#eden's zero chapter 1

[evildeadfan102]

I read Eden’s Zero Chapter 1 (Image Set 1 of 2)

[arkus-rhapsode]

Eden’s Zero Chapter 1 Review

Hey guys, now before I dive into this already longer than usual review, I did wanna take this time to mention something. Its been no secret that I turned on Mashima and FT pretty hardly after the end of FT and some of you may be aware that I was moderately active in the fanbase with putting out my reviews and such. That said some may liken that shift in mentality to me not liking how the story went and a common critique of fans is that when what they’re fans of doesn’t gel with what they want they wanna destroy it. As if the fan has ownership of the source of the fanaticism.

I admit there are times that I’ve question decisions on Hiro Mashima’s end and has posted rewrites, but that’s not me doing it out of a sense of ownership. I’m doing it because I have a standard. Being a fan of something and letting your disappointment get to you and fester into salty, bitchy purest is one thing, but being a person who’s judging what a series puts out and actually caring about the quality of what’s in the popular media is important. FT got negative reviews in its latter half because it was that bad. By the end of the series it was legit that bad. Now I don’t say that is someone who was in the fanbase and hated Hiro’s decisions cause they weren’t mine, I hated them because it was bad writing. I’m a reader with standards, as are all of you, and in the digestion of media we make distinctions between good and bad. I make this claim with more concrete surety now that I’ve been around longer and have reviewed more series than just FT, I think it be harder to believe if I made this case when I was just starting and all I was talking about at the time was FT.

Some of you might remember when I first started out on MHA, my second chapter I ever reviewed I had found it boring and mundane and to date its my least popular MHA review and I still stand by that assertion. I hold everything to the same standard, and that includes FT. The reason I write this is that while throughout this review I will mention comparison’s to FT’s first chapter (and yes, even ways Eden’s Zero improved on it), but I will be holding it to the same standard. So this entire review won’t be me holding a grudge against Hiro, but it will be me holding it to the same standard as I do everything I read. That out of the way lets dive in.

We open on a hill side and met our MC named Shiki. Beside him is the mecha demon from the cover page and what they see is a... dragon. Yeah, Hiro I thought you wanted this to be wholely original?

On the hand I actually like this scene in the sense robo demon here is actually encourging actual adventure (something FT lacked) and its kinda amazing listening to this demon looking guy talking about friendship, yet on the other hand, damnit Hiro. Is this the only thing how to write about? Like damn man.

We cut to the future where we see our main female Lucy-I mean Rebecca! Y’know I could make a Rebecca from One Piece joke, but she’s kinda already a bit of a decisivee figure so I’m not gonna bother.

I mean its okay. Its just castle theme park. Also Rebecca we find out is apparently a youtuber. Look if DBS can have GodTube then I can put up with Blue Cate (Aoneko) website. Also yeah Happy here, no sugar coating its just Happy. Also Rebecca here purposely made her skirt short. Just because you point out the sexualization in canon doesn’t make it better, ya still drew it, Hiro.

We see that the theme park is full of robots and each one acts as an assist in sending the guest through some kind of medieval simulator. And if anyone has seen Westworld you know where this is heading. To be fair I love worldbuilding so please, explore!

So we find out Rebecca’s dream is to have one million suscribers and now here’s where I gotta give props to Hiro because he actual made a dream for a character that doesn’t seem like it can be achieved a chapter from now. Granted this seems a bit hard to actually quantify, but this dream could potenially evolve into something of why she wants the suscribers and could be like Nami making the map of the world that getting video of unknown locations may actually be worth something to the general population.

We see that Rebecca chooses to go on a monster hunting quest and they encounter...

...This thing. Also it seems Rebecca’s character quirk is she really likes cats I guess? But this doesn’t last long as someone crashes down on mecha cat.

Okay that was kinda funny. I mean if this was FT would’ve actually gotten the panty shot so maybe Hiro has learned his lesson! Also note that wrench!

Oh god damnit Hiro. So this tarzan guy after acting like an animal is knocked out by Rebecca. Y’know it took about 60 chapters before Natsu got all up in Lucy’s chest, guess we’re cutting straight to the chase here.

Okay is joke with here just going be about here short skirt? Damning it with faint praise here, but at least he still hven’t flashed us them yet. Also Tarzan here is the only human on the island.

We get some scenes of Shiki here wanting to be friends with Rebecca cause she’s a human and Rebecca isn’t interested and she returns to the Granbell town where Shiki is there and the robots know who he is.

Shiki’s expressions and creepy advances really gives off this tinge of sci-fi horror, unfortunate Hiro doesn’t really go that route and we’ll get to it. Also that wizard looking robot from the color page is also here.

They then have a party where the robots all celebrate them having a costumer for the first time in so long they have a party being nice to Rebecca and lavishing her with stuff outside is robot that looks like Robin Hood and he reports to his boss this machine king.

Oh look, Hades if he was a robot.

We see Shiki trying to bond with Rebecca and it leads to him expressing he wants to leave the kingdom and see another country, but we also learn he’s in charge of fixing this and the robots are acting up lately. We find out that the one who was talking to Shiki and is his “Grandfather” was called the Demon King a robot designed for playing that role in the park.

Umm Rebecca... That’s being a dick. So you don’t like it, so you decide to cut it, cause it bothers you. You could’ve framed it like, “If he fixes you up then maybe he needs better vision” or “He’s been so nice to me, let me do something for him.” And what makes this worse s that Shiki is asleep, so she doesn’t even consult his feelings. Like seriously, that’s not being a good friend . But for contrivances sake I’m sure Shiki will wake up and love it, won’t he?

Huh? I was wrong instead we got shitty 80s comedy. I don’t know if that’s better or worse.

Y’know I said I’d give Hiro atleast two free fanservice moments for his first 3 chapters. He’s now used all of them up in a single chapter. Also Rebecca is tied to a stake while robots with torches surround her along with the machine king.

Shiki is also there and here’s something that did remind me of rave, the tightness of the first chapter. Everything seems to flow like one continuous story and doesn’t seem to do some dumb interlude like FTs first chapter did with that awkward moment where Lucy leaves Natsu and she’s just randomly in the park reading.

The King wants to use her ship to leave this world and we get som kind of motivation out of him.

Oh wow, for a first chapter villain that’s actually a really deep thing to unload. That as amusment park hosts they must’ve just been seen as pleasure tools and with no one around these robots who seem to be senstinent must’ve felt betrayed and...

Oooooor you cut out all moral ambiguity by just saying they have a virus. Sure. Trust me, this is where it gets stupid really stupid. And that’s the inconsistency.

So these robots I guess are like the ones from the Animatrix where they just kinda develop sentience out of nowhere. But unlike Animatrix it doesn’t seem to imply when they developed this sentience and that they began to think they were being abused.

Tired of Friendship already, it ain’t leaving.

So why do you hate humans? They abandoned you I guess, but there’s not other robot saying “hey our times were fun together” no everyone is like they left us to rot  so we hate them. Not like Humans did anything legitimate bad. We actually see that at the end of the chapter that there is some sort of central battery on the park that all robots are hooked up to. You could make their reason for hating humans that. That even though they left these sentiment robots still had a little kingdom to themselves, but realized that its all just going to end one day and humans didn’t even bother to unplug them. They’re existence is literally knowing when they’ll die, imagine that as why they harbor negative emotions and maybe Shiki actually fixing things might’ve actually been prolonging their lives so maybe that be why they kept him around. This whole sentience things just feels like Hiro wanted to do a trope of crazy robots and ended using multiple to fit the whatever story purpose at the moment.

You do run the planet, dumbasses. This entire plane, apparently for hundreds of years, has been solely controlled by you. Maye this should be rephrased as, going to the place that built you to get revenge or as I spoiled with the battery we’ll take the ship to get more power for our kingdom?

Shiki doesn’t do anything and kinda lets the robots just wail on him as he found out all things in his life were a lie. Then Rebecca gives a friendship speech. A stupid stupid friendship speech.

You’re right, Rebecca! Too bad we didn’t see that. I’m serious we barely see memories of Shiki with any robot outside of the demon king and Michael so there’s no weight to this conflict. We only get the vague sense they raised hm, but there’s no moments of Shiki really laughingg and enjoying their company outside of the party with Rebecca which rather is made more for getting Shiki to like Rebecca for this moment.

Shiki remembers what his Grandpa the Demon King said and just blows them all away.

We see Shiki’s hand and apparently he has these marks indicating he has Ether gear. The power system of this series.

You’re sentiment! You have out grown your programming! You can choose to have a concept of friendship.

So they fight with shitty action scenes (If I can give Horikoshi a hard time for how he draws his fight choreography, then I sure as hell will give Hiro the once over.) Happy manages to save Rebecca and like Happy from early FT, he basically spots off exposition on powers.

So is it like a literal gear? Because Happy afterward destincties as the Gear of Gravity, so is it like a devil fruit? Is ether in all humans, but this specific gear brings it out in a certain way? If its internal then I guess its like the magic circuits from Fate? And then every of has their own unique variation like Nen? Like cause Happy gives it the distinction of Gravity it doesn’t seem like Shiki gives a reason why he has this power. I’m hoping \its like devil fruits, literal gears you implant and then it brings out your ether in a certain way.

Shiki punches out the machine king and cause a massive collapse.

Credit where credit is due, Hiro actually did build up the reveal of this power throughout the chapter and its actually really well done. Kinda reminds of something Oda would do with subtly building up a devil fruit power without revealing it. Like Crocodile drying out a flower but it isn’t stated his power is specifically sand.

They then flee when the other robots rally and Shiki takes Rebecca back to her ship.

This scene would actually be really nice if we actually saw more young shiki actually having fun with the machines and not a being a creeper with them.

Shiki and Rebecca take off and we see the universe.

Not gonna lie, that’s a really pretty shot. Like damn, I could get behind this.

It seems like worlds in this universe are basically like kingdom hearts worlds. They’re not real “worlds” so much as they are islands in space.

Sure, keep the mystery alive why don’t you, no that be too much.

Well great place to end the chapter. Little dry of a first story, but I definetly see that has room for improvment and there is something-Wait this isn’t the last page? But what else is there to talk about. There’s nothing left-

Oh for fuck sake. That’s right they were trying to send SHiki away. Because apparently these robots thought there was no way to restore battery life even if stayed.

Here’s a tip, ifyou really care, and had such a close bond, maybe tell him to leave? Tell SHiki the truth that you guys are tied to a battery and instead of Shiki vowing to leave for the stars so he can make 100 friends (I’m not kiding that’s his actual goal here). Then this would be an interesting goal.

But no, you have to act like human hating jackasses and shatter the boy’s entire reality, just so you he would go out and “change the universe”

This would be a really nice scene with a very nice amount of character development starting point, if we actually saw their past. All we know is they raised Shiki, but its never really seemed like they’re loving or caring or Shiki openly gets upset if one of them had a problem. Again the biggest flaw with this chapter is that it sacrifices seeing one potentially interesting relationship (Shiki and the robots) for another one (Rebecca).

So we end on this page which reveals that Shiki’s goal is to have a hundred friends. Not going to say something snarky I just realized this is the same motivation as Yuki from future diary. Like before the crazy yandere shit.

Post Chapter follow up:

Lets be positive and look at the good stuff in this chapter. The first thing great about this chapter is it improved upon two of the biggest failings in the first chapter FT. Goals established and world building. Not only does this set up force Hiro Mashima to actually world build (literally) but each person in the first chapter has a goal that doesn’t seem like it can be accomplished quickly. It means we can have investment in the story.

Another thing I’ll give is Shiki is an okay MC. He has more personality than Natsu, but not as much as Haru and this first chapter is about him. Its easy to understand that Lucy is often considered the MC of FT because it literally focuses on her for the story than Natsu. But this chapter had a healthy balance.

Also the power system at least seems to have some definition. Unlike how anyone could have magic yet normal people just don’t choose to use it like in FT. Ether Gear seems to be a powersource that only a select few can use. Now we need to see first if there are ways of combating it like technology or such so a non ether gear person can still fight.

It also has its own unique aesthetic. Ft is a pretty generic fantasy world. It doesn’t have the bleakness of bereserk or the Japanese aesthetic of naruto. You could say Black CLover, Fairy Tail, and Seven Deadly sins all had their first chapter happen in the same world and I’d have trouble arguing it.

Now on to the crappy stuff. This series suffers from the usual Mashima foibles such as the sexual harassment, the stupidly way it tries to justify and give all conflict happy ending, not actually bothering to have a situation drawn out ad built up too, etc. I mean for the first conflict of the chapter its a heavy one, these guys raised SHiki yet their own mentality is against humans so Shiki has to choose, but instead of actually answering that question, it turns out there was no real conflict and the machines were just faking.

As for my like for Shiki, I flat hate Rebecca. She is so pointless and useless. Look I will defend Lucy and she actually can d things. First chapter she saved Natsu by using aquarius. But Rebecca? She’s just all of the bad traits of post timeskip Lucy. She is used for pointless fanservice, does nothing contribute, and becomes a mouth piece for friendship.

Speaking of friendship as a concept and goal here, Hiro just rewrite what you mean. Have deeper meaning than friends for once. There is ways you could take the motivation “I want to make 100 friends” in a compelling way. Prehaps Shiki is going out to make his own world where he can make a happy place for people where they can laugh and cry in harmony. Like story telling wise its pretty weak.

Like me personally, I would’ve taken the first chapter like this, the robots are sentinet and they are nice to Shiki and Rebecca and they have genuine fun together. They gradually reveal that they are shutting down maybe one starts acting wonky and tries to hide it and maybe the machine king is the real bad guy. He has sentinece and hates humans and he wants to eliminate SHiki and Rebecca and that’s because they’re shutting down. The other robots say they don’t care they were abandoned, they were mad at first but Shiki showed them that why they loved catering to humans. King and Shiki fight and they all reveal they’re shutting down and Shiki cries he doesn’t want them to go. The robots say its inevitable and they don’t hpw to recharge the battery and Shiki vows to leave the planet and search for a power source to bring them all back. Then that’s shiki’s goal and it even can cause questions like “Is it worth all this for machines?” or “who designed them maybe we can figure out the right substance to power them up?”

or if Hiro wanted to go a more darker route. Have the machines have no sentience and literally be dolls for the King who turns out to be a human who stayed here on Granbell and made his own little kingdom. Make it a bit meta on how Shiki’s only friends were just hollow imitations of people who were only friends because that’s what their programming dictated and they can all be switched off. It be meta as critiquing Ft and how all the guild characters basically had no conflicts, all got along, and were just friends with no depth or reason.

This all highlights the issue with Hiro Mashima and that’s he is not a good a writer. Hiro is an incredibly talented person and can come up with incredibly unique ideas and looks, which is why his cover pages are the best things he puts out because its him free forming. But writing. He has a limited scope on that and stuff like sci-fi and fantasy can be very morally grey things. But Hiro doesn’t seem to understand tragedy in the sense that its tragic because a person fails or dies unsatisfied. But he only seems to know how to write painfully obvious concepts like “save the world” or “friendship” instead doing a concept like “what it is to be a hero” like MHA does which can have a variety of answers to it.

So what’s the final verdict? Well I actually am going to do something different than usual. I’m going to say what I though the quality was compared to FT and then to what I’d consider this work compared to anything else.

In comparison to FT, Eden’s Zero gets a Final verdict of 8/10

Improves on a lot of FT’s first chapter flaws

Created a more unique environment for a story

And actually has a lot tighter narrative

But in comparison to everything else...

Final Verdict: 5/10

Even if it wasn’t Hiro, its a pretty generic start (some names aren’t even all that inspired like Machine King, Demon King)

Potential to grow into something better is there

Nothing is outright offensive

Cool concept

[evamag4869]

Eden’s Zero

She’s a Youtuber….or a hairdresser?

[wheniwatchtheworldburn]

Okay so I don’t know if anyone saw this before but those two are literally Max and Volen/Warren and Ez-Max has a broom on his t-shirt. I love it.

[rebecca-granbell-blog]

Hello! ^_^ I am so glad to be a part of the Edens Zero fandom right off the bat! :) It’s only been one chapter, but I already love Rebecca, Shiki and Happy! And obviously I already ship Shicca as well! XD I can’t wait to follow this new adventure!

[arkus-rhapsode]

Rhapsode Rambles (I talk my continuing coverage of Eden’s Zero, my place in the FT fandom, and potential future for this blog)

So anyone whose read this review, I ask you to read this.

So guys Eden’s Zero has blasted onto the scene and there’s definitely been an explosion of response to it. I swear I don’t think we’ll ever see a first chapter blow up as fast as this one did. There’s already side blogs being devoted to it, fan art, and panel coloring, it just goes to show how powerful an existing fanbase can boost a series versus someone without one. Hell, I can say the same for my review this is not only I think my highest rated review, but I think its the quickest I’ve seen a review blow up on my blog.

That said we also have a problem with this in a sense. In a sense this is just the highly prone to discourse FT fandom reborn in a different shell. This is not a brand new fandom being built from the ground up, its a continuation a postponed fandom. This means that people already coming into this “new fandom” already have an unshakable simulus of the man behind the work, be it positive or negative. So in short, getting into Eden’s Zero (in the case of fandom) is going back to Fairy Tail.

Look this post is probably not going to be what you thought because I’m going to have to now talk about something I’m sure none of you want to hear, me. Well specifically this blog. Look this blog and my reviews are basically exaggerations of my true feelings like I have no intention of ever not expressing my honest thoughts, but this is just me played up more for the intent of this blog. This post however, no Rhapsode persona, this is my unvarnished true feelings. (I’m putting this under the cut cause this might get a little long and maybe a little hard to read)

So back in the day 4 or so years ago, I started my tumblr out of the sole intent to follow and send asks to a comedy list blog and even intended to do my own. That failed. Or at the least I couldn’t keep producing results because my brand of comedy just wasn’t something all that viable to build a blog on. I was around that time I started FT and it was the first series I ever feel like I chose myself. Most series I got into at the time were the ones people said I should check out, or I had a vague knowledge of before going into it. But this was the first series I picked because I randomly found it and was like, “I can get this.” I eventually met someone through that list blog that ended up being a fan of FT and we quickly bonded over it. It became kinda a crux for the first real friend I made over the internet. And I was happy. I got into the fandom and eventually met more people and that’s basically how I made friends which was through the fandom. It eventually influenced me so much, I ended up at a place that made me have to confront the “true quality of the series.”

This group had kinda been a more negative FT crowd who kinda pointed out how it was kinda dumb (and let me express this was an anime in general group we had, FT was a topic cause it was a weekly series, but just don’t this was a solely salty FT crowd) but at the time I felt I couldn’t articulate my thoughts so I write my first review. It got minimum views with my big break eventually being my review of chapter 515. And I was so happy. I people who validated my opinions, I grew in followers, and I could finally come to the table with a personality to blog for my friends (They were already distinct bloggers so I was always kinda the least successful cause I didn’t do much) But doing this review thing forced me to dive into parts of the fandom I never noticed. The discourse. I was so green to it that I became a stunch defender.

So I put all my efforts in my reviews while also popping up in many different places and FT related blogs. As I continued to do reviews  though and the shift of my own friends feelings and me associating with people who were in the negative feeling of FT, my opinions shifted. The series I chose so long ago finally revealed that it wasn’t as good as I thought it be. Every horrible thing I heard trolls yell about FT actually felt like it became true in that. So I was now in the thick of it and I would fight for my opinions. I would take on anybody who felt differently. Defend my opinions with the utmost passion and doing this while trying to build a reputation for myself. For the first time ever I actually had something that was passionate about and felt like I could make a name for myself through a medium that was hard for me to find people in the outside world to talk to with.

I’m sure your asking, “Rhapsode, what does any of this have to do with a revival of the FT fandom?” Well it basically means a revival of the FT fandom would mean I’d have to take this series the same way I took FT and would mean I’d likely have to resort to what I was like back when the FT fandom was active. Now let me give you little insight to writing reviews for an anime series. The key to it is timing. Unlike a movie that was made like 10 years ago and you can make a review of it and still have it attract readers, isn’t the same as Manga reviews which the key is to get it out while this chapter is relevant. In one week everything can change and you gotta keep up with that. Which is why back when I was doing Ft and I wanted to be in that window of releasing it, I would look up spoilers because those would help me formulate opinions and ideas quicker. The problem with that is I basically have those forming opinions bouncing in my head for days, eating up my time and focus till it actually came out. And then it would just repeat.

And then it all ended. The series was over and I had basically went on my own suspension, eventually reviewing other series since I still felt I had obligations to the people who followed me. And the series I choose, One Piece, Black Clover, MHA, I never did the same for them. I released them on the day they came out sure, but I always just ran with them instead premeditating a review like I did for FT. But with Edens Zero that mean’s I’ll have to go back and frankly I can’t do that.

I can’t go back.

When I started writing reviews I was in my last year of high school. I wasn’t fully aware what it be like in a world where I had no planned schedule and I at the time I was working a lax desk job which gave me access to the internet so I always had a way of keeping up with Tumblr. It all just consumed me at the time. FOr a while this discourse was my life, not my hobby. But now things are different. I have a different job that means I can’t use the internet as much as I used to and my new classes this year are all in the morning. There’s no way I’d be able to hit that window sufficiently. The other thing is I’d have to go back to how I acted in the FT fandom.

Now its been years and looking back on it what I did back i the day, I’m kinda ashamed. I’d show up everywhere like an unwanted degree of kevin bacon, I would either have to defend my opinion against backlash that turned into a screaming fit or an insightful conversation with people I would’ve never talked to otherwise, and then that would get shared around and then I’d have to defend myself from that image of those rallying against me. Maybe its just that I’m older now and had time to run this blog as a normal, non discourse inflicted blog, but I discovered it was a lot more easier, a lot more fun and, while I stand by what I said t the time in my reviews, the way I acted just makes me seem like a child.

And yet with EZ first review, in 24 hours I got basically a same taste of that lifestyle after so long and I honestly can’t take it. I fell so much different having to write responses and receive mail, and then venture through stuff and blogs I don’t care about just for other opinions. Fun fact, on the day I wrote my review of EZ, I ended up staying up later than I ever would on a week day to answer peoples questions and then having to defend my opinions and image as not a salt blog. Then went to bed, went to work, then I came home and I passed out. And waking up I found I had to do more of that and for the first time I felt like this had become a chore. And if that’s just me on one day, what’s it going to be like 500 from now?

What makes this worse is I’ve basically made this my personal blog and my professional blog. Because when I started out, I never had the forsight to make a blog solely for reviews and others just for fun. I’m a simple guy and I thought, “ehh easier to have one blog.” So there’s no mincing personality here. You see thegreatrhapsode it all falls under one umbrella.

Another thing to keep in mind is that there is no incentive for me to write reviews. I don’t get any revenue like on youtube which multiple views would get me. I did this solely on the fact I wanted to and I enjoyed spreading my opinion. But nowadays that isn’t enough. Not to sound ungrateful, but I’m not in a position where “sheer fun of it”, is enough to warrant all this time and effort. Because when I do these, I want to put my best into it. I don’t want to let readers down, but I can’t do that if I’m no longer able to enjoy writing and feel like I’m not doing anything.

Because this shit ain’t MHA or OP where we all agree on its quailty, this is FT. If you have an already existing opinion you’re going to stick by it. There’s nothing I can do that would ever convince people who openly call themselves “thrash” in how they eat up Mashima’s content. Like what can I do?

So that’s where we are. Potentially a continuation of FT that will likely swallow up my life the same way it did the first time if I don’t do anything. With a guy who doesn’t to act the way he did years ago, I found way to spend my time not reviewing series and meeting people beyond just a series, no incentive to keep going beyond a feling of duty. But here I know first hand my experience with this fandom and if I complain about this hardship and yet continue, its on me. I know how this’ll end. I can see it. This is the first time I ever felt like there was nothing to gain from what I did.

Followers, mutuals, casuals, I love you guys, but I let you down. No matter what option I pick I let you all down. If I keep going with EZ I potentially burn myself out and have potentially wasted all of your time or I stop and as a content producer I’ve failed to deliver which is the basic purpose of a blog like this. I still promised I’d review up to chapter 3 and I’m a man of my word, but as t stands I think I’m finally going to do what so many people who don’t agree with my opinions have told me, “don’t like it, don’t read it.” Well lets be clear I’m stopping not cause I don’t like it, I’m not going to read it because my life is better off without it. There’s noting I can do to shift your already existent opinions and there’s nothing Hiro Mashima can write that can hurt me more than I hurt myself running a blog in this manner.

So sorry guys. I’m sorry.

[arkus-rhapsode]

So I noticed something about the Granbell Kingdom... (Chapter 1 Observation and the attention of World Building)

So this is something I realized with Eden’s Zero when I was looking over chapter one and I noticed that all of the main robots like Michael and a lot of the Robots in that greet Rebecca have these rounded, cartoonish heads.

Usually I wouldn’t mind that so much like I did with my first read through of the chapter, I was like “yeah, this is just how they’re drawn...” But looking back on it something I noticed was how different the Robinhood Robot looked.

Like this robot clearly has more humanoid looking face with more pronounced lips and nose and then there is the King, who also is the most humanoid looking one in terms of facial features.

Now the easy meta-textual explanation is that they have the more humanoid faces as the Robin Hood-looking bot is supposed to look different and suspicious while spying on Rebecca. As for the Machine King he needs to look more humanoid for the purpose of conveying pain in the fight against Shiki as well as look more humanoid because he’s the one who gets the big emotional revelation. 

But thinking about it and where they are placed in the Kingdom there might’ve been something hinted at. Now in the introduction of the kingdom, this robot that looked like a mayor with monocle had this speech about the stuff you can do in this kingdom.

Now the examples he used were being treated like a royal or go act like an adventurer. (Also looking at the far right of this photo looks like a mustache-less time skip Macao.) Now Rebecca goes to the adventure simulator and there she’s surrounded by the more rounder headed robots. Then there was the disclaimer put at the front of the chapter of how certain places or things that might seem like references to real life things isn’t. This seemed to be referring to whatever website Rebecca gets her subscribers on as youtube and Granbell being a big disneyland copy.

Now with a place like disneyworld, its split into distinct parks with Epcot and the magic kingdom with even smaller communities in those parks. I wonder if with this place being a planet sized theme park if the “Granbell Castle” portion of the world is its own park. While the little tavern area that’s near the forest where Rebecca met Shiki is its own thing as well. Both seem to also have distinctly different robot hosts with the rounded headed ones in the adventure part of the park and the more humanoid ones in the castle town part of the park.

Then there’s the demon king.

He has different features then all of them. He looks more demonic and maybe going by my theory there’s a part of the park that’s like a demon land, where you can live through a horror situation like a haunted host. Oooooorrrr if you wanna go dark maybe its a more “mature” part of the park where you can live out darker fantasies.

Plus with how the entrance works maybe there’s like a town square section, you remember it right, the place where Rebecca was almost burnt at a stake, that could connect to all the other parts of the park. I’m actually surprised we didn’t get a “You Are Here” map. We’re in an amusement park, you have the perfect framing device for giving just a map of this place. In fact, for a planet sized theme park, we don’t get really a scope of the park that much. I am aware that its not an actual planet and that “worlds” here seem to be like islands in space. But come on, I’d even take a little text box that says what location this is like with FT. Something like “Dream Forest, where adventure simulations take place” or “Mitra’s Bar, outside of the Dream Forest.” Clearly “Gear Town” wouldn’t be used as a name because that already is a yugioh card.

Now you can easily pick apart my theory by just pointing out that the robots near where the quest area still gave Rebecca the dress like a princess and the robot in the princess simulation had one of the rounder headed robots in the background. And once again we arrive to the answer for the facial expressions simply being there to fulfill the meta of the story (someone who looks suspicious and someone capable of conveying emotions), but I mention this in the sense of scope and world building. This series seems like, and I’m hoping here, going to push Hiro Mashima to world build more than he had in FT, where he simply just made everything this medieval-modern backdrop for the series. But with world building it takes a tentative eye, small details can have a big importance to making this world pop beyond just a surface level.

Take for example the Sky Races in One Piece. All of them can be summed up as, “they are humans with wings on their back.” But the you notice that there are actually 3 sky races: Skypieans, Shandians, and Birkans. Which as I said, are all at the end of the day the same thing, humans with wings. However, Oda used his art to add to the already different looking astetics of the 3 tribes, but also detailed their wings with each race specifically having their wings styled the same way as their other tribe members: Skypieans possess small wings that are pointed upward, Shandians possess larger wings that also point upward, and Birkans possess wings that point downward.  and that’s why Urouge, a guy from the sky race introduced later into the story, is fascinating because he has the same wings as a Birkan when we first meet him, but as a child we see he has the wings of a Skypiean.

Thus the reader is invested for caring about the knowledge of this world these learned as well as heightening the interest of what’s in the narrative if we the audience are aware if the character and it seemed like there was the potential for something similar in Eden’s Zero with the robots. (Again, I must stress potential)

I actually wonder if instead, we had the first three chapters of Eden’s Zero all on Granbell. Like we explored it and then went into space. Now I’m sure you’re saying, “Rhapsode, you can’t do that. That might be just be dragging it out.” And look there’s no way I can disprove that. First chapter happened, we can’t just turn around, but I can bring up the first 3 chapters of a series. As I said in a previous post, its common for the first there chapters of a new series to almost be a mini arc as well as an introduction. This is often due to make sure the first there chapters aren’t just rising action for all the extra pages the magazine gives you, but if it were to go belly up there is still a miniature gratifying journey for the cast of the story and you can write it off as a short story even if some plot threads aren’t resolved.

A prime example of this was done by Mashima himself during Rave Master where he had made the first 3 chapters take place solely on Garage Island (Haru meeting Plue and Shiba, getting the Rave Stone, defeating Feber, rejecting the call to adventure, fighting Feber again, receiving his sword, challenging Shuda after he burns up garage island, sword breaks, accepts the title of Rave Master, and leaving Garage Island) and then the third chapter leaving off on the note of Haru is going off to the big outside world. If you want a more recent example both My Hero Academia and Black Clover which are Shounen Jumps current money makers along with OP used a similar one in done story done in three chapters (MHA arguably is four). MHA it was Deku’s backstory, told he can’t be a hero, proves himself, trains, more training, enters the school, meets Uraraka, goes through the obstacle course, saves her by destroying the unbreakable bot. And Black Clovers was Asta and Yuno’s backstory, Asta gets a grimoire, goes to the trial, fails most of it except beating Sekke, gets accepted in the black bulls, Yuno shows he still cares about Asta by stopping Sekke, and Asta sees the black bulls headquarters. And if all of those series were to end at the end of chapter three there would still be a sense of open ended-ness.

But as I said Hiro didn’t and I’m not condemning him for it, maybe he thought the selling point of the series was that it was IN SPACE, and that it would generate more interest to do that then do a 3 chapter arc with just Granbell and open universe is the ending page of that third chapter. I’m just saying that he could’ve. The same is true with these robots and their appearances, I’m sure he didn’t mean them beyond just a surface level and I’m not saying NOT doing that is inherently bad and I’m going to construe it as negative against him and this series.

The reason I made this post is to convey that he could’ve done something with it (Also talking about robot heads would’ve been pretty short). Like I said, the robots with more rounded heads could be the good ones and maybe robin hood bot is actually the first chapter villain and then we meet the other more humanoid faced robots later. Or maybe Rebecca wants to explore more the park for more of her internet video. I made this mainly to show both the potential of subtly in world building and the possibilities that can be made from attention to detail.

[charlierejouis]

Quick Notes: Chapter 1

Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve done one of these. I did these all the time for Fairy Tail on my side blog. Now that Eden’s Zero is out, I thought I should bring it to my main blog. For those who wouldn’t know, I use this series to comment on/joke about the official version of this chapter available in a few places. Let’s go!

The main character is called Shiki, like Monster Hunter Orage. Otherwise known as, “The only Mashima work I haven’t read.”

“There are loads of things you’ll never know if you stay here all your life.“ Subtle foreshadowing is subtle. Anything else you want out of the way?

“Machines don’t have hearts.” Okay.

 My first thought seeing Rebecca’s ship is that it reminds me of the Epoch from Chrono Trigger.

Shock is the feeling you have when you learn that one of your main characters explores the universe as a “Youtuber”. Familiarity is the feeling you have when it’s a Mashima character who worries about sex appeal.

I promise not to make a ton of Fairy Tail comparisons, but I was looking back through Lucy and Brandish meeting that one time (you either know or you don’t) and she made her wear cat ears. Could Mashima have known?

Also, does Rebecca count as a furry or am I reading too much into this?

Blatant sexual harassment... in my Mashima manga? It’s more likely than you think.

Helpful hint: Before asking someone who you just met to be your friend, it’s best to apologize for any previous actions they deem inappropriate.

Honestly, I don’t know how Rebecca could have thought the robots wouldn’t know who Shiki is.

“Just like me when I was your age.“ You’re a robot.

“Why am I not supposed to look when she’s changing?“ ”Because she’s a girl.“ Let’s see how long that sticks.

Rebecca eating more than Shiki is a welcome change to the norm.

Shiki breaking the table was the funniest thing I’ve seen in a manga in a while. (Sorry MHA fans.)

Rebecca wants to cut Shiki’s hair without his permission? This relationship isn’t off to a healthy start. I guess you could say its... cancerous?

For the uninitiated, I feel like it’s important to take note of what gets focused on. On the one hand, showing that Rebecca is getting tied up matters. Seeing as much as we do makes me feel dirty.

Punishing one person over the things that tons of other people did to them in the past? That’s ridiculous. What kind of people would do something like that?

It’s interesting to see that Michael’s text font switches from one similar to the other robots to one similar to Rebecca and Shiki’s a few times. Does this mean anything or is this a mistake?

As a general rule, I read these chapters three times to do this. The first through, Shiki getting beaten up by the other robots was pretty impactful. Now, all I can think of is this. What’s wrong with me? 

And in seven pages, Rebecca and Shiki have a better foundation to form a romantic relationship than Nalu in chapter 1. In this essay, I will-

Oh hi, Happy. Guess you were asleep for most of the past few pages.

I should talk about the fight, but I can’t help but think about how Rebecca’s wearing different clothes than the ones she had on before putting on her dress. I mean, we couldn’t get a good look at her pajamas, but that’s weird.

“Ether Gear... A Power from the Dark Ages“ I’m calling shenanigans. I don’t remember this being in Rave Master. (I MEAN IN TONE!)

“You don’t even have the courage to leave this island!!!!!” I’m mad that he’s not even that far off.

“Kill the humans!!“ Oh, and Happy gets to live?

Every time I look at the Sakura Cosmos panels, I just feel so much good. We’ve seen Mashima handle fantasy in a few different ways. Now it’s time to see him handle space stories.

What many people might call a needlessly painful set of experiences, I like to call a Mashima backstory.

Something tells me we haven’t seen the last of Michael yet.

Shiki wanting to break the window is quite a fun moment.

And that’s chapter 1. Man, that took too long. All jokes aside, this was really fun to do again and it feels great to be reading another Mashima work as it comes out. Let’s see how long this lasts.

See you!