RJ Writing Ink

Ho-ho-ho, Internet!! Tomorrow marks the start of the Christmas Season. For me. I don’t count the days after Thanksgiving until December 1st. It’s a quirk. It’s the 25 Days of Christmas!

But that’s not why I am here. I’m here for Holiday traditions. It’s a tradition of mine during this time of year where I watch at least one holiday special or movie a day to get me jazzed for Christmas. This year, I have a blog, so I thought “why not make this a theme?” So that’s my plan.

Check back every day leading up to Christmas to see what special I’ve watched. I’ll be giving you my honest thoughts and what I liked and hated about it, all leading up to Christmas Day. If you’ve got a good holiday special that I haven’t seen, let me know in the comments below! If I watch it, I’ll give you a shout out.

Until tomorrow, Happy Holidays, no matter what religion you follow!

Now, let’s watch a clown ride a christmas tree. Take it away, Joker

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One Piece Chapter 926 Review/Recap

This chapter of One Piece continues to set up the Ninja-Pirate-Mink-Samurai Alliance (which I will just call the Alliance for simplicity’s sake) plan to launch an all-out rebellion. 

There are a lot more samurai loyal to the Kozuki Clan left than I thought there would be, but that is an excellent thing. That just means there are a lot more people ready to put Orochi’s head on a spike where it belongs. The rest of the Straw Hats have split up to do their part:

What Is the Alliance Doing?

Nami is working with Shinobu to gather intel. For the moment, Shinobu seems to panic easily.

Sanji is doing what he does best and what he’d like to do best: cooking for people and flirting with girls. 

Despite Nami’s frustration, though, I think there’s a purpose behind Sanji’s actions. He could be trying to a.) gather intel by filling people’s bellies (full bellies can lead to loose lips), b.) win people’s support for the rebellion or c.) just flirting. Probably all three.

We then are given a glimpse of the prison where Kid and Luffy are being held. Backtracking for a minute, though, remember what I said in my recap of Act One of the Wano Arc? About how they would be running the place within a week?

Yeah, I was right. Though if you stayed with the story long enough, you’d know that Luffy wouldn’t break. Bonus, he and Kid seemed to be fully healed.

The guards can’t believe how much work the two captains are doing even with seastone handcuffs on them. Far from breaking, the two remain as defiant as ever, beating the crap out of the sub-warden. Their actions are winning over the other prisoners pretty quickly, which I think is Oda’s plan. Why? Think about it.

New Allies for the Alliance

Every single one of those prisoners will have an axe to grind against Orochi and Kaido for turning them into slaves. Until these two came along, they probably gave up any hope of living. But now they have two people willing to openly defy Kaido, and that will inspire them to do the same. When Luffy and Law get out of prison, and we KNOW they will, those prisoners are gonna follow them. Speaking of which, there’s a familiar face among them:

That’s Caribou, all right. He’s that pirate with the swamp-swamp fruit that tried to kidnap all those mermaids on Fishman Island. After a series of misadventures, he got captured by Kaido. And I know he’s gonna want to get payback!

In less than two weeks, the rebellion against Orochi and Kaido will begin. The Alliance is going to need all hands on deck to take down the Beast Pirates. Here’s who they got so far: The Straw Hat Pirates (minus Jinbei); the mink warriors of the Mokomo Dukedom; the Kozuki clan’s retainers; the Heart Pirates, and several ninja. Now add in the samurai they’re recruiting, and the prisoners, which include Kid and Caribou. That’s an army, and they’ll need one if they want to stand a chance. I have confidence in them, though.

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One Piece Chapter 925 Review/Recap

This chapter does not do a lot to advance the immediate plot: we don’t see Luffy at all, but he’s still in prison. The real focus of this chapter actually takes us abroad to the rest of the world, and there is a lot of big news. First, it’s now confirmed that Gekko Moriah is still alive, with Perona leaving Mihawk’s island to reunite with her captain. That could be a mistake, though. Moriah went to the headquarters of none other than the new Yonko, Blackbeard. I already Blackbeard was already incredibly powerful, but the Blackbeard pirates are getting stronger with each passing day.

The fact that Shiryu now has Absalom’s Clear-Clear fruit means that they most likely killed him. If everyone in Blackbeard’s inner circle has fruit powers, then I am honestly terrified.

I’ve known it for a long time now: Blackbeard is going to be Luffy’s last and most significant obstacle to becoming the King of the Pirates. The Blackbeard Pirates are essentially the antithesis to the Straw Hats, down to most of the crew’s skills. When the day comes that they finally clash, it might be one of the biggest fights in manga history.

Meanwhile, in Wano, the Straw Hats have split up to prepare for the rebellion in two weeks. Chopper and the minks are looking after Tama, Raizou’s gone to bust Luffy out of jail, and I don’t know where everyone else is. But we also get a glimpse of two more of Kaido’s officers, and if they are tough as they look, they could be a problem. Even Jack seems scared of them.

King also seems to be responsible for trying to break Luffy and Kid. He’sepgoing to be sorely disappointed.

Other News From Blackbeard

Oh, one last thing: Blackbeard mentions that the Revolutionary Army attacked the Reverie to get Kuma back. Hope they are all safe!

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I have wanted to do this since I started my blog, but I couldn’t find the time. I’ve wanted to do a review/recap of Hiro Mashima’s latest manga, Edens Zero. I think that it would be a good idea to go back and explain some of the main characters and what’s happened so far to prevent confusion. There’s only 22 chapters so far, so I don’t have to go far.

Edens Zero is the new manga that is being written by Hiro Mashima. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because he previously created two other successful manga, Rave Master and Fairy Tail

Fairy Tail will probably be the one you know. It’s got pretty popular in the West thanks to Funimation’s dub of it with some of their best voice actors. Rave Master did have an anime, but it sucked, so it got axed.

Anyway, back to Edens Zero. Now, the story takes place in deep space and has a lot of sci-fi elements mixed with fantasy. It starts off when a young girl named Rebecca and her best friend Happy visit this abandoned theme park planet called Granbell Park. Even though it’s supposed to be populated by robots, there is one human living there, a boy named Shiki. 

Our hero, Shiki

As a kid, Shiki was brought to Granbell by the robot’s leader, known as the Demon King (not as scary as he sounds) and raised as his adopted grandson. He’s been offline for years, but he left Shiki behind a powerful gift: his ether gear.

Ether gear is this type of power that lets a person use their bodies natural energy, or ether (AKA Ki, Chakra, Magic, Spiral Energy, and any other source of power from manga) to give them crazy abilities. In Shiki’s case, he can manipulate gravity. 

Since he died, Shiki’s been staying in Granbell and taking care of the other robots, but before he went offline, Grandpa Demon King told them to find a way to get Shiki off Granbell. Their batteries were slowly dying, and they would all go offline within a few years, leaving Shiki alone. 

When Rebecca and Happy show up, the Granbell robot’s see their chance: they pretend to act all evil to force Shiki to leave, and thanks to Rebecca and Happy, it works. What nice friends. So Shiki decides to stick with Rebecca and Happy and travel the universe to make new friends.

Things Get Weird

Rebecca and Happy take Shiki back to their home planet of Blue Garden and register him as an adventurer with their guild, Shooting Starlight. Unlike Fairy Tail, though, everyone in Shooting Starlight doesn’t really get along like a family. That’s where Shiki also sees Mother, this giant, cosmic entity that’s called the goddess of space. 

People have been trying to sail beyond their region of space, the Sakura Cosmos, to meet her, but no one has ever done it. Shiki gets the weird feeling that he’s met before, though, and decides to go on a quest to meet her. Rebecca and Happy come along because they think it would get them tons of views for their B-Cube Channel (the stories version of YouTube).

To help them, they decide to upgrade their ship and go to visit an old friend of Rebecca and Happy, Professor Weisz. When they get to his home on Planet Norma, something’s not right. The entire planet is covered in clouds, and they end up crashing their ship. On top of that, everything and everyone in the world seems like 50 years in the past. Because it is. They literally traveled to the Norma of 50 years ago.

See, I told you it was gonna get weird. Well, you better get used to it, as the story’s narrator explains that time has little meaning in this story. Meaning this is going to be a regular thing, probably. 

Time-Travel 101

Back in the past, they end meeting with the younger version of Weisz, who was a thief at that point in his life. He also just betrayed his former boss, Sibir, and stole a briefcase containing a tiny robot named E.M. Pino. Like the three, Pino is from the future but got stuck in the past. She has this ability to shut down machines using EMP’s, and Sibir is a jerk, he tortures her and forces her to work for him. He even erased her memories of her creator.  Total jerk.

Shiki and the others get super mad at Sibir when they hear of his cruelty, so they do what heroes do: kick his ass. They then leave Norma with Pino in tow, only to find that younger Weisz stowed away. He then uses his own ether gear (he has it, it’s called Machina Maker) to remodel their ship and let them escape.

Don’t worry about any paradoxes. As soon as they leave the planet, they’re back in the present (or future, in Weisz’s case). They get a video call from the older version of Weisz who explains that a space monster had eaten Norma’s timeline, leaving it permanently stuck 50 years in the past. This also makes younger Weisz an alternate timeline version of Professor Weisz, free to do what he wants. Boom, paradox solved.

The New Demon King

Soon as they escape Norma, though, the group gets caught in a tractor beam from this massive ship called the Skull Fairy. It’s run by a group of space pirates led by a woman named Elsie Crimson, who is the spitting image of Erza Scarlet from Fairy Tail. 

So, Shiki being Shiki decides that he’s gonna take over her ship and runs off. After battling it out with Elsie (who was seemingly a robot), they end up taking over the entire ship. Turns out, though, what they beat were just these weird parasites that had copied Elsie and her crew. They’re on another ship in their fleet.

But get this, the Skull Fairy used to belong to Shiki’s grandpa. The Demon King (real name was Ziggy) had helped Elsie out once and asked him to give his ship to Elsie before he died. It also isn’t called the Skull Fairy: its real name is Edens Zero. Even crazier, though, is that Ziggy was once known and feared as the ruler of the Sakura Cosmos! Crazy!

Elsie gives the Edens Zero to Shiki and then leaves as the space police arrive. Everyone gets settled in, and they find this female robot called Witch. She used to work for the Demon King, and proclaims that as the ship’s new captain and Ziggy’s grandson, Shiki is the new Demon King.

Current Arc of Edens Zero

The android, called Witch, reveals she was one of four robots than maintained and protected the Edens Zero, known as the Four Shining Stars. They brought the ship to its full power. Ziggy had tried to take the ship to meet Mother himself, but he couldn’t get past a nest of space dragons that blocks the path out of Sakura Cosmos. After that, the Four Shining Stars split up, Ziggy went back to Granbell, and Witch stayed on the ship in stasis.

To have a chance to make it to Mother, Witch explains that they need to find and recruit the other three Shining Stars, whose whereabouts are unknown. One of them, though, Sister, was reported to be headed to Blue Garden after they split up.

So everyone heads back to Blue Garden. Rebecca and Happy go off to meet the guildmaster of Shooting Starlight, Weisz ditches everyone to explore the future, and Shiki and Pino go explore the place. But it doesn’t last long.

Taken: In Space!

Shiki ends up fighting this cyborg ninja called Jinn, who has Wind Ether Gear, and they end up fighting to a draw. Jinn leaves after being ordered by his boss but tells Shiki to come to find him on the planet Guilst for a rematch.

Things get worse, though. Happy comes up to them half-dead and collapses, telling them that Rebecca just got kidnapped! The group of mercenaries that Jinn is a part of had captured her and a bunch of other B-Cubers across Blue Garden, and was gonna take them the planet Guilst, which is lawless central in the Sakura Cosmos. They plan to sell them all as slaves to this slimy piece of garbage called Illega, who likes to kidnap pretty girls, strip them, and turn them into naked statues and pieces of furniture. Why? Probably because it’s his fetish or something, I don’t know. I just want to punch him.

When Shiki hears about this, he goes absolutely ballistic. Liam Neeson’s Taken level ballistic. Yeah, that fat frog made the worst decision of his life pissing off the new Demon King. So they grab their stuff and chase after them all to Guilst. Weisz also comes back after hearing what happened, and he brought a new friend: this girl named Homura who has this Ether Gear that lets her make this cool sword thing. They head to Guilst where they learn that Rogue Out works for Sister, but even though she has the same model number, she’s not the Sister Witch remembers. 

Rebecca’s Escape

Meanwhile, Rebecca takes stock of her situation but manages to prove more than capable of taking care of herself. She rallies all the other B-Cubers to come up with an escape plan that actually works! She uses this bubble foam that dissolves inorganic matter to destroy the window inside their cell and gets out. But then she’s caught by Illega, who decides “screw it. It’ll be more fun to make her my toy.” Pretty sure this is an innuendo. But don’t worry: Shiki busts and gives Illega a well-deserved face kick

Caught Up to Speed on Edens Zero

And that’s where we left off. No telling what happens next, but I’m really looking forward to it. I like Mashima’s work for the plot. And so far, this story is turning out to be very interesting. 

That’s it so far. I was gonna explain more about some of the characters, but this blog has already run pretty long. I’ll upload part two in a couple of days before the next chapter is up. If you want to learn more, check out the Edens Zero Wiki. They’re always looking for more people to help them improve. Until next time, J out!

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