I expected Mashima to find a way out of the dark situation he wrote himself into with chapter 84. I could see Weisz going on without an arm for the rest of the series. I could see the team getting back Happy and Pino. I could imagine Shiki, Homura, and Rebecca finding a way to break free and help all their friends. But once Drakken Joe shot Shiki, I knew that something had to change.
But I could never imagine Cat Leaper’s awakening in chapter 84 being what it was. Of all the possibilites Mashima could have gone with to bring things back to normal, this wasn’t one I could have expected. And yet, the more I think about it, there wasn’t any decision he could have made that would have sense. In honor of Edens Zero Week, I’d like to talk about what makes the activation of Cat Leaper such an amazing moment, along with its future implications for the series.
Strap in, because this is gonna be a long one.
What happened when Cat Leaper awakened?
To start, let’s talk about the moment itself. To be clear, I am speaking of the proper awakening of Cat Leaper in chapter 84. Even as the ability is revealed in chapter 64, I’ll be refering to that moment as the unlocking of Leaper for the purposes of this post.
A big reason for this is that Drakken Joe makes a distinction between Rebecca’s ability to use Cat Leaper to move very fast and the actual power that he’s trying to steal. That power
If I have anything to criticise this moment for, it’s that it’s taking place in a shower. On the one hand, it’s the only place that Drakken Joe wouldn’t reasonably put cameras in, which is important to this moment happening at all. Still, I don’t like that this important moment is happening while Rebecca’s naked. It’s worse considering you have moments where we go from Rebecca think about Drakken Joe to her being in the shower, as opposed to a consistent view from that flashback perspective.
That being said, the awakening of Cat Leaper is dependent on not taking advice. Upon seeing Rebecca still brooding about what happened to her friends, he flat out says, “forget the past”. In his mind, there’s no point in dwelling on the past. After all, it’s not as if there’s anything she can do to change it. It’s irony like that which is why I love Mashima’s writing.
With the actual moment, it happens because she wishes that she could change the past. Specifically, she wishes that Shiki wasn’t dead. And that was the trigger for Cat Leaper’s awakening. She wanted to return herself to a place where Shiki could have been saved and was brought to one of the easiest places for that to happen: right before going to Belial Goer.
The crazy thing about this is that there was a subtle hint towards what’s about to happen within the chapter title. You’ll notice that the title of this chapter is “A World Without Shiki”. If you were to read this without knowing about this moment, it would mean that the world has to move on without Shiki. Knowing what happens, the title is describing what is at stake for the rest of the arc: a world without Shiki.
Speaking of which...
What did the awakening of Cat Leaper do for the Belial Goer arc?
In the most literal sense, all it did was reset the events of the arc by about 15 chapters, from the middle of chapter 69 to the last few pages of chapter 84. This resulted in much of the darker events of the arc to be negated near entirely.
Near, being the operative word. Yes, Weisz doesn’t lose his arm to Fie. Yes, Shiki doesn’t die. And yes, the crew is prevented from being held as prisoners by Drakken Joe. However, that doesn’t mean that events are the same as before.
Notice that the amount of time Rebecca has been out has changed. In chapter 69, Sister Irvy says that Rebecca was out for about a full hour. In chapter 85, she says it’s only been half an hour. With the thirty minutes saved, she’s able to prevent the EZ Crew from going to Belial Goer and setting off the events that set up the future Rebecca came from.
Not to mention, the EZ Crew doesn’t find Labilla in the same state she was. In fact, they didn’t find Labilla to begin with. In this universe, Amira infiltrated Belial Goer, pretended to be Labilla, and hid the real one in a dance hall. Rather than finding Labilla as the victim of Daichi’s sadistic tendencies, she was accidentally spotted by Homura.
In one sense, this power can be seen as Mashima finding yet another way to keep his characters from dying. As someone who has made that complaint multiple times about his writing, I understand where that comes from. This is something that has shown up in both of Mashima’s other major works.
However, we were well prepared for this aspect of Cat Leaper’s abilities by Rebecca’s fight with Nino in the previous arc. I questioned why this wasn’t a bigger aspect of Rebecca’s reaction to activating it originally. This doesn’t strike me as Mashima breaking the rules of reason to keep a character in the narrative. This feels like a deliberate choice on Mashima’s part.
When Rebecca unlocked Leaper in chapter 64, Xiaomei hints at her understanding of the Ether Gear being limited. She outright says, “This power may save the universe one day... Yes... it is the power of possibility.” That doesn’t sound like something you’d expect to be said about a simple speed boosting power. And we already knew that Leaper was more than just a speed boosting power.
Even before then, we were introduced to Xiaomei in chapter 5, who made an important declaration. “In this story, time doesn’t really mean much.” By the end of that arc, this could have been assumed to mean that, with the existence of chronophages, time can be more relative from planet to planet. When we learned that time could be reversed with Leaper, characters were less bound to time than they would have been otherwise.
Not to mention, Rebecca doesn’t make it through the jump unscathed. While she didn’t experience and physical torture, she had to live through the events of the future. She has the mental scars of the event and has been shown to be apprehensive about doing things that could cause harm to Shiki or Weisz.
In erasing the previous events of the arc, there was another important thing that happened. The nature of the arc changed. That’s not me being hyperbolic.
Up to chapter 82, the main goal for the arc was to fight Drakken Joe. The expectation of the arc would be to fight the various members of the EZ Crew to fight Drakken Joe’s goons, including the Element 4. Ultimately, this would culminate in a final battle between Shiki and Drakken Joe. That’s not a bad set up for an arc.
But, after the awakening of Cat Leaper, the arc still has the EZ Crew fight with Drakken Joe’s people, and Shiki still fights the Element 4. However, the change in events results in a shift of the arc’s focus. The motivation for these actions became trying to reach out to people who may become friends by the end of the arc in Kris and Labilla. Not to mention, there are reconciliations with Sibir and Amira, opposing forces from previous arcs, that were made possible by the change in events.
What does Cat Leaper’s awakening mean for the rest of the series?
I can’t say that Xiaomei’s assertion that time doesn’t reallly mean much should be taken as literal as it may seem. After all, the reason that the revised plan works at all is becasue she woke up at a different time than before. The extra thirty minutes was the difference between life and death.
However, knowing how Cat Leaper works really does change how we see the rest of the series. Our understanding of the series has shifted from a normal set of events happening on a linear timeline to a set of various timelines beginning and ending at various points where Rebecca come to and from.
Knowing that Rebecca has been using Cat Leaper to avoid other events has put a lot of moments into perspective. Of course, it explains the flash forward at the end of chapter 4 and the nightmare that Rebecca had in chapter 69.
However, it does leave fans with an interesting question: is it possible that Cat Leaper is responsible for the change in other events throughout the series? Does Rebecca die because of the kidnapping to Guilst by Illega in another timeline? Does her initial meeting with Shiki have a different result in a different timeline and is that meeting the result of Cat Leaper in the first place? Is the fact that Rebecca and Labilla aren’t friends anymore the result of Cat Leaper? These are questioned opened up to fans with the awakening of Cat Leaper.
As for how the awakening of Cat Leaper specifically affects Rebecca’s character from this moment on, that will stand to be determined. Her ability to become an Ether Master was mentioned in that previous timeline. However, I’m more interested in the after effects of the mental trauma she’s experienced through the jump in timelines. How that plays out will be interesting to see take place.
For example, if (not necessarily when) Mashima decides to push Shiki and Rebecca’s relationship towards a romance, we’re going to look back at what happened in this arc. This may be the start of Rebecca realizing that she wants Shiki to be more than just her friend. Presumably, Shiki would have something awaken similar feelings in him.
I’m not currently hyped over any EZ ship, but I love what we’ve been getting regarding Shiki and Rebecca’s relationship. The first chapters gave us a great look into their complimentary views on robots as people and friends. And as the chapters have continued, it’s been interesting to see their relationship change and grow. Recent chapters have even been showing links to their Ether Gear abilities. This moment serves as a great reminder of that.
Of course, this also could cut in a darker way. If Shiki ends up in a situation where his life is on the line, how will Rebecca respond? Even facing Drakken Joe before he fought Shiki was enough to trigger traumatic memories for her. Of course, Cat Leaper may come in to prevent his death from sticking. But at what point does Rebecca break from the stress of seeing her friends die again and again?
It’s worth noting that Mashima has been known to use both to his advantage in writing characters and character relationships. While an overall lighthearted series, Edens Zero has had its fair share of dark moments, starting from the very first chapter. It will be interesting to see what direction Mashima takes this in.
Where should Mashima go from here?
One thing I worry that current and future fans, along with Mashima’s detractors, may complain about is that a power such as Cat Leaper may result in the series tension becoming nonexistent. Of course, that’s contingent on Rebecca being able to control that part of Cat Leaper and that’s not entirely a given, considering we already know it causes a number of problems. But if that happens, that would theoretically mean that Mashima could kill characters and bring them back as he pleases. There’s no way Mashima could prevent this.
Right?
Let’s ignore the obvious issues with this accusation that we’ve already touched on somewhat. I doubt that people who’d make these accusations actually care if events differ from time lines, Rebecca carries mental scars from the events through the timelines, or that this was set up long before we got to chapter 84. They’d likely only care that a character who was dead is brought back.
Before chapter 99, I would have said that there was one important thing that Mashima can do in the future to prevent this accusation. If and when Rebecca activates Cat Leaper to undo previous events again, this ought to come the cost of something else. Yes, the group is able to prevent a character from dying in a new timeline, but it comes at the cost of something or someone else precious to the group. In some cases, a tragic incident can happen across both times despite trying to change events.
Of course, this isn’t without precedent. In chapter 2, we learned that Happy died after a car accident and Professor Weisz is responsible for his current cyborg form. It was revealed that the first time Cat Leaper was ever used, it was used passively to correct her dying in that same accident. In other words, while Cat Leaper prevented her from dying, it wasn’t used to correct the incident altogether. In my eyes, that was proof enough that Cat Leaper isn’t a magic “get out of death free” card.
However, I still would have said Mashima would do well to not make that the only instance where escaping death comes at the price of something else. While I’ve thought losing Weisz’s arm might be the next step, as long as something important is lost that isn’t undone, the effect is the same.
What a difference a couple of weeks makes...
With the most recent chapters, it seems as though the current timeline has come at the cost of Captain Connor as part of the EZ Crew. While his impact on the series was relatively minor up to this point, it’s hard to say that his current position won’t have an effect on the series. When he first showed up, the existence of other Edens ships was debated. Chances are that the EZ Crew will have to meet with the Edens One sometime soon. It stands to be seen if that will be a happy meeting or not.
Now, if Mashima really wants to really mess with us, we’ll see Rebecca use Cat Leaper a few more times throughout the series. We’ll see some of the similar effects here and there. However, at the end of the series, we’ll see a lot of the major antagonists serve as the final bosses for the EZ Crew. As crazy as that might seem at this point in the series, if certain spoilers are anything to go by, I wouldn’t be shocked to see something like that happen.
In Conclusion:
Cat Leaper is an amazing moment in its own right. But, while its main focus was overwriting events of the series, it also managed to change the nature of both the arc and our understanding of the series. It will be fun to see what this means for the rest of the series and how Mashima plays with it.
If you didn’t know, I talk about new chapters on this blog every Wednesday. If you’re reading this after June 30th, I might have the reaction for chapter 100 up now. I’ve also talked about the decision to go find Mother in chapter 3 for last year’s EZ Week.
#EdensZero @hiromashima managed to turn a story written into a corner into an awesome do-over #Edens #Zero #Manga #Kodansha #HiroMashima
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