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Eden’s Zero Chapter 35 Review/Recap

My readers, I will be blunt about this: I don’t know what’s going on right now. By all intents, it looks like Homura’s turned on the crew of the Edens Zero, and we still don’t know why. At the same time, I have seen Mashima do this kind of thing before, so until I see actual proof, I won’t believe this to be an actual betrayal. For now, though, the recap

Recap

As the Edens Zero crew is fighting the monsters, Homura goes to the forest to speak with Jamiroff. He’s waiting for his army to kill the townsfolk and bring him the players so he can kill them, and begs to let her work with him.

Meanwhile, Shiki takes the unwilling Hermit back to the town, using is Gravity Ether Gear to fend off the monsters. Hermit’s convinced that Shiki somehow stole Ziggy’s powers, because she doesn’t trust humans. She even goes so far as to say they don’t have a soul. Shiki says that while some may not (i.e. heartless monsters), since Hermit was Ziggy’s friend, she’s his friend.

As for everyone else, they’re holding their own. Rebecca’s doing her Elie-gunslinger thing, but Pino and Weisz are at a major disadvantage since they can’t use their powers. There’s just too many monsters for them to deal with, though, and they start to move on the NPC’s.

That’s when a monster boss, the Shinobi Troll, that the crew met earlier jumps in to protect the people, saying its his job as an NPC. Shiki then returns, and then trounces the mosnters.

Jamiroff finally shows up on the battlefield, and orders his army to slaughter everyone. The Shinobi Troll (nicknamed Shino-Chan) uses himself as a living shield, but is filled full of arrows and falls unconcsious. Or dead. I can’t tell really.

Just then, another arrow’s aimed at the girl that Shino-Chan was protecting, and Shiki takes the shot into this arm. To everyone’s shock, it’s revealed that the person who shot him was Homura herself, who coldly declares that they aren’t friends.

Review

Okay, what the heck is going on here? What is Homura really after by betraying everyone? I know that it has something to do with wanting to meet Drakken Joe, but what could her motivation be?

We know that Homura has Valkyrie’s Ether Sword, so she either wasn’t lying about being her student, or she stole it from Valkyrie somehow. Either way, we still know too little about who Homura is.

As for her betrayal, the reason I’m not convinced it’s genuine is because Mashima pulled this stunt before in Fairy Tail. In one of the arcs near the end of its run, it looked one of the main heroes, Gray Fullbuster, had gone over to the dark side by joining a Dark Guild and severing his ties with his friends. Turns out, he was working undercover in order to stop said guild’s plot to slaugther an entire city.

Working on that logic, and considering how Mashima seems to be reusing a lot of his old material, he could be doing the same thing with Homura. Or it could be genuine. But if she ends up joining them for real because Shiki gives her some “power of friendship” speech, I will be so mad. It’s an overused trope!

What I did like about this chapter is Hermit’s remark about humans not having any souls. It’s both a reversal on the statement that robots don’t have souls or hearts, and a very real represenation of how some people can act. I’m not joking, humanity has done some pretty nasty stuff throughout recorded history. And there are jerks that act like they have no soul. But there are also plenty of people who care about each other and are good and kind.

I don’t know what Hermit went through, but I am very eager to learn about it. That could take a while, though! Something tells me that next chapter is about explaining Homura’s betrayal.

I Give This Chapter 3/5

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Eden’s Zero Chapter 31 Review/Recap

Before we get back to the story, there’s someone I may or may not have mentioned in my recap: Xiaomei

Our Narrator

Introduced back when Rebecca, Happy, and Shiki went to Norma, and she explained that time had little meaning in this story. She also has a fourth-wall breaking awareness of what is going on, hence why she’s the narrator. Xiaomei hasn’t shown up since that time, though, so I almost forgot about her.

That makes me dread what may happen or where Mashima is taking this story. But let’s get back to the action!

The Eden’s Zero crew’s dive into Digitalis continues right where we left off: with the appearance of that horse thing from Rave.

In-Game Avatars

One by one, the crew meets up after choosing their avatars. To be honest, I couldn’t help but laugh a little. Homura chose to play as a guy.

In online games, it’s not unheard of for people to create characters opposite of their gender. MMO’s are a fun way of reinventing oneself, so they may want to try playing an idealized version of themselves, opposite gender included. So I wasn’t too surprised to see Homura’s choice.

Next, we see Weisz’s avatar, and it becomes clear that he’s one of those players.

Yeah, Weisz is playing as a girl just so he can oogle himself. Sad to say, but people also do this stuff, too. They either want to oogle at themselves or like making people that they’re the opposite gender and mess with people.

I’m getting why Weisz has so much trouble with girls.

At least Pino’s avatar looks like her.

When I saw Shiki’s chosen avatar, I found it hard not to laugh.

They get Shiki to settle on how he looked when he first met Rebecca and Happy, and they head out.

RPG World

They arrive at this town populated by the former NPC’s. Since they’re all sentient now, though, they are capable of properly expressing their thoughts and feelings. They are no longer restricted to saying the same dialogue over and over again.

That is a nightmare! The gang then splits up to look for Hermit, but all they can find is that she was spotted heading north. They decide to stay logged in overnight, but that might be a big mistake. Why? Because of this guy, that’s why.

His name’s Jamilov, and I think it’s safe to say that he’s going to be one of the sadistic things that Xiaomei warned us about. He’s also part of a group of MMO players that a lot of people don’t like: the kind who try to break the game and do whatever they want, regardless of the rules. Whoever he is, I can tell he is going to be bad news. I’m looking forward to seeing where this story goes, though!

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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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