Hiro Mashima has written and illustrated another amazing Japanese science fiction manga series, which has been serialized in Kodansha’s Weekly Shōnen Magazine since June 2018. The story is about a boy named Shiki Granbell who goes on a voyage on a starship across different planets searching for a cosmic goddess known as “Mother.” (1)
Plot
Eden’s Zero Manga is a story about Shiki Granbell, a human Ether Gear user who lived among robots on the planet called Granbell, a deserted theme park world in the Sakura Cosmos. One day, two space-traveling B-Cubers – namely, Rebecca Bluegarden and her cyber cat companion Happy visit the deserted park and meet Shiki while recording videos for their online accounts.
The park’s robot forces them to leave so that Shiki can explore the cosmos along with his new friends. In the process, Shiki comes in possession of the interstellar warship Edens Zero, which was captained by his grandfather, the mechanical Demon King Ziggy.
Eden’s Zero Manga Review
This review’s main reason is that many people are confused, whether it’s another fairytail mashup or some random manga with FT characters. This series is not at all about “Fairy Tail in space,” plus there’s no friendship-power; this series is really AMAZING, that’s the reason it received an anime adaptation. It’s probably Mashima’s best work yet as so far.
Despite the MC talking about friendship a lot in Eden’s Zero Manga Volume 1-2, the series does NOT “run on friendship-power,” and they don’t even get any superpowers on a silver platter after making cool speeches about friendship. In fact, it’s the opposite of fairytail because the universe constantly shows the MC that his views are naive and keep proving him wrong. The manga is ongoing, and 11 volumes have been released till now in Japan.
The main problem of the Eden’s Zero Manga Series
It seems that Fairy Tail made people lose all their faith in Mashima; as FT is over, people no longer want to give Mashima a fair chance after reading the first few chapters of Eden’s Zero Manga and seeing how much the “friendship” theme comes up they decided “oh it’s just another FT in space, totally boring blah blah.”
Is Eden’s Zero Manga a Fairytail sequel?
NO, ABSOLUTELY NOT. To make it clear, the Eden’s Zero Manga series is similar to Rave than FT, and if people continued after Eden’s Zero volume 1, they would clearly see that. This series’s universe is very gloomy and GRIMDARK, and it DOES NOT support MC’s friendship ideals. In Edens Zero’s universe, anyone gets murdered in cold blood immediately after giving a great speech about friendship. In this manga, people who suffered and begged for help died horribly before the MC’s eyes. This series is actually DARKER and teaches us that Death is normal and constant in nature.
What makes it special?
Eden’s Zero characters put their best to make their ideas stick in a universe where the vast majority of people are selfish and ignorant, almost parallel to our world, a universe full to the brim with horrible things like slavery, racism, the use of humans, kids women alike as experimental subjects against their will, and human trafficking at the level of forced-prostitution (You can’t compare it with FT now right?)
Will the series go downhill?
Hiro Mashima Eden’s zero, in my opinion, already has a complete outline for Eden’s Zero, all the major arcs (and the story’s length) from the start while just making up details (battles, character interactions) along the way.
According to one of the fans’ discussion, He had stated that in FT, he only had the first few arcs outlined and a few plot points planned. Still, since the series got way more popular than expected, he extended it LONGER than he planned, and so he ended up making random bizarre plots with the theme of friendship, at which point the series went downhill.
But from the looks of the manga, I can say that if it’s already well planned and would go according to the author, maybe it’ll be one of the popular series!
Mashima has stated online and in interviews that he’s writing EZ, which will be opposite to FT. This also means that the series is already planned 70%, and we’ve only read 30-40% of the series.
This shows that Mashima learned from his previous mistakes with FT and plans to not repeat them by making sure to plan/outline all the arcs of Eden’s Zero Manga from the beginning as he did with Rave. I have complete faith in Mashima that this series will become popular if the fans stop taking it as another sequel for FT.
Official News on Edens’s Zero
Edens Zero Anime’s Teaser Video Reveals there will be More Staff working on the project. (News released on 12 Jan 2021)
Yoshihisa Hirano announces the production of anime of Hiro Mashima manga premiering on April 10
Kodansha streamed a new promotional video for the anime adaption of Hiro Mashima’s Edens Zero manga on Wednesday. The teaser video confirms that the anime will make it to the screens on 10 April 2021.
The new staff members include:
- Audio Director: Shōji Hata
- Audio Production: Magic Capsule
- Music: Yoshihisa Hirano
- Music Production: NTV Music
The anime’s cast includes:
- Takuma Terashima as Shiki Granbell
- Mikako Komatsu as Rebecca Bluegarden
- Rie Kugimiya as Happy
The anime will make it to the screens of NTV and other channels on Saturday, April 10 at 24:55 (effectively, April 11 at 12:55 a.m.).
Countdown Begins!
Shinji Ishihara (previous works: Fairy Tail, Log Horizon) is the chief director of the anime at J.C. Staff, and Yūshi Suzuki (She has been episode director for Fairy Tail season 3) is directing the anime. Mitsutaka Hirota (Zoids Wild, Rent-A-Girlfriend) will be supervising scripts and write-ups, and Yurika Sako (key animation for Food Wars! The Third Plate) is the designer for the animated characters.
If you’re an enthusiastic manga reader and crave some more news on the latest manga releases, don’t forget to check out Jujutsu Kaisen’s Latest Manga News.
Konami, inspired by Eden’s Zero Manga Series, develops 3D action RPG console games and another RPG game for mobile devices. Konami had already launched the gaming trailer, which you can check out below.
Sources: Weekly Shōnen Magazine’s YouTube channel, Comic Natalie
Where to Read?
Overall Review
As always, Mashima’s art is beautiful in both the static scenes and in fight-scenes, not to forget character-designs. Eden’s Zero Manga’s plot is very intriguing as it presents itself as a nice mix of over-arching plot-lines and arc-specific stories, and the strong elements of mystery are just like seasoning over a nice plate of bacon. I got emotionally attached to the series, as many characters have very tragic and emotionally compelling backstories that have made me switch on the depression mode.
Eden’s Zero Manga character interactions are wonderful, and the characters themselves are absolutely inspiring and empowering people. The series handles the themes of civil rights, slavery, objectification, trauma at the level of C-PTSD, and much more in a very intricate manner.
Finally, the mechanics of battle and the power-sets (Ether Gears) are really mind-blowing, and the battles themselves are just a dessert after a good meal.
Overall I’ll rate it with 8/10 stars.
I’m hoping to watch Eden’s Zero anime adaptation as well. Let me know if this review helped you through the comment section below ^~^
You can also check out the trailer of Eden’s Zero below.
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