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Edens Zero Chapter 275 Review/Recap

So, at this point, we know how Mother came to be and what Shiki has to do with her. He was the only human who managed to survive the destruction of Earth thanks to Ziggy. However, what didn’t make sense was how Ziggy wound up going back far enough to see Mother’s birth in the first place. As it turns out, he didn’t. That’s due to even more timey-wimey nonsense going on. It’s only thanks to me be so well-versed in time travel stories that I’m able to make sense of all this! 

Buckle up. This is going to be confusing.

Recap

Ziggy is at a loss for words; how could Mother, a being said to have existed for eons, have been born in front of him. As Mother explains, that is due to outside interference. A Chronophage had eaten the last 20,000 years of her time, returning her to when she was simply Earth. Everyone on it was supposed to have died, but thanks to Ziggy, Shiki lived.

Intrigued by this, Mother makes Ziggy an offer to entrust the future of the cosmoses to Shiki. When he returns to her, he can choose to revive the Earth and let Mother become the source of all Ether in the Cosmoses. Or, he can choose to enjoy the universe he has at the cost of her Ether running dry and disappearing forever. Before Ziggy can argue about anything, Mother teleports him away.

Now tasked with raising Shiki, Ziggy has no clue what to do. So, to help him, he uses the data he recorded from the room to make Android copies to help raise him. Dubbing them the four Shining Stars, he implants false memories of a journey to find Mother that was cut short due to finding Shiki.

Watching the memories, Rebecca and Happy are shocked that Ziggy lied to the Shining Stars. However, Pino explains through the data Ziggy left her his reasoning. They needed the memories to stabilize them, or else they wouldn’t work. None of that matters to Shiki, though. All he cares about is whether or not Witch is his mom.

Review

It took me a little bit to figure out what was going on, but I think I have an idea about what happened. So, let me explain.

Making Sense of it All

All of the events that led to Mother’s birth happened 20,000 years before the start of the series. That led to the birth of the four Cosmoses and the life that populated it. But her birth also led to all life on Earth dying. That’s how it originally went.

However, about twenty years ago, a Chronophage reverted her back to her original state as a planet, restarting the whole thing. Except this time, Ziggy showed up after going on his quest to find another, and his meddling led to Shiki surviving. From there, Ziggy would take Shiki back to Granbell and raise him, and events proceed as they do in the story. 

So, to clarify, it’s not that Shiki is thousands of years old or was sent into the future as a baby. He’s like Weiss, a person from a planet hit by a Chronophage. And if any of this is still confusing, don’t forget, time travel has been a big part of Edens Zero since the beginning. It’s why all this timey-wimey stuff works without changing too much.

Well, it does change a few things. I was not expecting the reveal that the Shining Stars’ memories were made up. Mashima fooled so many of us in that regard. In addition, the fact that Witch is, technically, his mom makes her death in the last universe all the more heartbreaking in hindsight. And I say technically because Shiki’s birth mother, the human Regret, is already dead.

This Just Changed the Endgame

While some people might be upset at the fact that the men and women in the flashbacks weren’t the last lives of the Shining and Dark Stars, I don’t see it as a bad thing. While they are Android clones of the group of eight, that doesn’t make them any less than their own people. In hindsight, it also makes the fighting between the Shining and Dark Stars a little less heartbreaking. They’re not friends turned enemies because they were never friends to begin with.

It all sounds confusing, I know. I’m barely able to put everything together. The important thing is that everything that we’ve learned about in the story still matters. It all still happens.

Now that Shiki knows the full story, though, he’s going to have to either make the choice or find another option. Saving Mother will not just save the universe, but bring back the Earth and everyone on it who died (hopefully.) However, it would also mean that many of his friends would eventually die. What a terrible choice to make, and I don’t know what the right one to make might be. Here’s hoping Shiki can find a way out of this. Also, we still need to know what the heck led to the Edens One go nuts.

Good job at misleading us, though, Mashima. You had the wool pulled over my eyes! 

I Give “The Four Shining Stars are Born” a 4/5

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