RJ Writing Ink

Edens Zero Chapter 277 Review/Recap

Have you ever seen a plan so insane that, despite everything telling you it shouldn’t work, you know it will? After last week’s chapter of Edens Zero ended with Shiki asking Mother to disappear, I freaked out at first. But during the week since then, I got to thinking, “Wait, what if Shiki’s plan was to do that?” As crazy as it was, it seemed like the only way to get out of this mess. As it turns out, I had it out. Shiki was going to do that! What is “that”, exactly? Read the recap and find out.

Recap

As Mother begins to fade away, space itself begins to distort and twist. Aboard the Edens Zero, everyone comes to the realization that either Shiki failed to save Mother, or he’s letting her die. Either way, no one is happy about this! 

The group aboard Rebecca’s fighter, though, acknowledges they had to do this. Otherwise, Witch, Valkyrie, and even Shiki would die again. Shiki says that he had to do this, though. He had to make sure everyone who died would survive first. Contacting everyone aboard the Edens Zero, Shiki summarizes the main details of what’s happening before explaining his plan: he will save Mother. 

Remembering what Mother said about a Chronophage reverting her back into Earth, Shiki decides to repeat the process once more. They’ll use Rebecca’s powers to summon a Chronophage and turn Mother back into Earth. Except this time, they’ll have the technology they need to save the planet. Once that’s done, Shiki will destroy the Chronophage to end the cycle. They also need Ziggy to keep Void busy so he doesn’t figure out what’s happening. Ziggy takes to the task with gusto.

Review

Bravo, Hiro Mashima! Bravo! You have no idea how hard I started laughing when I first read this chapter! A gambit worthy of the likes of Doctor Who!

I will be completely honest: I was very surprised that Mashima decided to go forward with this idea. When I thought about it, I thought that there was no way that he would do that. As it turns out, though, he would. And, yes, it is very much a deus ex machina, which I know some people will not be happy with. However, this isn’t the first time he’s done this in Edens Zero. Plus, I do think this plan is crazy enough to work. Doctor Who crazy!

For context, in the Doctor Who 50th anniverserary special, the Doctor traveled back in time to the day his homeworld would be destroyed by war. He then proceeded to team up thirteen of his past and future incarnations to move the planet into another dimension, saving it while fooling everyone. Shiki’s plan, while not as crazy, just reminded me of that moment. It’s the kind of insane audacity that you can’t help but be impressed by. 

As for how Shiki plans to destroy the Chronophage, I have no clue. However, I do hope that it’s entertaining to watch. I can’t wait to see how Shiki’s plan turns out!

I Give “Fading Mother” a 4/5

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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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Edens Zero Chapter 204 Review/Recap

Just when we thought that Edens Zero seemed to be losing its edge, Hiro Mashima pulls out this trump card: Ziggy is Shiki from 20,000 years in the future. However, that was only the tip of the iceberg. This week, we learn how Ziggy came to be like this, and more of why Xiaomei said time doesn’t hold much meaning in this story. There’s something much bigger to all of this: Point Zero.

Recap

Picking up where the last chapter left off, Ziggy explains how he’s Shiki from the future; rather, he’s a version from an alternate future, and it all ties back to the events at Planet Nero 66 three years ago. On that day, the Shiki we know chose to flee thanks to Xiao Mei’s interference. However, originally, Shiki chose to stay and tried to save everyone. His attempts to compress the bombs combined with Rebecca’s Cat Leapers and the bombs themselves to create a spacetime distortion. As a result, the two got sent 20,000 years into the future. Shiki survived. Rebecca…did not.

Shiki lost all his memories and started calling himself Ziggy as he was converted into a machine. Rebecca’s body was kept by the machines to study due to her Ether. Decades passed, and Ziggy forgot almost everything. Then one day, the machines summoned him for a purpose. 

In their future, Mother is dead along with Humanity, and the universe is running out of Ether. They have obsverved the multiverse to find the one where this outcome doesn’t happen, with that one being Point Zero. They wanted Ziggy to use Rebecca’s Ether to travel to the past to Point Zero and stop the extinction of Humanity. Thus, they plan to build a ship to carry him from Planet Eden to Point Zero: the Edens Zero.

Review

I think an explanation’s in order. Firstly, the reason there are now two Shikis is simple: time loop. Originally, Shiki was supposed to stay on Nero 66 where he and Rebecca would meet their horrific fates. After that, he becomes Ziggy, gets sent back into the past, and presumably does everything else before going nuts, all leading to the war on Nero 66. It would’ve been a stable time loop, explaining how two Shikis could exist simultaneously. Xiaomei changed all of that, though, making it an alternate future. 

When you read a lot of comic books, this sort of thing becomes par for the course. Well played, Mashima. And he proved that there was no way to stop the destruction of Nero 66 or prevent countless deaths. 

The fact that Rebecca’s Ether plays a big part in the plan to reach Point Zero also clues us into what the secret of Edens Zero is: it’s Rebecca. It has to be. All this time, she’s been powering the heroes ship, and they didn’t know.

This chapter did a good job of explaining a lot of things. However, the one thing it doesn’t explain is why Ziggy’s decided to just wipe out Mother anyway. That doesn’t make sense. I guess we’ll have to wait until the next chapter to learn the truth. For the first time in a while, though, I’m super excited to find out what happens.

I Give “Point Zero” a 3.5/5

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Welcome to the grand finale of my Phineas and Ferb week, everyone! After looking over when the episodes of the show were released, I realized that I wound up watching the majority of them. The last season was just strung over the course of three years. Having said that, there were a lot of episodes that I loved and/or found memorable, but I managed to narrow it down to the ten that I liked or remember the most. So sit back, relax, and enjoy this little trip down memory lane.

By the way, I will be excluding the TV movie and crossover episodes from this list.

Rollercoaster

Kicking off my list, we have the episode that started it all, Rollercoaster. In an effort to make the most of their summer, Phineas and Ferb decide to build the mother of all rollercoasters, and things just spiral from there. Meanwhile, Perry has to stop Doofenshmirtz from reversing the earth’s rotation using tin foil.

While future episodes would offer better storylines and jokes, what I like about this episode is the fact that it seems so simple in hindsight. The big finale song in the final episode even lampshades this by calling the experience “simple”. If something like a rollercoaster was simple to the boys, then that should have given viewers a hint of how crazy things would get.

Lawn Gnome Beach Party of Terror

One of the worst things about summer time is trying to beat the immense heat, but Phineas and Ferb are nothing if not creative. So when a heatwave strikes Danville, they make the most of it by building a beach in their backyard. A literal beach, I might add, that attracts everyone in the neighborhood. Meanwhile, Doofenshmirtz is enacting a plan to steal all the lawn gnomes in Danville.

I don’t know what I liked most about this episode: the fact that the boys made an actual beach in their backyard, complete with ocean and everything. Or maybe it’s Ferb’s catchy song that I would listen to over and over on my IPod. Or the fact that this episode that we get a glimpse into Doofenshmirtz’s hilariously abusive childhood. Seriously, that guy needs a hug.

Phineas and Ferb’s Quantum Boogaloo

While Phineas and Ferb had already traveled through time earlier in the summer, their second experience with it makes the first pale in comparison. When the boys travel to the future to get a tool they need, future Candace’s desire to bust her brothers gets reignited. Thus, she uses another time machine to go back and bust them on the day they made the rollercoaster. However, things snowball when this leads to a dystopian future where children are locked away and Doofenshmirtz rules the Tri-State Area. So Candace then has to go back and stop Candace from being…Candace?

Look, if this episode sounds confusing, then that’s the whole point. The creators did it to parody the absurdity of time travel stories, making it as confusing as possible. What makes it even more confusing is the fact that, in the credits, Isabella comes back in a time machine and gives the boys the tool they need. Thus, I don’t even know if any of the events happened!

Phineas and Ferb Get Busted

When Phineas and Ferb turn their mom’s car into a flying car of the future, Candace manages to finally expose them to her mom. As a result, the two get sent to a brainwashing military school that makes St. Olga’s look like child’s play. Once the euphoria of victory wears off though, Candace feels guilty and busts them out.

I would like to point out the fact that this episode may be one of the darkest moments ever seen on a kid’s cartoon. As a matter of fact, I think I repressed the memory of it until I was older. Thank god, though, that none of the events actually happened. The whole thing was just a dream inside of Perry’s dream. Not sorry for the spoilers

Meapless in Seattle

Yeah, this clip pretty much sums up why I loved this episode so much. The fact that the creators were willing to go this far for what was originally meant to be a joke shows real dedication. Respect!

Traffic Cam Caper

This may not be one of the more memorable episodes, but i found it hilarious. When Candace discovers a traffic cam’s recorded all of her brother’s projects, she think she finally has the evidence to bust them. Unfortunately for her, Perry also needs the disc on the camera since it could blow his cover. You can guess the rest.

Like I said, it’s not the most memorable episode, but there’s two reasons why I like. First, the second that Candace says she won’t let anyone take the disc, then Perry comes in using Norm the robot and steals it. The comedic timing is perfect! Second, this episode shows that when push comes to shove, Candace will choose the safety of her brothers over busting them. It’s sweet to know that Candace really does care about her brothers.

Lights, Candace, Action!

Another early gem from the show, in this episode Candace learns that a movie adaptation of her favorite play is being filmed in Danville. While she’s excited when she lands the lead role, she’s upset to learn that her brother’s are the directors of the film. Meanwhile, Doofernshmirtz takes up cheese-making and uses a new invention to super-age his cheese.

While this episode is not as big as future ones, I still think it’s significant. First, it marks the first time that Doofenshmirtz uses the “inator” moniker. Well, at least the first time we notice it. Second, that ending film “the Swamp Monster of Danville” is peak meme material and reminds me of the early days of YouTube.

Last Day of Summer

After eight years and hundreds of episodes, Phineas and Ferb’s summer vacation reaches its final day. And, as always, Candace fails to bust them for whatever it is that they’re doing. But while visiting Dr. Doofenshmirtz’s lab, she activates a device that rewinds the day back to the beginning. What should be a simple “Groundhog Day” story becomes even crazier, though, when the days start getting shorter. Oh, and things start to get sucked into another dimension and making people forget about their existence

As the final episode for an amazing show, “Last Day of Summer” had a lot to live up to, and I think that it managed to deliver. As I said in my post for Fandom two years ago, the finale serves as a reminder that, as fun as some things in life can be, we have to learn to let them go. Plus, the final song recapping everything the show did was the tribute fans deserved.

Flop Starz

You ever wonder why Phineas and Ferb had a song in almost every episode? It all comes back to the third episode of the series, “Flop Starz.” When the boys decide to see what life is like as stars, but not wanting to deal with the negative aspects, the boys write a one-hit wonder that becomes hugely successful, both in the show and in real-life.

I’m not joking about that. The executives at Disney liked the song “Gittchee Gitcchee Goo” so much that had Dan and Swampy right one for each episode. Thus, Phineas and Ferb and its successor, Milo Murphy’s Law, became musical cartoons. And I won’t lie, a lot of the show’s songs are very catchy.

Dude, We’re Getting the Band Back Together

There’s no particular order to these episodes and which one is my favorite. Until this one, however. This is my favorite, and a lot of fans will agree. When their dad forgets their mom’s anniversary, Phineas, Ferb, and Candace team up to give them their parents the ultimate anniversary gift. That gift being reuniting their favorite band to play a concert dedicated in their honor.

Crazy scheme by Phineas and Ferb? Check. A meaningful sub-plot involving Doofenshmirtz, his daughter Vanessa, and Perry the Platypus? Check. More than five amazing songs in the span of a single episode, one of which got nominated for an Emmy? Yeah, this is without a doubt my favorite episode of Phineas and Ferb.

Leave Me Your Thoughts.

Do you agree with my picks? What were your favorite episodes of Phineas and Ferb? Let me know in the comments below. Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to stan the Phineas and Ferb movie on Twitter. The review will be up by tomorrow afternoon.

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