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Edens Zero Chapter 44 Review/Recap

You know, I have seen Hiro Mashima do a lot of unexpected things before, but this may be one of the better surprises that he’s done. As we transition out of the Digitalis Arc, we make a surprise discovery about a character!

Recap

We open up with Xiaomei, the fourth-wall breaking narrator of the story, as she asks for our opinion on the Digitalis Arc. Personally, I thought it was sadistic, but I have seen worse on Game of Thrones. She reminds us of where the Edens Zero is headed, but then has to go, because she has guests.

Cut back to the ship and the clothes factory, Weisz is having Homura own up to the deal they made in the Guilst Arc. Which was… to have her dress up in a sexy outfit of her choosing.

Yeah, Weisz is Sanji 2.0, only not as cool and even less likely to get a girlfriend. Cue the fanservice that Mashima seems to love.

In no time at all, the clothes factory manages to give Homura the perfect Bunny Girl outfit. Pretty soon, the entire crew is joining in on the fun and cosplaying.

Even Witch and Sister decide to get in on the fun.

So cool. By the time they’re done messing around, they’re already at Mildian, where they go to meet the legendary fortune teller. Once they get inside her home, though, they’re in a familiar space setting, where a familiar figure appears to speak to them. Familiar to us, because the fortuneteller is Xiaomei!

Review

This chapter was short and brief, as chapters that transition between arcs often are. Once we saw who Xiamei really is, though, I was surprised! I did not see this coming. Of course, this does explain how she’s able to know everything has happened or will happen. She can look through time to see everything at her leisure. Just how she can break the fourth wall, though, is beyond me.

I would end this with some prediction, but to be honest, I have no idea where the story will be going from here. All I know is that things are going to get weird.

I Give “The Temple of Knowledge” a 3/5

Eden’s Zero Chapter 34 Review/Recap

Well, things just keep getting crazier and crazier in this chapter of Eden’s Zero. Hermit doesn’t trust humans, for reasons that’ll be revealed later, and now I’m not sure if we can trust Homura.

On top of that, remembering what Hermit said about humans triggers Shiki’s memories of the robots of Granbell and how they said they hate humans.

As the readers, we know that the robots were lying in order to get Shiki to leave Granbell before they went offline for good. Otherwise, he’d be stuck there forever. It was necessary, but I still feel bad about it. I hope Shiki learns the truth one day.

At the moment, though, the crew of Edens Zero seems to have much bigger problems. At that moment, an army of monsters appears outside the village!

And they’re being led by… a talking bird man? What the heck?

This Giron says that he’s working on behalf of that psychotic monster Jaimoff and he’s going to kill every last NPC in town and take it over. Then, Jamioff will kill the monsters so he can level up and gain experience.

Shiki, however, is having none of that.

For a few moments, it looked like Shiki was going to curb-stomp the monster army, but then Happy points out that some of the flying monsters are headed towards the hill where Hermit’s sulking. So Shiki runs off to save her, whether she wants it or not.

As for the rest of the group, they have to face the monster army by themselves. To make things worse, Homura ran off again. According to her conversation with Jesse, she has nothing against the crew of Edens Zero, but they’ve “done their part”.

Strange Development

I still cannot figure what Homura’s real motives. I know that she has some ulterior motive for helping out Shiki back on Guilst, and since she has Valkyrie’s sword, I can assume her connection to Valkyrie of Edens Zero is genuine.

Regardless, the crew of Edens Zero is at a disadvantage. Pino can’t use her EMP generation inside Digitalis or it will wreck everything, and Weisz can’t use his Machina Maker. Right now, Rebecca and Happy are the only line of defense.

Most people would say it seems hopeless, but this is a shonen manga. They’ll pull out some trump card somehow; that’s how shonen’s like to work. And I think I know what it could be. Maybe this fight will be what lets Rebecca master her dormant Ether Gear.

Back at Hermit’s hill, Hermit was about to just let herself be killed by the monsters, but Shiki jumps in and saves her at the last second. The chapter ends at that moment, but I hope that this will be the start of Hermit growing to trust Shiki. At the least, we’ll learn what made Hermit hate humans so much in the first place.

This chapter didn’t seem quite as interesting as last week’s, in my honest opinon. To be fair, though, the previous chapter had a lot of twists, so maybe I’m still trying to wrap my head around that. What happens next is your guess as much as it is mine, guys! I hope to see you guys next week for another episode of Edens Zero!

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Eden’s Zero Chapter 32 Review/Recap

The following chapter contains disturbing images of people being tortured inside the confines of a virtual world. Viewer discretion is advised.

…………. holy cow, Xiaomei wasn’t kidding about this story being sadistic.

Recap

Picking up the morning after the last chapter, Rebecca has learned a valuable lesson: never let the other crewmembers sleep in the same room.

In Mashima’s last series, Fairy Tail, there was a running gag involving the main heroine, Lucy. Her guildmates would continually show up at her apartment uninvited, something that drove her nuts. I got the same, comedic vibe from this scene. Remember, though: breaking into a friend’s house is a serious crime. Mashima’s only did it for Lucy’s hilarious reactions.

Now, *gulp*, picking up in the real world, Sister informs Witch that there’s an abnormal data stream running through the Edens Zero. They’ve been hacked.

It drives the point home that Hermit is needed to provide digital security for the ship.

Back in Digitalis, the gang continues admiring how lifelike the digital world is, to the point where it can replicate the five senses. If we have VRMMO’s in the future like SAO and Ready Player One speculate, I really hope they meet our expectations. But then Shiki had to wish for something to fight!

That’s when a giant monster shows up.

It’s not actually an evil monster, it’s an event boss for a quest in a nearby cave, but that doesn’t make it evil by default. It’s not there to fight, though: it ‘s running away from a psychotic player who just leveled the nearby town of Krysta. Yet despite breaking the rules, said player’s not banned.

Since the boss monster says that Hermit was spotted outside of Krysta, that’s where Shiki and the others are headed. Knowing Shiki, he’d head to Krysta anyway just to beat up this player.

Jamiroff the Monster

When they get there, though…. just see for yourself.

I’m lucky that this is taking place inside a digital world. If it was in reality, the blood and gore would be too much for a shonen manga.

As I predicted, the man we saw at the end of the last chapter is Jamiroff, a man who lives to kill other people. If what he did to the NPC’s wasn’t bad enough, look at what he did to a group of players.

Dude, that is messed up. This Jamiroff is Joker level sadistic: doing these horrible things just because he can. That, and he gives this flimsy excuse:

That’s the name of the man that was released when the Chronophage turned back the clock on Guilst. I had hoped that we would wait a little longer to get involved with this “Drakken Joe”, but it would seem that that’s not happening. As for Shiki, he’s not letting Jamiroff get away with his atrocities.

Elsewhere, we finally get a glimpse at Hermit’s digital form. Mirroring the way that the crew of the Eden’s Zero found her body, she’s just sitting on a hill, looking depressed and declaring that human beings have no souls.

Review

I don’t know what is going on, but if I had to guess, then I would say that sometime between Ziggy and the original crew of Eden’s Zero splitting up, she went through or saw some traumatic event that led her to abandon all faith in humanity. Having read a lot of history books in the past and seen plenty of stories, I can attest that mankind is capable of great good or great evil. Hermit seems to have seen too much of humanity’s dark side, though, leaving her like this.

I wonder, does her current state have anything to do with Jamioff and his actions? I know it can’t be a coincidence that he shows up right when Hermit turns out like this. Hopefully, the next chapter will shed some light on this subject for us, and sees Shiki kick Jamiroff’s butt

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Eden’s Zero Chapter 27 Review/Recap

Well, that wrapped up faster than I thought it would! It seems that the Guilst Arc of Eden’s Zero is, for the most part, over. There will be a follow-up chapter or two that wraps everything up as we transition to the next arc, but the climax has come and gone. It’s established in the last chapter that there were only ten minutes left before the Chronophage attacked Guilst. It’s every man for themselves on the planet.

Pretty accurate representation of an apocalypse.

Of course, Rebecca and Pino wait for Shiki and the others. I admire the fact that they don’t panic. But then the giant tree goes berserk because “the planet’s Ether is counterflowing”, as Pino puts it. Global destruction logic.

The trees block Eden’s Zero from getting any closer, but Weisz and Homura make short work of them. Weisz can make flamethrowers out of guns now, but the big thing I took away is Sister’s reaction to Homura’s sword. She was as shocked as Witch was, which means she’s familiar with Homura’s powers. That makes my theory of Homura being connected to one of the Fours Shining Stars even more plausible.

After the two powerhouses cut an opening, Shiki demonstrates his creativity. He uses his Gravity Ether Gear to propel them to the ship, and then they punch it as the Chronophage shows up.

We then witness what happens to a planet a Chronophage attacks.

The creature swallows the planet and then passes through it, taking some of its time with it. In this case, Guilst’s back 1200 years into the past, before anyone lived on it.

Review

Guilst must have been a fun place to visit in Weisz’s youth if his stories are anything to go by, but it had turned into a den of greed and vice. Seeing it return to this state is the best outcome.

So, the Eden’s Zero crew made it off. The B-Cubers and the girls Illega had imprisoned made it off the planet. That leaves Illega and the members of Rogue Out. , I couldn’t care less if Illega died from the Chronophage, but I’d like to see more of Rogue Out. Jinn, at least, seems like he could become a recurring enemy. As for the Fake Sister, she is either alive or dead.

This was a short chapter, but that’s a good thing. It wrapped up the Guilst Arc and without any extra hassle. In the next few chapters, I want to learn how Sister Ivry got captured and what that imposter wanted her for. As for Rebecca, something tells me she’s going to find herself with several thousand more subscribers soon.

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Edens Zero Chapter 26 Review/Recap

At last! I have been waiting patiently for two weeks to see the new chapter of Edens Zero and it did not fail to disappoint. Picking up where we left off the last chapter, it is confirmed that the one in the basement is the real Sister, Sister Ivry. She came to Guilst ten years ago for a mission, but she got captured. Then that imposter started using her powers for evil.

Fake Sister tries to say that she never meant to keep her powers and just “wanted to heal her friends”, and that she worships Sister. Yeah, not buying it, and neither is Sister Ivry.

Man, she is sassy. I like her!

So she decides to throw in with Shiki as the new Demon King, but first she decides to complete her mission. Which, apparently involves stripping off her Nun’s habit. Mashima got that from Gray, didn’t he?

Well, whatever she did, it seems to have freed all the girls that Illega trapped in stone. That beats me solution of finding that stone ray-gun and hitting the reverse switch.

Shiki and the crew leave Jinn and Rogue Out behind, and Jinn does not take being lied to well. I think he crushes her head. That is dark! I just wanted to leave her to the Chronophage.

Speaking of the Chronophage, there’s only ten minutes left before it arrives on Guilst, and most people are scrambling to get to ships and leave. Lucky for the B-Cubers and the freed girls, Illega’s tower has plenty of ships. They’re going to use them to escape, but Rebecca decides to stay behind and escape with Shiki and the other.

Clock is Ticking

Ten minutes is not a lot of time before the Chronophage arrives, but I know the crew of the Edens Zero will be fine. They have plot armor! I just want to see if any of the bad guys will get stuck behind. Especially Illega.

I won’t forgive Illega for what he did to those girls, or what he implied he was going to do to Rebecca.

What did you guys think of the chapter and of the real Sister Ivry? I personally like her. I don’t know why, but she seems to remind me of someone I have seen before. I’m not referring to Grey and his stripping habit, though (Character from Fairy Tail, powerful wizard but has bad habit of walking around shirtless or in his underwear).

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Eden’s Zero Chapter 24 Review/Recap

Picking up right where we left off, Witch confirms our worst fears about Chronophage: 

• There’s no way to stop it.
• There’s no way of telling how many years it will eat.
• Depending on how much time is set back, anyone who wasn’t on a planet at that point will cease to exist.

The people of Guilst only have 60 minutes to get off, or they’ll die or be trapped there forever.

Planetside, while Jinn does show off some new tricks, it looks as though Shiki has him outmatched. The fight is interrupted by the arrival of Sister and Ganoff, who tell him to kill Illega and take everything he owns. But Illega seems to have fled amidst the commotion.

So, Shiki decides to just fight all three of them at once, because, why not? He’s a Shonen protagonist.

Meanwhile…

Meanwhile, Rebecca got her clothes back, so that’s a start. She and the other B-Cubers are looking for a way out, but one of them goes missing (I wonder if that has anything to do with Illega’s flight?) Despite Pino saying it would be inefficient to do so, Rebecca goes back to look for the missing B-Cuber (Copa, they said her name was?) 

Back at Rogue Out’s Church, Weisz and Homura continue their stand-off, until they both hear a noise coming from the basement. They head down to find a woman trapped in what I assume are cables meant to drain one’s Ether. The chapter then ends with Homura stating that the woman is none other than one of the Four Shining Stars of the Demon King, Sister Ivry.

This is merely a theory I am working with right now, but it might have some plausibility. The Sister that we see trapped in the basement is, in fact, the real one. The one who is leading Rogue Out could be an impostor or a duplicate. This is just speculation, though. Only time will tell if anything comes of it. That is, if the Chronophage doesn’t kill them all.

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Eden’s Zero Chapter 23 Review/Recap

Now that I’ve finished recapping what’s happened so far, I can finally move forward with the rest of Eden’s Zero, Guilst Arc. This is Chapter 23: Million Bullets

Picking up right where the last chapter left off, Illega has been knocked completely unconscious by Shiki. Rebecca is overjoyed to see him and Pino again so soon, but Shiki doesn’t seem to pay attention to her. His focus is entirely on Illega and how he kidnapped his friend and hurt Happy.

Shiki just keeps beating that fat frog even though he’s already out cold. After seeing all the people he’s hurt, I was dying to see this happen. But it was still disturbing to see Shiki in a blood rage. I think Shiki may actually have a dark side to him, if this is any indication of it. If Pino didn’t use her EMP to shut off his ether gear, who knows how far he would have gone.

Regardless, Shiki and Rebecca are reunited. And then Shiki ruins it by just staring at her. I knew this was going to happen, but I just stopped caring.

 As luck would have it, the other B-Cubers were set free by Pino’s EMP, and they found some clothes to replace the ones that bubble stuff destroyed.

Something tells me that when they all get home, Rebecca’s subscriber count is going to go up a couple tens of thousands. Now they need to get off of Guilst

Rematch Awaits

At that moment, though, Jinn shows up again to finish what he and Shiki started. I knew that this was going to happen sooner or later, though, so I’m not surprised. I’m looking forward to their rematch. Meanwhile, the B-Cubers are going to find a ship to escape in.

Back at the Church, Homura has just finished wrecking Sister’s army, but then Weisz turns his gun on her because he still doesn’t trust her entirely. She says she wants to fight Shiki, but I have a feeling that she’s hiding something, just like Weisz. Then Weisz, just to prove that he can take Homura, shows off his Machina Maker, by showing the guns he installed in the floor.

Back on the Eden’s Zero, Happy finally wakes up to hear that Rebecca’s gonna be all right, but then all these alarms go off: 

So now, a giant time monster is headed to Guilst to eat the planet’s time. If that happens, everyone will be either a.) be stuck there forever or b.) cease to exist because they become unborn. I was hoping to see Shiki free all the girls that Illega had kidnapped over the years, but that might no longer be an option. The clock’s ticking for everyone to escape Guilst. I hope Illega gets stuck behind…

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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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