#eden's zero chapter 2

[incorrect-ft-ez-quotes]

You think I didn’t realize Hiro? I know you play Overwatch you sly dog.

[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.

[charlierejouis]

Quick Notes: Chapter 2

So, a number of things have lead to me doing two thing that was always annoying back in the day: two chapter reviews in one day and posting these on Saturday. Let’s go.

Serious question: Is this the same dragon Shiki and Rebecca saw?

Non-Serious question: (pointing at Mother) Why is Mashima like this?

So, B-Cube basically is YouTube. Cubes are cool and all, but this is basically just YouTube.

One day, I hope to learn the in-series rationale for the Blue Cat aesthetic. I mean, it might just be Happy, but is there another reason?

“Adventurer... just hearing it gets me pumped!!“ This is what it reminds me of.

Will we get planetary title cards all the time? Please say yes, Mashima.

Shiki wanting to touch different humans reminds me of when I asked my Spanish teacher how you say you want to touch someone and her responding with it being sexual in nature.

Happy getting captured was a funny set of panels.

“A cat from the Planet Exceed.“ Yes.

This may sound weird but I’m kind of worried about Shiki’s feelings about friends. It makes sense, but I’m afraid that this won’t help his development.

Young Rebecca reminds me of Ichigo from Daring in the Franxx. I’m a bit behind on the show, so I don’t know if that’s good or not.

Shiki identifying different people is nice. Not much else to say.

We all know I’m late to this party, but I find it cool that this guy who looks like Max has a broom on his shirt.

Glad to see that Mashima has kept his tradition of giving “Happy” a relatively good reason for his name. This is opposed to his tradition of handwaving the explanation for “Plue” as a name.

It’s weird that the official translator couldn’t find a way to localize a dick joke. Did I just type that out?

Now might be a good time to bring this article up.

“What is he, some kind of sliding master?!!“ Is that a thing?

“Killing an Ether Gear’ll really help my reputation.“ I feel like you’re missing the word user.

Hey, remember when we said that Mashima wouldn’t kill off main characters? What happens if they were already dead?

“Please God!!! Give Happy back!!!!“ Look, I know this is a touching moment and all, but in between remembering moments from the Shrek Musical, questioning the existence of God in this franchise, and remembering my reaction to a similar scene from Fairy Tail, I can’t feel that sad the third time through.

I’ll hold off on making that Rave Master remark. I’ll have that cookie now. Wait. So what if I mentioned Fairy Tail?

“Ducky?!” I know, right?.

Shiki’s right to question the need of a bodyguard, but I’d imagine Rebecca wouldn’t want to use Happy like a pair of guns all the time.

“I don’t care what you look like!! We’ll be together forever!!“ You know what that means? “Because we’re friends!!!“ Well then...

I love that we have a page of Shiki admiring Rebecca and Happy’s relationship in light of his life on Grandbell.

“My adventure... is starting!!!“ Shiki Grandbell: Start Line

“Elsie Crimson.” Yes.

That was fun. It’s hard to comment on something that’s over a week old, but I did my best. See you soon.

[incorrect-ft-ez-quotes]

Elcy: *watching footage of the blue garden fight* Jesus Christ it's Shiki Granbell.

[arkus-rhapsode]

Eden’s Zero Chapter 2 Review

Alright alright, we’re here for the second chapter of Mashima’s newest series. Now this chapter will be about Rebecca and Happy and if you recall... a week ago. I had basically voiced my problems with Rebecca. I still stand by my criticisms of her not contributing anything to the actual plot of the first chapter aside from having the ship and having a non definitive personality But hey, that’s just one chapter. A first impression.

And I’m up for changing my impressions if the writer is capable of turning my opinion around. Afterall, I found Katsuki Bakugou to be a horrible little punk at first and Usopp to be an unfunny jerk. But, those two eventually changed thanks to their writing and now I love them. So can Mashima do the same for Rebecca? Well, lets find out and dig in.

We open up onnnnnnnnnnnn...

A giant woman. Now those might remember her fro the cover page as being the most unique looking design out of the bunch and well. I don’t know how to feel looking at her full design. I mean we clearly see she is massive and with these wired growing out of her seem to be connected to this crumbling planet. Maybe she’s like Galactus from Marvel.

But we also see her... planet sized mammaries. Now, I don’t have a problem with ecchi if it doesn’t demean a character or moment, so this isn’t one of them. But is this suppose to be organic? She looks partially machine-like. So is that blue in her boob diamond actually just a feature and not actually revealing anything? I’m just going to move on.

We also see the dragon from the last chapter and boy does it look something straight out of the 80s with the golden paint job. I guess the idea was like the gold used on satellite panels, but against that backdrop, I think less space dragon a more, “what if the yellow submarine took place in space?”

We cut to Rebecca’s ship where Shiki is checking out these cubes that seem to play videos. Y’know this trope in sci-fi is one I always find makes me laught at the concept that in the future holograms tech will replace everything. I know people who can’t stand use touch screens, I don’t know how to convince them to use a box of light.

Also small credit to Hiro, we saw a box looking object being summoned by Rebecca to start recording the Granbell park.

So we get some explanation to what Rebecca does for a living and its a B-Cuber. By making videos and people watching them she earns money. She seems to think going to other worlds as the focus of her channel will be what gets hits. I’ll say this is a good explanation for why she does what she does. I mean guilds were basically suppose to do anything and everything, so having a youtube analogue in the series for creatively going and doing what you want actually makes more sense.

But now I have one question, why do you wear the cat girl outfit? I know you like cats, but dressing like that while visiting potentially dangerous worlds can’t be good for safety. Maybe she dresses like this to trick people into clicking on her stuff?

“Too bad?” I call that Hiro learning self restraint.

Okay, wow. That owl of generic you just dumped on me needs some examination. First of all “adventurer.” Okay is that it? Like what else is there to this registration and what does the job of adventurer actually entail? Why does your title allow you to go to different places? Maybe I’ve been ruined by Hunter x Hunter, My Hero Academia, and One Punch Man, but they go into explicit detail of what the governmental system and why it allows you to do what the characters do. Hell, those series have arcs built around getting ahold of the ability to allow them to explore or do heroic stuff. This world apparently none of that has to be done. I mean, this chapter has extra pages, you couldn’t spare a few to dignify and differentiate the profession of your MC? Then there’s the fact Adventurer is a bland name. Like just that? What about “Star sailor” or “Planetary Expiration Officer?” No no, “adventurer.”

I guess I’d be okay with this if it was like Shiki became a B-Cuber and  they have to register the types of videos he does. Also, you said you wanted him to be an adventurer, but then you ask him to be your bodyguard, why not register him as that? Like Shiki still would travel with Rebecca. And finally, female lead asking their stronger male lead to be their bodyguard, yeah real original, Hiro.

So we see Blue Garden and if people were pointing out how Grandbell kinda reminded them of Crocus in Fiore, then that river in the sky reminds me of of Edolas. But aside from that, place looks pretty nice. I like the rounded features of the buildings, because if you know flowing water, it smooths stones so this is a cool visual illusion.

Okay, that was funny. Also Rebecca is wearing glasses now. Sure, I think it helps her design.

Y’know this message is very nice in a way, and actually would be seen as a bit of a subversion to normal shounen series. Buuuuut, this is Hiro Mashima, and I have trouble hearing this from the guy who’s made Rave Master, a story about how all people in the worlds strength flows through our MC as he fights for all of them and Mashima has a tendency to try and redeem a lot of his villains. The only ones allowed to be complete jerks seem to be the ones so far in the moral black spectrum.

Some random guy then kidnaps Happy.

Okay, props to Hiro right here. He expresses that Happy is from a different planet and he’s worth a lot. Showing that there is some  stimulus in the world aout obtaining these rare creatures and subtly creates the implication that Exxid is hard to get to.

The thief flees on a hoover bike-wait where have I seen this?

No one rips off Hiro more than himself.

We then enter a flashback with Rebecca as we see her as a little girl. We find out that she’s alone in the world, likely meaning she’s an orphan too.

We cut to Shiki chasing after the biker thief and actually its a pretty good chase seen using the gravity ether gear to its fullest allowing us to get some cool action situations. Sure there's this part that’s Shiki running past random people for the sake of reiterating Rebecca’s statement, but it doesn’t kill the momentum of the scene. So yeah, I like this.

Shiki seems to add weight to himself to pull down the bike and I wanna take this time to mention something funny I noticed. In FT, Natsu was pretty invicible and used his powers pretty blandly, but what always seemed to screw him up was gravity powers. Zero’s Dark Gravity did the most damag to Natsu, Bluenote’s Fall pretty much had him at death’s door if Gildarts didn’t show up, and tempesta’s impact literally just tripped Natsu. So I do find it funny that Shiki’s more is built around it.

The guy gets up and pulls a gun and also Max and Warren are here. Okay that is a fun cameo for fans of Hiro’s work, even having the Max looking guy have a broom on his shirt. That is what I call a cool shout out, Wait till we get to the end...

We get another flashback of Rebecca giving Happy his name and honestly I kinda don’t get why these flashbacks are apart? We get like two more in the chapter, but I feel like you can just merge these first two and still have the same impact. I get Rebecca running and her fear of losing Happy is causing her to recall her finding him, but like I said there is two more flashbacks. You can still do that with just those two.

We met the boss of the gang who I don’t think is given a name. Like what the hell Hiro? You used to text boxes for character names, that was cool. Now you have me calling all of them by these very generic sounding titles. Demon King, King, Gang boss.

That was funny.

This is probably my favorite flashback out of the bunch. Its both the most sympathetic as well as what screams the characterization of Rebecca,. It seems her loneliness might actually play into be a B-Tuber because then people want to see her and have her around, like doing her job validates her. It also shows their relationship and why I think they’re close more than “Hey I found, wanna be friends?”

Shiki fights the gang in present.

Yeah the markings change, but really I don’t see the point. He’s just slind which means he’s just using momentum and making himself light enough to hover across the ground with less resistence. That or he just pulsates gravity.

I repeat from last week, is this magic? Or is this an actual gear? Like you need to implant this into you to summon your ether. If not and its like magic, why doesn’t anybody still use it. As said before, Happy recognizes it as the ether gear of gravity, so is there like and ether gear of fire? I guess we have to wait till we meet another ether gear user.

Also Hiro reuses the term dark ages that was dropped by the machine king in the first chapter. Remember this.

The boss reveals his weapon a machine gun-god damnit Hiro. Wasn’t that wht the machine King’s finishing weapon was? Like you couldn’t think off anything better than big gun? Like I get doing it as the next part of a fight ike Shiki vs King, but this is very similar. Like its not even shooting differently, It’s another machine gun.

Happy gets freed in the ensuing fight and we get our final flashback

Wait I thought cars hovered in the air? We just saw that. Like its not even in an angle facing down to imply it fell, it looks like a normal swerve off the road.

So Happy seems to be literally torn in half and then we get an unexpected cameo.

Yep, robo arm old man from the color page of all the characters. And he’s dressed differently so there’s some nice subtlety.

“Random old man, please put this cat you’ve never meet get back together, even though I have no idea what you do for a living!”

We reveal that Happy turns into guns and Rebecca fights with them

Yeah, I get that’s suppose to look bad ass, but with her stance, her skirt, and her really goofy facial expression, I can’t take her seriously.

So this here highlights my problem with gun based fights. They’re boring. People who read comics in the 90s might remember the risse of gun toating heroes and villains and soon you realize how bland the action is because you’re literally just having two people stand around and soot at eachother. Its incredibly limited and makes for poor action.

But people who remember rave will say Elie used guns. Well actually, she used them very sparingly outside the first few chapters and it was more so a gimmick out of anger that she shot up the place, and thinking about it she didn’t really use her tonfa blasters all that uniquely either. The mist I can think is her fight against Yanma where she used the gun feature as a propulsion system.

Shiki assists and they win. Also her face is scary similar to Natsu. I actually heard some comparing Rebecca to characters like Julia and Natsu when she fights given she seems to have a glee for it. Personally, I don’t agree with that. Natsu and Julia both carried themselves with a somewhat aggressive and hasty demeanor (moreso Natsu) Rebecca never really has up to this point and none of the flash backs seem to imply she had to develop this attitude in fighting because of growing up on the streets. I think this is more like Kawamura from Price of Tennis, who comes off as this timid and not very threatening guy, till he gets a racket in his hand and he has a total personality shift. So my guess is that this is just a gimmick.

I mean what do you think this is, seinin? We’d never get away with that.

Yeah, how about that? Surprised that didn’t come up during the Granbell adventure. I mean Hiro carried over things like Dark Ages and the B-cube, why didn’t he foreshadow this when he had the chance? Actually talking about android with freedom would’ve been a better thing than the overbloated friendship speech. Would’ve also explained some of Rebecca’s screaming about going past man and machine. But again, it wasn’t built up or hinted at (Maybe aside from he calling the robo cat cute), that she had an affinity for machines and trusted them.  SO instead it came off as usual Hiro Mashima friendship speech, but then again, that’s last chapter, lets finish with this one.

What a cool, creepy, yet sympathetic image.

We then see...

Oh, fuck no! Look... This isn’t Fairy Tail... It really isn’t. Like none of these characters or cast and world is FT, but hot damn is Hiro repeating some of the worst aspects of this. Now granted, nothing has happened with the guild yet. We don’t now how many members are apart of it, and we don’t know what he intends to do. But lets remember that one of the things about FT that messed it up was the guild ascetic ultimately having too many characters and not enough done with them. So lets hope that he’s learned from that mistake...

Also it’s sad that SAO had the decency that when they did Gun Gale they at least changed the name of guild to squadron even if they were basically the same thing, you still knew this was different enough. At least in name.

We cut to space where someone adressed as princess is being reported to about Shiki and the Demon King. My guess is robot dragon that they passed by in chapter one was the one who did it.

Our chapter ends with... Elise (Elcy?) Crimson. Okay, well time to point out what I think everyone has said, looks like Erza swagger jacked Captain Harlock. Then again, wouldn’t be the first time that people have accused Mashima of ripping off designs from older anime.

Now to be fair to Elsie here and Mashima, this is not Erza. While she might look like Erza, she has not acted like Erza, she hasn’t done any of the infuriating aspects of Erza, and she doesn’t seem to have the same background as Erza (We don’t know her backstory, but I’m giving her the benefit of the doubt) and she seems to be an actual princess (Though at least Erza got title of Queen which actually was pretty cool). So I’m not “hating” her right off the bat. Now, I’ve seen the accusations that people don’t like EZ because the art style looks like FT and that he should change the whole thing. Now I have my own problem with how Hiro’s art evolved in certain ways, (I always thought his most unique style would’ve been early FT to about Tenrou), but an artist literally can not change over night. I think what the criticism about the art is it means more the designs of the characters that it comes off as laziness with the fact that the character designs looking verbatim in this brand new series. Now I’m not a fan of similar looking characters either, but as I said they are not the same character. Just cause I don’t like Erza doesn’t mean I don’t like Elsie, but that works the opposite way too. I liked Lucy and Wendy, but Rebecca and Older looking Wendy character on the cover page don’t have any of the moments or development of why I liked Lucy and Wendy. They have to prove that on their own.

Sure Elsie wrecks of Erza in both appearance and title, but again, benefit of the doubt and I’ll wait till she does something herself before I judge her. Her title also has “armored” in it similar to Erza and I’m hoping that her magic (or Ether Gear if she has one) isn’t armor like Erza. I actually notice that ornate looking rapier she’s holding and I’m hoping that she is a swordswoman right off the bat, because with Erza, Mashima seemed to wanna forego the armor so he could have her simply sword fight in the samurai pants. So Elise starting out with just the sword would avoid that snafu.

And if I may say, I get that there are people who hate the similar looking designs and with a character that looks like Erza it makes me kinda wish if Hiro was going to do an intentional Erza shoutout, he finally used his initial Erza design.

This design is still cool! You can dress her up in the same Captain Harlock getup but keep the face and head. It still is really unique in appearance and would get people to stop ragging on you about the similar looking cast. There might be an intentional reason why she looks like Erza, but I’ll get into that during the post chapter follow up.

Post Chapter Follow Up: Okay so lets ask if this answered the big question at the beginning, did this chapter raise my opinion of Rebecca? Well, it defiantly made Rebecca more defined in my opinion in both motivation and gimmick, bt it still think that her base persona is still a diet Lucy.

I did also think that for a series that wants to focus on writing, this felt a lot more self contained, almost as if you didn’t really need chapter 1 to enjoy this chapter. I am still a little peeved about a lot of the vagueness of this world, like could’ve rebecca mentioned that adventure guilds exist? Though to be fair, adventurer guild seems more inclusive than just a simple mage guild. And where are people’s names? I mean jeez is it that hard?

I also do have a problem with the action, but there is not any who could make gun fighting seem interesting, so I won’t hold it too much against Hiro. I will however bring up the constant shout-outs in design and a theory of this is that Eden’s Zero is going to lead to a whole, Hiro Mashima-verse. Personally I’m not a fan of that idea. It feels way too much like its telling you to go read everything else Hiro has  made, and it kinda starts stripping away the unique identity of EZ.

In a positive note, this chapter did do some cool civilian action with the chase scene as well gave both SHiki and Rebecca a chance to shine, instead of choosing one over the other. Plus their victory came from both of them working together like actual teammates. The stuff with Happy and Rebecca’s past is sweet if a little simplistic.

I do like the attempts of world building with the B-Cubers concept and that dragons seem to play a bigger role. I’m not too fond of the concept of Shiki seemingly born special, Haru had to have the call to adventure and be chosen by his own skill, Shiki apparently has potential just cause of his birth. But I do like these threads building like the dragon in space or the machine goddess.

I think this chapter you would’ve enjoyed more if you were a fan of Rebecca’s, but I still had a bad taste in my mouth after the first chapter. However, this chapter is pretty plain, BUT it definitely feels like Hiro is putting effort into it. He seems to want to come up with more longer running threads, though I’m still not sure if this’ll last longer than FT, but it is definitely still improved upon the structural problems.. Nothing is too bad in it nor offensive in writing so I think its time for the final verdict!

Final Verdict: 6/10

Is there dumb stuff, yes absolutely, but nothing is overtly bad enough to ruin the chapter.

I will take a simple story that isn’t anything really new, over one that tries to be more and botching it like last weeks

I hope Hiro has learned from his issues with FT and won’t make mistakes with this guild and Elsie (Elcy)

Ups and downs on the actions

Hiro seems to want to try again

[arkus-rhapsode]

Oh lord. Space Captain Erza. She goes by the name Elsie Crimson. Look, she has eye patch.