RJ Writing Ink

When we last left off in Edens Zero, the gang met with the all-knowing, fourth wall breaking fortuneteller Xiaomei to find Homura’s mentor, Valkyrie. Xiaomei’s happy to tell them where she is, but first they have to fight through her champions.

She has a fighting fetish. Shiki makes short work of the first guy, but now the rest of the crew has to step up.

Recap

After Xiaomei gets down from her high, she tells the heroes that they have three more people to fight. To make things fair, she’s making each of them fight, one on one, anything goes aside from killing.

First up is everybody’s favorite blonde B-Cuber, Rebecca, and her best friend Happy! Against the Space SBA champ and B-Cuber Flanker Yotch!

It’s a gunslinging showdown as Yotch uses special bullets that spew… clothes eating slime?

Big mistake on his part, because Rebecca beats the snot out of him.

Next up is Weisz against Highway Yana, who reminds me a little of Dyspo from Dragon Ball Super. Weisz uses Pino’s EMP to shut down his speed, then curb stomps the poor guy. Another one bites the dust.

Yet Xiaomei gets even more excited, because she knows what’s coming in the final round. For the Edens Zero, Homura steps up to fight. To her shock, though, she sees her opponent is a duplicate of her teacher, Valkyrie of the Demon King’s Starshines!

Review

I would have preferred it if Mashima had decided to draw out this tournament thing over a few chapters so that we could see the heroes really cut loose. It feels like he’s rushing things at this point. That said, I found Rebecca and Weisz’s fights, while short, to be a good way to show off their skills. We also learned to never make Rebecca mad, because she will beat you senseless.

The one thing I am curious about is how Xiaomei created a replica of Valkyrie in the first place. I know that she’s up to something, but I can’t figure out what.

This chapter was short, but it seems the point was to get the fodder out of the way for the big guns. Next chapter will see Homura stack up against a copy of her mentor, and that makes for some good character development and backstory. I’m look forward to it!

I Give “Valkyrie’s Footsteps” a 2.5/5. Could have been better, could have been worse.

Also, we need to address how much fanservice Mashima’s putting into his work now. The slime thing was crossing into ecchi territory.

Edens Zero Chapter 45 Review/Recap

In the last chapter of Edens Zero, the crew of the Edens Zero traveled to the the planet of Milidan to seek out a fortune teller to learn the whereabouts of Valkyrie. Then we discovered that the fortune teller was actually Xiaomei. This is gonna get weird.

Recap

Xiaomei confirms that she is the fortune teller that they are seeking, and that (since she’s the narrator), she knows who they all are. On a side note, she reveals why her planet is considered frozen in time. It’s actually the other way around: the moment they set foot on her planet, time everywhere else stopped. They can spend years there, but when they leave, they’ll go right back to when they came.

It’s like if the Hyberbolic Time Chamber but powered by DIO’s Stand, The World. Don’t think too hard about it.

At any rate, she’s happy to tell the gang what they need to know, but she doesn’t want money or information. What she wants is… entertainment.

She wants them to fight against her champions in gladitorial combat. Why? Because she can’t see the exact future, just the potential futures, like that which can occur because of battles. And as it turns out, she has a fetish for battles. A big fetish.

Shiki’s the first to step up to fight, his opponent being an armored Zorg Warrior named Metal Bogey.

It lasted less than a second. And Xiaomei was very turned on by that. But that was just round one! The rest has yet to come!

Recap

Well, none of this turned out the way I thought it would. I could have guessed that this was going to lead to a tournament style event, as that’s common in Shonen manga. What I didn’t expect was the truth about Mildian. Or that the normally stoic and calm Xiaomei would end up looking like this!

After she’s finished drooling over Shiki (or the fight), she thought to herself about his relation to Mother. Shiki did say that he felt like he met Mother before, and Mother seems to know who he is. There’s so much about Shiki’s past that we know nothing of, and finding the truth is the big mystery behind the manga. Whatever Xiaomei seems to know, though, she’s not saying.

So, I can’t help but wonder what’s gonna happen next chapter. Odds are, each of the crew is going to get their turn in the spotlight and fight someone. I mean, that’s what normally happens.

This chapter got weird fast, but I think I liked that about it. I wasn’t expecting the change in character from Xiaomei, but this is kind of what Hiro Mashima does in his stories. Even the most stoic character has their moment of silliness.

I Give “Mildian Battle Colosseum” A 4/5