, unnerving, etc.).
• Dungeons & Dragons has a number of monsters that create and/or use darkness and shadows as weapons, such as the shade, shadow dragon, and shadow mastiff. The shadow demon was more effective in darkness/shadow but couldn't create or manipulate it.
  • Less dignified is the Skiurid, basically an evil squirrel from the Plane of Shadow that hunts by creating a strength-draining field of darkness around living creatures and collecting the resulting nugget of congealed shadow-stuff like an acorn.
  • The Shadowdancer Prestige Class (also available in Neverwinter Nights) is a tricksy melee combatant who can use shadows to teleport around the combat area. Again, Dark Is Not Evil, though it does synchronize well with the Thief class.
  • One of the power sources for Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition is Shadow, which is the dark half of arcane magic. (This is mirrored with the Forgotten Realms own Shadow Weave in lore.) So far, Assassin is the only class released that makes use of this power source.
  • Now, however, any class can technically pull in power from it with certain feats; some classes may pick up shadow powers and/or have their own variant of the class that almost exclusively pulls from it; and there are a few races that have ties to shadow.
  • The 3.5 book Tome of Magic introduced the Shadowcasters, which were just like they sound, an entire class based on the use of shadow magic. In this case Dark Is Evil, but not to the point that it can't be used by decent people (good shadowcasters are described as exceedingly rare thanks to the ties to dark powers and the need to view the world through a skewed, alien perspective, but this is a fluff observation, not a mechanical limitation). They're different from Wizards mechanically in that their spells, called mysteries, follow strict paths of progression, and Shadowcasters' mastery of them will eventually allow them to use them as supernatural abilities rather than prepared spells. They can still be hard to differentiate from more mainstream spellcasters, but when in doubt, watch the caster's shadow - a Shadowcaster's won't match his or her gestures.
  • "Shadow" spells are a type of semi-real illusion. Some of these mimic other spells. The mimicry version are higher level and act less real. If someone successfully disbelieves they only suffer how real the illusion is, otherwise they suffer the full effects.
    • Min Maxer's ^note  or maybe munchkins, the extend spell part of the article doesn't take into account Dungeons & Dragons' stacking rules for cumulative multiplying effects [1] ^note  Click the button "Acquisition of Prestige" and then read the Shadowcrafter segment. have found a way to make it MORE real than 100%. Thus if these min-maxing methods are used, someone is being attacked by the spell, or something the spell created, and victim succeeds on his saving throw to disbelieve, he is in even more danger than the regular un-mimiced 100% regular version of the spell. Sadly the guide fails in taking the final step of the process, mentioning how to make the saving throw as easy as possible for your opponent and ways to force your opponent to choose to attempt the saving throw.
    • For other game-breaking wackiness you can mimic the spell miracle by compiling several loopholes into one glorious combo ^note Go on the mentioned the previously mentioned link, click on the button below "Feats Deserving of Special Mention", and read arcane disciple (luck) segment. Even though it says you need the arcane disciple (luck) feat for this, you could, in theory, say that any wizard/sorcerer with that feat would let you use the trick. But that is really stretching your luck.
  • In the Eberron D&D setting, the Mark of Shadow is a dragonmark which, among other things, grants its bearer the power to generate darkness (least Mark), call up semi-real illusory creatures (lesser Mark), or teleport between shadows (greater Mark). The two elvish Houses that are inheritors of the Mark do a lot of spy work, and at least one of them is very much into assassination also.
  • The Candle of Anti-Light, a fan-made custom magical item for Dungeons & Dragons, is a candle that "sheds magical darkness in a 10-foot radius."
• Games Workshop games:
  • Warhammer
    • The minor chaos god named Obscuras (see more here) has powers mainly based on shadow and can grant his followers the ability to see without requiring light.
    • Ulgu, the Lore of Shadows, is the Wind of Magic that allows the caster to manipulate shadows and darkness. The spells of Ulgu involve using shadows for concealment and illusion, as well as transportation.
  • Mordheim: The Shadow Weavers of the High Elf Shadow Warrior warbands use a unique form of shadow magic. The spells of this strange blend of magic allow the Shadow Weaver to manipulate threads of shadow so that they hide his allies, strike at the foe, or congeal into a solid shell to protect from enemy attacks.
  • Warhammer 40,000:
    • The background material mentions the Umbra, a strange race of aliens that look like completely black spheres. They have the power to manipulate any shadows in the vicinity, turning them into huge toothy tentacles that tear people to pieces. And they can do this to any shadow. Even the ones in your pupils.
    • The Dark Eldar have "darklight" weapons that use some kind of energy that resembles tangible darkness mined from other dimensions.
• Halt Evil Doer!: The Splotch is a Spider-Man Send-Up who wears a costume made of shadowstuff, generated by a Ring of Power, and uses tendrils of this instead of webbing, creating an effect not unlike the symbiote suit.
• In Nomine:
  • The Songs of Darkness create literal and metaphorical shadows. The Corporeal Song of Darkness shrouds an area around the performer in darkness; at their discretion, this may be merely shadowy, night-dark, or absolutely lightless. The Ethereal Song of Darkness instills targets with a deep fear of darkness and the unknown. The Celestial Song of Darkness blinds targets.
  • The Songs of Shadows manipulate existing areas of shadows instead of creating them. The Corporeal Song of Shadows calls shadows to the singer, hiding her as long as she moves in darkened areas. The Ethereal Song of Shadows animates and shapes shadows to the singer's will.
• Magic: The Gathering: This lies within Black's purview. It has the "negative emotion", "physical darkness", "night", and "evil" variants all represented. Red also gets in on the action with Vicious Shadows, Shadowstorm, and Shifting Shadow.
• Pathfinder, has many of the same forms of shadow and darkness-related magic found in D&D 3.5e, and adds some of its own, such as the shadow bloodline for sorcerers, the shadow patron for witches, and the chaokineticist. Most of these come with the Required Secondary Power of being able to see in the dark (or being able to see better in the dark if the character is of a race that can naturally see in the dark) so characters don't hinder themselves with darkness.
• Princess: The Hopeful: Unsurprisingly, the All-Consuming Darkness grants many powers connected to literal shadow and darkness, from animating your shadow as an independent entity to seeing by the absence of light to teleporting through shadows.
• The World of Darkness:
  • Vampire: The Masquerade: Clan Lasombra have the ability to control and create shadows as their signature power. When handled correctly, this makes them more disturbing than their initially more monstrous allies from Clan Tzimisce.
  • The Khaibit bloodline from the successor game Vampire: The Requiem gets a toned-down version of Obtenebration, complete with the power to interact with ghosts and spirits, teleport through shadows, and turn into a shadow yourself. Between this and their fluff (which paints them as worshippers of Set who work to keep back even darker monsters), they are quite popular in play.
  • Mage: The Awakening has this in the Death Arcana, and practitioners are neither worse nor better than any other mage. The issue over how shadows are merely the absence of light is justified by that explanation simply being part of the Lie, and that darkness is a metaphysical representation of death.

Toys

• BIONICLE: The Makuta are all about this, although characters belonging to other species sometimes have shadow-based powers as well. Also, if one taps into their inner dark side or has their inner light drained, they automatically gain shadow powers.

Webcomics

• Astral Aves: Mages become capable of casting a shadow into another dimension and fighting other beings' shadows/lights.
• The Burned: The main character can manipulate shadows, despite being a good guy. He primarily attacks with shadow needles, which are hard to detect when it's dark out.

• Champions of Far'aus: Leilusa, a Goddess of shadow and one of the main characters, can use shadow magic, although due to magical restrictions of some kind, she is usually stuck as a sort of magical Mission Control to the others, unable to help them with her shadow magic directly.
• Debugging Destiny has Osborne, whose Shadow-Walk special lets him summon darkness (and presumably see through it). Taken to Lovecraftian Superpower levels when it's implied the shadows are literally Osborne's physical form dissolving to blot out light.
• Homestuck: Rose Lalonde may not be evil, but she's definitely The Unfettered and uses pretty damn powerful dark magic, as well as having a black outfit and a black Battle Aura to boot.
• morphE: Curio is a Moros mage who specializes in casting shadows. His first spell during the opening chapter was coating the room with wisps of darkness.
• Muted: The Eloi can commute with spirits and manipulate darkness.
• The Order of the Stick: Shadow Dancer can teleport himself through shadows. The snag is that he's in a stick-figure comic where there are no shadows.
• Project 0: Ciro and Kareem can turn themselves into shadows as a stealth mode.
• Roommates: Both the Erlkönig and Jareth were shown to have power over the shadows. They can summon shadow beasts, catch things and people with tangible shadows, make a cool entrance by invoking Emerging from the Shadows, etc.. Also while the Erlkönig does almost all his magic through this element (even the not directly darkness-related things like teleporting), Jareth seems to avoid it when he can... except when his dark side takes over that is.
• The Sanity Circus: Scarecrows are strong at darkness magics. Posey can turn into a shadow to travel quickly and even Wall Crawl, and even when stabbed by Luther she still manages to engulf and (seemingly) kill him and walk away.
• Wapsi Square: Tsillah has some interesting shadow manipulation powers. While the full extent of her abilities is yet to be shown, she can construct clothing out of shadows.
• Artemis of White Dark Life has the title of "Endless Shadow Armed Demon Lady" for this explicit trope. Not only can she form limbs from her shadow to strike at enemies and drain their life energy, but she also uses her shadow as a storage room for anything or anyone she feels the need to take. Naturally her main weakness is bright flashes of light.
• Yokoka's Quest: Copycat is able to disappear into, appear from, and travel between shadows. He also caught a fleeing mouse form Kalliv with a shadowy hand.
• Zero Game: Elliot Baek, one of the antagonists, is an uncommon example. As the wielder of the SSS-rank ability "Shadow", he is able to control Exactly What It Says on the Tin in various ways, such as creating shadow shields and most commonly summoning towering entities made of shadow to do his bidding. The subversion comes from the fact that most wielders of such powers have them overlap with darkness in general and are as such Weakened by the Light and associated with the night, Elliot controls specifically shadows, which means that his ability ironically only works during the day. At night, when there is no light to cast a shadow, Elliot's ability is — in the words of his brother Alex — "essentially 'Nothing'." Later subverted as it turns out he carries items to create lights at night, bypassing this weakness.

Web Original

• Hazbin Hotel: Alastor the Radio Demon can transform into a shadow and summon living shadows, including a beast of shadowy tendrils.
• Dreamscape: Keela can utilize many different dark powers with her scythe.
  • Keedran has dark magic (such as soul-stealing) in addition to holy magic.
  • Aseir has darkness powers, like sending out waves of dark energy.
  • Like Keela, Kaila can use her pitchfork for various darkness attacks.
  • The Master of the Dammed, being the one who gave Keela and Kaila their powers, naturally has them himself. It only makes sense, considering where he resides. The Shadow Hands are the most notable ability of his.
  • Ghost Melinda can create slashes of darkness, as well as a massive blast of darkness.
• Mortasheen's Jabbersnatch uses a low-level version of this, being able to absorb all light in its vicinity to turn itself into a solid black Sillouette. It uses this power to be a highly effective boogeyman.
• Omega Universe: Blackfriars can teleport via a combination of angles and dark shadows.
• The Questport Chronicles: The Master of Darkness, who is Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
• Super Powereds: Shane DeSoto can summon blades of shadow. As a very kind-hearted person, he actually has difficulty using these, since these blades are more suited to killing his opponents than anything else; he's had to train hard in order to inflict non-fatal damage.
• Worm: Brian, the supervillain "Grue", has powers based around flooding an area with a thick "mist" of total darkness that results in sensory deprivation and messes with some other powers. Since many of his normal allies have ways around the ensuing sensory deprivation (Tattletale gets strong and accurate hunches about whatever she focuses on, Skitter can perceive the world through the insects she controls, etc.), he often acts in concert with his more directly offensive teammates to prevent enemies from properly retaliating.

Western Animation

• Ben 10: Michael Morningstar (as "Darkstar") can manipulate a black energy that absorbs energy (life force, mana, electricity, etc.), making him stronger and better looking. This comes with the downside of making him hungrier.
• DOTA: Dragon's Blood: Vahdrak and other Chaos dragons embody darkness. This actually correlates to the weak nuclear interaction. Indeed, the actual powers seem to mostly consist of red-hued nuclear explosions.
• Double Dragon (1993): Shadow Khan uses the Black Flame. His attacks are darkness-based and fueled by death, fear, hate, etc., and he can create or imbue minions with darkness as well.
• Jackie Chan Adventures: The Shadowkhan, demonic ninjas that travel through shadows but have no will of their own, only acting when summoned. In season 4, it's revealed that there are nine tribes of these shadowy warriors, with vastly different forms, each deadly in their own way and each serving a different Oni general. When the masks the generals are sealed in are all brought together, the generals can summon enough of the warriors to make the world dark forever and destroy all good magic. Luckily, the Chans stop it.
• Kaijudo: Rise of the Duel Masters: The Spell of Absolute of the creatures and members of the Darkness Civilization is Absolute Darkness, which summons a cloud or field of darkness across the vicinity. Their resident Ancient Artifact is the Cloak of Dark Illusion, which allows the wearer to control any creature from the Darkness Civilization, trap others inside a pocket dimension of inescapable darkness, and turn invisible. It can negatively influence the wearer if worn for too long and is the only artifact that is actually alive.
• Monkie Kid: Macaque can manipulate his and other people's shadows to mimic a wide assortment of powers, based off those of the Monkey King.
• ¡Mucha Lucha!: The Return of El Malefico, El Malefico has a lot of Darkness-based powers.
• My Little Pony:
  • My Little Pony 'n Friends: Erebus, the Big Bad the "Bright Lights" arc, uses shadows stolen from other creatures to power up his own power. When he uses his power he grows weaker until he gets more shadows. When he loses his shadows, he's reduced to an easily capturable puff of smoke.
  • 'My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic'':
    • King Sombra has a number of shadow-based abilities as part of his Dark Magic. Primarily, he can transform himself into a smoky cloud of shadows when traveling.
    • The Pony of Shadows is a giant mass of shadows in the form of a huge Winged Unicorn.
• Ninjago: Season 2's Big Bad, the Overlord, commands darkness in every way or shape, be it force beams, spreading shadows, or literal corruption. His powers are also an antithesis of Lloyd's energy abilities.
• OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes: Shadow manipulation is one of Enid's many skills she acquired in her ninja training.
• In She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, Black Magic is used to create and manipulate shadows and darkness. It most notably by:
  • Shadow Weaver, who uses to manipulate shadows, including her own, to form multiple shadows, Tendrils of Darkness to ensnare her enemies, and living Shadow spies.
  • Micah, who becomes fond of it after being chipped by Horde Prime. Like Shadow Weaver, he is seen using it to manipulate his own shadow to form Tendrils of Darkness to ensnare his enemies. He is also seen using it to Shadow Pin the Rebellion and to form a swirling mass of darkness.
• Static Shock:
  • In his introductory episode, Ebon refers to himself as a "Master of Shadows and Darkness". Not to mention his general appearance...
  • A minor character named Nightingale could create and control shadow, though the show insisted on calling it dark matter, for whatever reason.
• Teen Titans (2003): Raven's powers take the form of darkness and her inherent demonic nature is evil, but she manages to be one of the good guys anyway through sheer Heroic Willpower (just don't make her angry...).
  Raven: Remember me?
  Dr. Light: [pales] I'd like to go to jail now, please.
• Trollhunters: Users of the Skathe-Hrün, or "Shadow Staff", utilize shadow magic, primarily to control portals to the Shadow Realm.
  • Claire Nuñez originally needed the staff, but would go on to develop her own shadowmancy without any need for it. She exists firmly in the Dark Is Not Evil camp, though overuse of her power left her susceptible to corruption by Morgana for a while.
  • Morgana also counts, but she's definitely not a good person. Not anymore, that is, though that changes later on.

• Villainous (Cartoon Network): Penumbra is so all about the darkness that her hair is literally a translucent wisp of shade. She wants to block out the sun so she can go out into the world without burning to a crisp. As it is, she has to use a parasol when she goes anywhere during the day.
• Winx Club: Darcy is a Wicked Witch who uses darkness-based magic in addition to Mind Control and illusions.
• Xiaolin Chronicles: Shadow merge into the shadows.

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